Cakes and Ale Back on Sale
Boris has earmarked June 22nd as the day when pubs and restaurants across the nation will be allowed to reopen, according to the Mail. This is two weeks ahead of schedule (the original date for the grand reopening was July 4th). The accelerated timetable follows a crunch meeting last Tuesday when the Prime Minister was warned by Business Secretary Alok Sharma that prolonging the shutdown could cost 3.5 million jobs in the hospitality sector.
According to Tim Shipman and Arthi Nachiappan in yesterday’s Sunday Times, the 3.5 million figure came as a shock to Boris, who is supposed to have said, “Christ!” when told the news. If the Prime Minister was surprised to discover that the lockdown is causing job losses – and will cause many, many more – he hasn’t been paying attention.
But don’t get out the bunting quite yet: those pubs and restaurants that do reopen will only be able to serve customers outside. Not a very appealing prospect, given the current state of the weather.
In other news:
- Britain recorded its lowest daily death toll today since March 22nd, with only 55 new deaths reported
- No new deaths were reported today in Scotland or Northern Ireland
- Britons should be able to travel freely within the EU without having to quarantine for 14 days by mid-July. Shame ministers aren’t put in the corner for 14 days every time they walk some crazy policy back
- Sunday trading laws could be suspended for a year to encourage people to go shopping
More on the Dreaded “Second Spike”
I was having supper with my children on Friday, having just filed the latest daily update, when they all received news alerts on their phones warning that the R number was going up again. “Looks like you were wrong about lockdown easing, Dad,” said my 15 year-old son.
This was based on a Public Health England/Cambridge University study saying there was “some evidence” the R number had “risen in all regions” of England. But on closer inspection, this wasn’t as alarming as it seemed. What the study in fact said is that it was “probable” the rate of infection was below 1 in all regions apart from the North West and the South West. But even in the latter, the study estimated the R number was “around” 1. So in fact it was only above 1 in the North West.
When asked about this at Friday’s Downing Street press briefing, Matt Hancock pooh-poohed it, pointing out that SAGE believed the R number was below one across the country.
The problem with the R number, as I’ve pointed out before, is that it’s fiendishly difficult to calculate, given incomplete data about who is and isn’t infected, and if the number of infected people in a particular region is quite low, as it is across the UK, a localised flare-up – in a care home or hospital, for instance – can push the R number above 1 without cause for alarm. Indeed, that’s what happened in Germany a few weeks ago. So few people were infected in the country, that an outbreak of infection at a single meat-packing plant in North Rhine-Westphalia pushed the R number above 1. The following day it fell back down again.
YouTube’s Censor-in-Chief Heading For Nervous Breakdown Trying to Keep Up With WHO’s Constantly Changing Guidance
My heart goes out to the poor drudge at YouTube charged with overseeing the removal of any content that challenges the WHO’s official guidance on COVID-19.
As you’ll recall, the CEO of YouTube Susan Wojcicki told CNN’s Reliable Sources at the end of April that the social media platform would be “removing information that is problematic”, including “anything that would go against World Health Organisation recommendations”.
But the problem is, those recommendations change from one day to the next. So how is YouTube’s Censor-in-Chief supposed to keep up?
Take face masks.
Readers with long memories will recall this WHO video which tentatively recommended the wearing of masks, in combination with other protective measures.
Then, on April 6th, the WHO updated its advice. Now, apparently, there was no point in wearing masks:
there is currently no evidence that wearing a mask (whether medical or other types) by healthy persons in the wider community setting, including universal community masking, can prevent them from infection [sic] with respiratory viruses, including COVID-19.
But in its latest official guidance, published on June 5th, the WHO has recommended that everyone should wear masks in public areas. The WHO’s technical lead expert on COVID-19, Maria Van Kerkhove, said in a Reuters interview: “We are advising governments to encourage that the general public wear a mask.”
No doubt in a few weeks time, the WHO’s advice will change again. It’s almost as if the organisation is trolling us now.
Question for Susan Wojcicki: If your video was removed because you expressed a point of view that was contrary to the WHO’s guidance on, say, April 9th, but is now in line with it because the WHO has changed its mind, can you apply to have your banned video reinstated?
In case you missed it, Lockdown Sceptics published a summary of the scientific evidence that wearing face masks reduces transmission on Friday that you can read here. TL;DR: it’s pretty threadbare.
Stop Press: The WHO has just announced that asymptomatic coronavirus patients aren’t infectious.
Editorial in Wall St Journal
There’s a great editorial in the Wall St Journal today entitled “Doctors For Lockdown Discrimination” pointing out the rank hypocrisy of Democratic politicians and public-health scientists who condemned anti-lockdown protestors, but who are now enthusiastically endorsing the Black Lives Matter protests. The editorial board homes in on the letter circulated by public-health researchers at the University Washington last week, signed by 1,300 health-care providers, epidemiologists and medical students around the country, seeking to justify this volte face.
“On April 30th, heavily armed and predominantly white protesters entered the State Capitol building in Lansing, Michigan, protesting stay-home orders and calls for widespread public masking to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Infectious disease physicians and public health officials publicly condemned these actions and privately mourned the widening rift between leaders in science and a subset of the communities that they serve,” they write.
“As of May 30th, we are witnessing continuing demonstrations in response to ongoing, pervasive, and lethal institutional racism set off by the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, among many other Black lives taken by police,” they continue. “However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission” because “white supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19.”
“This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders,” they add. “Those actions not only oppose public health interventions, but are also rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives.”
So there you have it folks. If you want to protest in favour of Black Lives Matter – a political group that wants to end capitalism, among other things – that’s perfectly fine. In fact, it’s your moral duty to do so. But if you want to protest against the lockdowns, you’re a “white nationalist”, i.e. a fascist.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be too outraged by this. After all, it means we don’t have to worry about a vaccine before we can dispense with social distancing measures. All we need do is proclaim our allegiance to a progressive cause and we’ll be immune from infection.
Good Thread By QC on Draconian Quarantine Regulations
I spotted a good Twitter Thread by Tom Hickman, a QC at Blackstone Chambers, about the new quarantine regulations that came into force today:
(1) So, the 14 day quarantine regs. How do they affect your summer holiday plans? Your work? Let me explain. And let me explain some surprising features of the rules.
(2) You may be thinking that people arriving in the UK – including you returning from a summer holiday – would have to observe the sort of stay at home measures you were observing in March and April. Wrong.
(3) The regs would require you to stay at home full stop. No leaving for exercise, not even once round the block. No leaving for shopping, unless you are on brink of starvation and no-one can go for you (“exceptional circumstances”) No cleaner, no nanny,…
(4) There isn’t even the “reasonable excuse” exception (otherwise known as the Dominic Cummings exception) like there used to be in the lockdown regs.
(5) These rules are criminal law, backed by criminal law sanctions.
(6) Here’s some surprising features of this system. In lawyerly sub para numbers.(6.1). As I have hinted at, these restrictions on liberty are far more severe than were imposed, and were effective, at the height of the pandemic, when transmission rates in the UK were very high.
(6.2) These are more stringent restrictions on liberty than those people diagnosed with or displaying symptoms of Covi-19 are subject to – 7 day isolation, based on guidance, entirely voluntary and based on individual responsibility.
(6.3) The restrictions apply in an entirely blanket fashion even from arrivals from countries with v low transmission levels. Contrast England with 17k each day.
(6.4) Buried in the schedule is an exception for people whose work requires weekly travel to the UK or to countries outside the UK. So most frequent work travellers are exempted from quarantine and can continue to come and go as they please.
(6.5) Whilst the UK Gov website proclaims this a UK wide approach starting on 7 June there are currently no regs have been published outside England. Therefore if you enter the UK outside England or live outside England on Monday: no quarantine.
Herd Opinion
Good question posed in the thread beneath Friday’s update from an executive of a large American corporation:
I have to be a little circumspect here, because I can’t risk being identified, especially in the current economic climate.
I work for a large American corporation, which is a very large employer in many countries around the world. I was surprised to see in the last few days that our CEO decided to send an internal communication to all employees taking a definite and unequivocal position on the BLM protests that are happening in the US and elsewhere. It’s not the first time I’ve seen him go on record with a political opinion, but it’s the first time I’ve seen an official party line be broadcast in this way.
For three months, the entire focus of the top management of the company has been on how to mitigate the blood bath that we’re seeing in terms of results around the world because of lockdowns. I know this, because I’ve been in many of the “meetings”. Nobody has been supportive of the lockdown and everyone thinks it’s an overreaction. We’ve lost, at a guess, between $3 – $4 billion in revenue this year compared to last year (again, to be very clear, I’m not naming the company and I have not seen the actual numbers. This is a gut feel).
Nobody has made any statement on our opinion beyond “keeping employees safe”.
How can it make any sense that the corporation is prepared to go on record with an opinion about the death of one man in Minneapolis but not prepared to comment on the destruction of the global economy? It’s perverse.
What’s the answer? It must have something to do with people being frightened to challenge herd opinion. Free speech used to be better protected, but one of the reasons governments around the world have been able to take away the civil rights of over a billion people is because people are frightened to challenge prevailing orthodoxies for fear of being publicly shamed or worse.
Is the NHS Becoming Schrödinger’s Cat?
Alarming email from a reader:
I called my sister on Saturday for news about our ailing and widowed father who is insisting on soldiering on in his house. She has given up keeping away, realizing that reassuring and caring for a confused old man at the end of his life is a more important priority.
She works at a local secondary school helping the special needs children. It’s already become apparent that ‘social distancing’ is ludicrously impossible. She goes in once a week at the moment to deal with the offspring of essential workers. They frequently turn up without equipment like pens and need constant assistance. Various members of staff have discovered they have to give them something to write with and can’t possibly sort out computer problems and other issues by standing half a mile away. Nonetheless, the headteacher has taken it upon herself to patrol the school, ever vigilant for such misdemeanours, and has already issued two teachers with disciplinary warnings – these of course will stay on their professional records. With that kind of motivational leadership, it’s easy to imagine how oppressive a school could become for everyone concerned.
One of her friends, a lawyer, went to the dentist at the of February and was told a lump in her tongue caused him great concern. He referred to her GP. But by then the lockdown was in force. Naturally, this GP NHS hero was a great deal more concerned about his own welfare and refused to see her. He passed her on to a consultant. He likewise seems to have forgotten his Hippocratic oath and refused to see her too. Only when her husband managed to take a photograph of the lump and send it in with a suitably-worded letter did the health-conscious consultant decide to remember what he’d been trained to do (and is being paid to do). The woman was called in immediately and operated on very recently to remove the tumour before cancer destroyed the whole organ. One dreads to think what might have happened to her without the emergency treatment.
The woman and her husband are educated professionals who wouldn’t take no for an answer and knew how to demand treatment, and even then it was a very close call. How many other people are silently malingering with conditions that will become irreversible and terminal? Protecting the NHS has become one of the greatest absurdities of our time. It’s like having a cherished vintage car in the garage you never dare take out in case it gets dirty or damaged. The NHS is turning into Schrödinger’s cat – before long it’ll be so invisible we’ll wonder whether we even know it exists. For many people it has already ceased to do so.
Around the World in 80 Lockdowns
I’ve been receiving a steady flow of ‘Postcards’ – first-person accounts of what it’s like to be locked down in different parts of the world. You can see them all on the right hand menu under the heading: “Around the world in 80 Lockdowns.” Today, I’m publishing postcards from Mexico, Slovakia and Zimbabwe. Here’s an extract from the “Postcard From Zimbabwe“:
Though conditions have been relaxed and some business that provide essential services have been able to reopen, the Government recently announced that lockdown would continue indefinitely with fortnightly updates. One particularly annoying and, to the minds of most people, illogical regulation concerns the wearing of face masks which is required even when you are alone in your car. Given the low levels of infection, these impositions on our liberties are somewhat puzzling not to say inconvenient. Further, all travellers to the country, and there are many Zimbabweans trapped abroad, are required to be quarantined for 21 days, either in Government-operated facilities which, to be blunt, are disgusting, or in certain approved hotels and guest houses at great expense to themselves.
All of them are worth reading in full.
Round-Up
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:
- ‘Britain’s “Professor Reopen”‘ – Tunku Varadarajan in the Wall St Journal interviews Sunetra Gupta (not paywalled)
- ‘Missing school is bigger risk for children than catching Covid, warns Government adviser‘ – Dr Gavin Morgan, an educationalist on SAGE, says the impact of COVID-19 on children’s health is “miniscule”, but spending a prolonged period out of school is devastating
- ‘Britain’s double shame: coronavirus deaths and economic collapse‘ – Simon Jenkins in the Guardian from about 10 days ago. Dunno how I missed it, but it’s a corker
- ‘More than half of England’s coronavirus-related deaths will be people from care homes‘ – The Guardian reports on a new analysis by the healthcare business consultancy LaingBuisson
- ‘Madrid chief warned against refusing hospital aid to care home residents: “They’ll die in undignified conditions”‘ – Spain, too, has a care home deaths scandal brewing
- ‘Early June graphs from Christopher Bowyer‘ – Good post for Hector Drummond Magazine
- ‘Boris Johnson wants to slash social distancing to one metre to help kick-start the economy and save millions of jobs‘ – The Daily Mail reports on Boris’s conversion to the one-metre rule
- ‘Boris has been taken prisoner by scientists‘ – Damning article in Conservatives Global
- ‘Furious relatives of Italy’s coronavirus dead launch legal action calling for full inquiry‘ – Expect to see more of these around the world as lockdowns ease
- ‘Coronavirus in Scotland: early study finds no greater risk for ethnic minorities‘ – The Times reports on the initial findings of Public Health Scotland. The headline means that ethnic minorities have not been dying in disproportionately large numbers north of the border
- ‘Lancetgate Is a Humiliation for Trump’s Medical Critics‘ – James Delingpole socks it to the critics of hydroxychloroquine
- ‘Safety is No Salvation: A Catholic Perspective on the COVID-19 Crisis‘ – Chris Larkin in Hector Drummond Magazine is fed up with the Catholic church’s wet response to the lockdowns
- ‘More Hysterical Media Misreporting: Fanning Faltering Flames‘ – Lockdown Sceptics contributor Omar Khan on the failings of the MSM
- ‘“Hundreds” of NHS Test and Trace staff are being let go after being left with nothing to do‘ – File under “quelle surprise”
- ‘Why lockdown could cost more lives than it saves‘ – Bristol Professor of Risk Management Philip Thomas predicts 675,000 could die from the collateral damage of the lockdown
- ‘We’re either lazing in the sunshine or cowering in the dark – and both must stop‘ – Robust column from Dan Hodges in the Mail on Sunday
- ‘Tell MPs “not in my name” if you are horrified by this social experiment‘ – Janet Daley in the Telegraph urges people to write to their MPs telling them to end the lockdown
- ‘Alex Berenson’s coronavirus booklet hits top spot on Amazon after online retailer initially rejected it‘ – Lockdown Sceptic Alex Berenson benefits from the Streisand Effect
- ‘30 private schools preparing to close due to COVID-19‘ – As I predicted when Boris Johnson’s old prep school announced its closure a couple of weeks ago, the virus will decimate private schools
- ‘LOCKDOWN LUNACY: the thinking person’s guide‘ – Blog post from JB Handley that several readers have flagged up. Worth reading
Small Businesses That Have Reopened
A few weeks ago, Lockdown Sceptics launched a searchable directory of open businesses across the UK. The idea is to celebrate those retail and hospitality businesses that have 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 opened 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.
Shameless Begging Bit
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 takes me about nine hours, which doesn’t leave much time for other work. If you feel like donating, however small the amount, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in future updates, email me here.
And Finally…
Picture taken by a reader on Sunday. Just in case you were in any doubt about what the UK’s state religion is.
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.
ASYMPTOTIC people spreading coronavirus is very rare. Hallelujah. Will anyone listen????
Asymptomatic, sorry. Stupid autocorrect
Asymptotic spreading isn’t so far from the truth now, it is asmyptoting towards a flat line of not spreading much further at all. And it would have done so still, perhaps rather quicker, if we hadn’t had this idiotic lockdown.
Doesn’t that negate the need for everyone (that is, asymptomatic people) to wear masks? How can they say that and simultaneously insist that everyone wear masks?
Does that not obviate the need for lockdowns? Surely, the only need for lockdowns is because it’s believed apparently healthy people are out there spreading the virus. So you need to isolate everyone. If it’s only people with symptoms who spread, the solution is blindingly obvious: just quarantine them!!!
Watch how absolutely no one reports this revelation until it’s needed to reach the public at large. They just put it out now as cover.
There was never any case for lockdowns asymptomatic spreaders or not.
It was also always far more likely that asymptomatic people would be spreading very little and this should have been the default assumption (it was mine) in the absence of evidence to the contrary.
All we ever needed is for people to stay at home when they’re ill.
We need one change to the law plus one recommendation to the public.
The law needs to make it illegal to have those clauses about needing a note from a Doctor if you’re off sick for more than two days. It’s a waste of time for the Doctor and nobody ever gets those notes.
The recommendation needs to be stay at home and go to bed if you’re ill. A cold usually lasts a week (or seven days if you take medication for it).
I have no objection to the traditional Japanese system of wearing a mask when you’re ill if you have to go out provided this is completely optional.
If you had been running the country in. March, we wouldn’t be in this inconceivable mess now.
Or my Mum which is where I got the idea that you should go to bed if you’re ill 🙂 I don’t know how she arrived at this incredible scientific knowledge apparently without access to any sort of SAGE committee.
Actually I agree with you about masks. If everyone who had a cold or a cough wore one if they had to go out in public, that would actually be helpful. I wouldn’t mind wearing one temporarily in a shop if I had a cold, but as you say, it must be optional. For the virus though, it’s unnecessary and a complete farce to make everyone wear one when they aren’t even sick.
Agree that they should be optional but they don’t help with colds and coughs either. Using tissues are more effective.
It wouldn’t because even the best surgical masks have pores three times the size of the virus. And if you’re infected you exhale about 10 million virus particles on every out breath. So even as it signals ‘threat’ it also breeds a false sense of security. Might as well give someone a bell to ring so people steer clear. If you’re ill stay at home.
You’re missing the point that healthy people don’t catch stuff in the first place, mask or not.
No mention – or at least, next-to-no mention – this morning of yesterday’s WHO announcement in any of the papers or any of the news outlets. Plenty about Prince Andrew, something about schools not reopening further before September (ugh) or even later for secondary schools. Hand wringing about people who are in financial difficulties “because of the virus”. I’ll be generous for a minute. I can accept that we might be genuinely concerned about the lethality of this virus. Personally, I think that those concerns are hugely overblown, but let’s just assume that I’ve been looking at the wrong evidence and that it really does kill a meaningful proportion of those infected by it. Let’s also assume that there are a significant number of people whose experience of the virus is so bad that they require hospitalisation and that we don’t have a health service that has the capacity to deal with the possible numbers of the very ill. I can see why the idea that the NHS might have been overwhelmed in the outbreak would have been so concerning that drastic action might have needed to be take. Let’s accept the possibility that the entire population is susceptible to… Read more »
You’ve pretty much articulated what’s wrong with politics and society now – the lack of humility, the insistence of staying the same course never mind if it brings misery and is becoming worse than what it set to protect us from, the narcissistic insistence that death is unacceptable.
Our leaders lack the backbone and cojones to admit that they have made a catastrophic error and to apologise. If they think the BLM demonstrations are bad now, wait until those who will be made unemployed over the next few months have had enough and take matters into their own hands.
You’ve hit every nail on the head.
It does feel like it’s been on rails since the get-go.
Asymptomatic transmission was the assumption at first, then the WHO provided the nudge with a bit of fake news and off the world went ….
Exactly, in one report the whole premise for lockdown is dismantled
Because they want to reassure the zombies. Like putting elephant powder on the streets to keep the elephants away. There are no elephants, but the zombies don’t know that,
I think the muzzle wearing is only to try to make the folk still hiding behind their sofas feel safe enough to come out. Why on Earth we should have to do so because of their irrational fears and the fact they can’t be bothered to do their own research on the virus, is another matter.
BBC are now, incredibly, reporting this.
I say incredibly because it makes their last 3 months of hysterical scaremongering make them look like a right set of pricks.
Really? I noticed it was nowhere near their front page this morning and then actually did a search on the news site for world health organisation and found nothing.
Ah, yes. Found it. Jolly good.
Here’s the line they’re taking:
“ And since people who haven’t yet developed symptoms are unlikely to know that they are contagious, pre-symptomatic transmission has “important implications” for track, trace and isolation measures, Prof Javid said.
This emphasises the importance of lockdown measures in “massively reduc[ing] the numbers of people infected,” said Prof Liam Smeeth, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.”
There you go. Panic over. The world has not changed. As you were.
They’ve reported it, then promptly disguised it in a load of bollox from a pet epidemiologist.
Hiding in the health section: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52977940
Unless that was just the initial means of entry into the nwo.
Now they have laws in place and no meaningful population-wide dissent, BLM, global warming to come as per the schedule, and fucking aliens on the White House lawn if necessary, they can sing whichever tune they want.
The one thing they will NEVER say is “This was a coup, this is how things will be from now on, wake up people !”.
We need to do that ourselves.
Someone has posted re ‘military checkpoints’ in Wales. Ffs.
There’s only so long one can be amazed at government stupidity/incompetence/inability to hold a piss-up in a brewery. Before one’s conclusion should be reappraised using the latest evidence.
Boris isn’t in shot. He’s just the other side of the tavern door, busy ‘admiring the ample assets’ of the Pub’s best barmaid. He will be along shortly.
Well, you know what the man said, ‘Better a witty fool than a foolish wit’: Boris is the foolish fool!
Archbishop Viganò’s letter to President Donald Trump:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/lifesite/Open_Letter_President_Donald_Trump.pdf
I am not a religious man, but Amen!
In two weeks.
Why aren’t thousands of people dropping like flies after all these protests of tens of thousands do people?
Oh, we’ve just found out that asymptomatic people aren’t infectious.
What a joke. ‘The Science’ is changed to fit the narrative. It’s so bloody brazen now. When indeed nothing happens in two weeks, how on earth can any lockdown measure stay in place. If the public weren’t so thick.
My only hope is that when infections rise in the winter (like THE FLU), that we may be able to admit our massive, insane mistake. Also, MORE media outlets better report that from WHO!!
It won’t be reported. They’ll just disseminate this information under the radar to give themselves cover for when anyone questions the lack of impact from the protests with regard death rate. It SHOULD be the headline of every single paper and news bulletin. This completely discredits all social distancing and makes wearing masks totally unnecessary in a week when wearing them on certain places is a legal requirement. Absolute joke.
More likely I think that this would be sold to us as the second/third/fourth wave – after all the rules don’t even require a test and the symptoms overlap. After a year of destroying peoples livelihoods and subjecting them the excess stress it would not be surprising for there to be more illness then normal this winter.
Not to worry though we will have the tried and trusted lockdown and track and trace up and running and even a vaccine so we will all be saved ! Saved to death that is.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The reason for the lockdown given by Her Majesty’s Muppets was to STOP THE NHS BEING OVERWHELMED.
Not, repeat NOT to “stop the virus from spreading”! You CAN’T stop a virus from spreading unless everyone is put in a plastic hermetically-sealed bubble and spends the rest of their life there.
The initial reasoning – preventing NHS overwhelm – was understandable at the time when the IFR of this virus was unknown.
But the NHS wasn’t overwhelmed and certainly isn’t now. The Nightingales are empty and most ICUs have surplus capacity.
And we know that the average IFR of the virus is 0.26%, similar to a bad flu. (CDC latest figures.) Most people other than the established “vulnerable” groups – elderly with co-morbidities, the immunocompromised, the generally unhealthy (eg young morbidly obese alcoholics taking polypharmacy) – have a 99+% chance of recovery, same as with the flu.
So why are we still locked down?
Well, it would seem that certain vested interests haven’t completed their agendas yet.
Follow the money. Follow the money. Follow the money.
Astrazenica is making billions of doses of vaccines ‘just in case’ even though they admit it’s not properly tested yet. They plan to roll it out on the public in September, ‘Caveat Emptor’. Maybe they got the idea from Roche, who made millions with Tamiflu after Sars, but faked the trials and it didn’t end up working at all. At least that didn’t harm anyone, although who knows?
https://prohealthbase.com/2020/01/29/roche-flu-medication-fraud-stole-billions/
I wouldn’t have a vaccine that had been developed and tested far quicker than normal.
I wouldn’t voluntarily have any unnecessary vaccine, full stop.
The initial reasoning was NOT understandable. There are zillions of epidemiologists out there who know about epidemics and new disease outbreaks. They know about ascertainment bias; they know that if the CFR at the start of a new disease outbreak is 3.2% the IFR is going to be one-tenth that or less. We’ve been through this before umpteen times. On top of that we had all the data from China and Italy in February and early March showing that serious illness and death are heavily skewed to aged people with multiple comorbidities.
If we accept that lockdown was understandable because of limited information, which is quite untrue, we have furnished an excuse for this happening again and again in the future.
Well said. The question for any independent public enquiry into this debacle will be: on what data did the government rely for its illiberal, quite possible illegal, measures? The answer, as with the French strategic reserve in 1940, can only be, quite simply: ‘Aucune!’
I’ve the distinct impression we’re Currently being taken for mugs. And we will remember those people. Bumpkin Hancock and PartTime Johnson
Sadly, I think that the overwhelming majority of the population have proved themselves beyond doubt to be mugs. So we haven’t been taken for anything we don’t deserve.
Read Wankock’s replies to the briefing questions. He completely and brazenly ignores the latest facts and figures.
Wriggle, wriggle, wriggle.
2nd wave ….2nd wave …. 2nd wave ….
Improvisation. Gotta save face every time.
It seems a bit heartless to say. but “nice to see those posh schools closing”. Obviously the job losses for experienced teachers will be tragic, and its not very fair on any parents who were rich enough to pay for private education and wished to do so. Also to tell the truth primary and secondary education isn’t as important as FE college or Uni, so the posh schools aren’t doing that much. But it is satisfying to see that the barbaric lockdown policies are bringing about the demise of the places which produced our current crop of paternalist politicians. Maybe those who grow up in whatever schools remain in this time of fanatical social distancing and deluded red tape (because as any present bureaucrat will tell you a thin line of red tape stops all the viruses which subtle sensible measures surely can’t) will be furiously anti-health-and-safety and utterly resenting of all authoritarian busybodies by the time they can hold office.
Interesting viewpoint. However not all kids attending private schools are posh and will ‘produce paternalistic politicians’. In fact many kids attending private schools are from working class houses, that skimp to pay the fees because their kids have special learning needs or experienced issues in some state schools. In fact one local private school has 30% special learning needs children and many families are not wealthy/elite.
If private schools close and parents can no longer afford the fees it will put much more pressure on already pressured state schools. Classes are already big and can only become bigger.
What is needed is more spending on education and improve teaching at state schools. Unfortunately we have an approach of the lowest common denominator where bright or special needs kids are ignored. Then you have the influence of unions that is currently preventing the opening of schools and children are missing out on education and social development.
Oops, perhaps my point wasn’t so well made. I quite agree that education in general in this country is very far downhill and still dropping, I just thought there might be a silver lining in some misery for the types who go on to take the PPE course at Oxford. Great shame about anyone who wasn’t on there way to being a paternalistic politician who has had their future disrupted by this disastrous lockdown.
See one of my best friends – same state school as me – ended up at Oxford doing PPE* – and is now a social worker. She abhors the thought of going into politics, I think because she is a product of her working class background and wants to help people who grew up like her. Sadly she is just the sort of person we NEED in politics. So it doesn’t even matter what uni you end up at, in theory, it’s all about the attitude you are born and bred into by going to one of those schools. It’s not even about ‘who you know’ when you get to uni – it’s about who you *already* knew before you even got there. *I am day by day made well aware just how excellent my school was (now it is an academy and it’s shit, thanks BLiar). We had 6 people go to Oxbridge in my year – this didn’t even include me, because I went for my master’s! (after years of being the gobshite in the back row who everyone thought was thick because I was lairy), although we were a ‘freaky’ year apparently. Anyway, my point… Read more »
The private schools where I live are about 12 grand a year. No matter how much scrimping one does there’s no way anyone but the very wealthy can afford that.
I’ve always assumed that if there were no private schools, the state schools would suddenly have much smaller classes and adequate equipment.
Why? The people who are paying the private school fees are also paying their taxes to fund the state schools. There won’t suddenly be more money in the system, just more pupils.
I suppose that there will be more unemployed teachers, so teachers might get cheaper.
The point is that, if they can’t opt out, the moneyed classes will insist on better standards for their little dears. A bit like those who use state schools but can afford to move house if they don’t like the local comprehensive.
No, no they won’t. They’ll just do what a lot of their economic peers already do and what a lot ofthe people in the socio-economic band immediately below them already do and move to houses in the catchment areas of good state schools. So house prices go up in those areas.
The opposite would happen. The richest people would send their children to boarding school in Switzerland etc and the rest of the kids would flood state schools.
Surely we could just build more state schools….?
There aren’t that many kids, proportionally, in private schools anyway, are there?
And yes, we’d get the best teachers back seeing as sadly they now all fuck off to teach in the private system where they get paid five times as much
Switzerland would replace Eton. The rest of their sprogs would join the state system and there would be clamouring for improvement.
Why? The government doesn’t fund private schools the parents do. Stare schools will be swamped with the pupils from private schools and classes will be bigger.
Read my reasoning above.
The wealthiest parents subsidise the others through a bursary system. At state schools, the weathiest parents pay tuition fees to improve their children’s chances……….
Yes I do agree with this. State schools should be the absolutely most essential thing we spend our money (not that we now have any) on as a nation but with guidance from private schools who get so many things right ie focusing on community, sport, music etc
The comprehensive schooled hero of the proletariat inside me agrees.
The ordinary person who has many privately educated friends doesn’t.
(Close Eton though, seriously. Drop them all in the nearest state school and we’ll see who ends up Prime Minister ;p )
To be fair education will be a waste of time in the new normal Fucking hate that expression
What gets me is that every time it’s reported, it’s the virus that’s caused them to close, not the bloody lockdown!
I don’t have anything against private schools.
Or grammar schools. The problem with these however is that they are no longer situated in deprived areas.
I thought I had a problem with grammar schools. Actually…. maybe I still do. I don’t have a problem with them in principle if you could judge young kids adequately on the strength of examinations. My parents are perfect examples. Both intelligent people, but my mum is arguably more academic. WAY more academic. My dad passed his 11 plus. My mum failed. My dad went to a grammar school, titted about (because he is a doer not a thinker), and failed all his O levels. My mum went to a shit comprehensive and passed all hers. She would have been served way better by that grammar school place, but because she came from a very poor family, had no time to study, wasn’t that great at exams until she got older etc. etc. she was deprived of it. My dad wasted his place. He went on to do an appreniceship and ended up an engineer with no qualifications (because that’s just how he learns). My mum ended up working in finance but even now regrets that she never went to university – I’m sure she would have been afforded more encouragement and tuition to get her there had she… Read more »
Well said.
This is ridiculous and ignorant. Me and my husband work bloody hard to send our kids to private school. We aren’t driving around in Bentleys, we sacrifice nearly all of our disposable income after essentials to provide them with this opportunity. It isn’t so that they will have privilege over others, it is for the experience. Many private schools, especially junior schools, have a phenomenal sense of community where teachers dedicate their whole lives to their jobs. These schools more often than not shy away from the culture of safetyism and allow free thinking, tree climbing and knee-scraping. Most private schools, staff, parents and kids are desperate to get back to normality. The schools my kids are at provide scholarships and placements for disadvantaged bright kids from the local area. Not all private school are Eton and Harrow, most are small and paid for by hard working, relatively ordinary people. For you to be satisfied at this shows how misinformed you are. If it satisfies you to carry on believing this nonsense then don’t let me stop you but I doubt you have any real knowledge of the schools you speak of.
Also, if those middle of the road private schools close and fewer people can afford them then the gap widens. Eton, Harrow and all the other £35k+ per year etc stay open and private school is only for the extremely rich. At the same time the state schools get flooded with an influx of kids but their resources stay as they are. The Boris dePfeffel type pupils of Britain wouldn’t even notice a thing.
Well said Louise. We are in the same boat. After a lot of soul searching and spreadsheet building to make sure we could make it work financially, we decided to pull our children out of the local ‘outstanding’ state primary school for various reasons and sent them to a local private junior school. I am so glad we made that call for the reasons you outline above, but what surprised me most was the hugely diverse set of parents representing all walks of life, wealth levels, political views, nationalities, religions. It was an unforeseen benefit but we felt so glad to escape from the white liberal middle class bubble that represented 95% of the parent group at the state primary.
So I find this news incredibly sad and I sincerely hope that my children’s school does not suffer the same fate.
So you think that primary schools don’t matter and you seem to have completely forgotten the children involved in the closure of these schools!! Wow!! The pupils of these schools will NEVER go back to the same school, be with their friends, finish their, no doubt, excellent education. Where do you think they will all go now? State schools are all full. Shocking comment.
That’ll be an immediate £400m required in extra taxes for the 7% of British pupils relocating from private to state schools, plus a school building program, teacher training etc plus the loss of foreign currency from overseas pupils attending private schools here, plus the destruction of a British export success story, overseas branches of private schools again bringing foreign currency back to this country……and so on
How much more harm do we really want to do to ourselves after this most recent massive shot in the foot……….?
I don’t really know the definition of what is a ‘posh school’ anymore. I grew up in a tough working class neighbourhood in the late 80s but went to grammar school. That was when you took an 11plus exam and then could apply for a place, there were a large number of grant assisted places available. My parents could not have paid any of the fees.
The end result was that said school was a healthy 50 50 mix of rich kids and grant assisted (ie. Working class like me).. That grant assisted program has since been phased out
Was this a good thing? I can’t really say, but it helped me in my life, and gave me opportunities that’s for sure.
Right now, that school is overwhelmingly fee based and so is now seemingly struggling. I know because I received a letter from them last week asking to donate!
I don’t know what the answer is, but to celebrate the demise of high quality educational institutions is not it.
Matt Hancock needs the ventilator makers to switch to large umbrella manufacturing so we can still go the pub when it’s raining…….
Pubs I think already have large outside umberellas, claiming of course that they are to protect against sunshine but when do we in britain get that, oh yes, only when we’re trapped under a lockdown jackboot.
I note the linked article in “Conservative Woman”
“Boris taken prisoner by scientists.”
Now, find out who those scientists are in the back pocket of, and you’ll have one of the answers to this whole charade.
Hint: the total absence of advice on how to acquire natural herd immunity, how to raise resistance to the virus (healthy diet, sunlight, vitamin D supplements etc.), how to treat hospitalised patients effectively (eg intravenous vitamin C at megadose)
AND : “we can’t go back to normal til we have THE vaccine, THE vaccine, THE vaccine, THE vaccine…….”
Yeah right. Flu jabs work 10-50% of the time. We had 24,330 UK deaths from flu in 2014 WITH a flu vaccine and 50,000 UK deaths from flu during 2017-18 WITH a flu vaccine.
But this new “miracle” vaccine will no doubt be 100% effective. Well, it’ll be 100% effective in making some people billionaires and I suspect some of our “expert scientists” advising Boris will become millionaires. (Not that they’d put money before scientific integrity, the welfare of their fellow man, or the fate of their immortal souls, of course. Perish the thought.)
Economics is a science too, I wish it could be a group of economists instead of epidemiologists who took Boris prisoner.
Any group other than epidemiologists!
Economics is not a science – it just wants to be one when it grows up.
Same could be said of epidemiology, to be fair, from what I can see.
Science has become too ‘clever’ for its own good. The human body’s own immune system is designed to fight off most pathogens, but only when it’s healthy (ie clean food and water, sanitation etc). It’s a little known fact that many of the diseases that vaccines take credit for curing were actually pretty much eradicated through clean water and sanitation about 20 years before vaccines were even invented. Statistics all available at the ONS.
“It’s a little known fact that many of the diseases that vaccines take credit for curing were actually pretty much eradicated through clean water and sanitation about 20 years before vaccines were even invented. Statistics all available at the ONS.”
Except measles, smallpox and polio to name some obvious ones.
Typhoid and Scarlet Fever declined anyway there was no vaccine. The others had already declined considerably due to improvement in health and sanitation. Vaccines came in at the tail end. Coronavirus will also decline naturally it has already started happening, but this is a very inconvenient truth.
Nice one Sceptique. 🙂
Anonymous, I think the word the yoof use for your situation is ‘pwned’.
He’s gone very quiet. Nicely done Sceptique.
How’s that working for Ebola? Since you are clearly an excellent specimen, I’d like to volunteer you for the first trial to test this excellent hypothesis.
Bill Gates has already said we can expect 700,000 people to die from the vaccine – so more than have died of the virus then? Hmm…
I guess he’s being honest about it, since he has already stated on the public record that we need to reduce the population. His covert sterilisation ‘tetanus’ vaccination of millions of African women wasn’t effective enough, I suppose.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/mass-sterilization-kenyan-doctors-find-anti-fertility-agent-in-un-tetanus-vaccine/5431664
I’ll only take the vaccine after Bill, Melinda and their offspring are publicly vaccinated and ALL politicians and their kin too. Worldwide.
if they don’t I won’t
I have never had a flu jab so why take this proposed ‘vaccine’? Not an ‘anti-vaxxer’ by any means, just don’t see the point, don’t need it, don’t want it.
It’s unbelievably sinister, but hey if the end result is ‘take the vaccine if you are scared/worried’ then fine.
Forcing a vaccination on the entire population will lead to civil war and demonstrations that will dwarf anything seen for BLM, I guarantee that.
I wonder if it will. A lot of people have been brainwashed, especially the young and so many facts are suppressed or ridiculed by the captured scientific establishment and media thought police.
It depends how they enforce it. I suspect they have a plan.
Some interesting news this evening.
Imperial College are busy telling how many millions of lives have been saved by lockdowns, that we are just the start of this, miles away from herd immunity, and it could/will all start again soon. Let’s hope they are wrong. I don’t really understand why none of the European countries that have relaxed their lockdown restrictions are not seeing an increase in cases or hospital admissions.
The BBC report that cases are up in Florida and Texas, but then go on to say that they have done more testing than before in Florida. But that wasn’t in the headline.
And the WHO say the outbreak is worsening globally – but I can’t see that has so far had much impact on mortality numbers.
We really need to see data on hospitalisations to get any sense of what is really happening, while it’s happening.
I wouldn’t trust Imperial to accurately predict a sun rise.
I’ve just seen the article in The Mail – ‘declare victory and move on’ on steroids. Guess this version of the model will be made available for peer review by those experts in computer programming, not to mention the ‘proper’ natural scientists who specialise in these things!
Ah, that bastion of British scientific integrity Imperial College, home of Professor Lockdown who couldn’t keep his Cockdown. Funded by Bill Gates the Final Solution Vaccine man. So no conflict of interest there. Natural herd immunity is extremely bad for business, you see. So we must be a LONG way from acquiring it mustn’t we? The longer the better.
As ever, follow the money.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8399471/Coronavirus-lockdowns-prevented-3MILLION-deaths-Europe.html is the link
Ha Ha
Are people really swallowing this stuff?!
That’s ICL again. Don’t they ever give up?
The people who cocked up the coding of the 737Max’s MCAS system cost hundreds of lives, the people who mixed metric and imperial measures when coding the Mars Climate Orbiter’s flightplan cost millions of dollars, Ferguson’s mistakes outweigh these thousands of times on both currency-loss and life-loss measures. Michael Levitt (Nobel prize winner for multi-scale chemistry modelling) has suggested that in epidemiology it is fine to be thousands of times too pessimistic in predictions as long as you aren’t too optimistic, epidemiologists it seems don’t care as they have never thought to count the losses to anything other than the disease they are presently modelling the spread of. Never in the field of human cockups has so much been cost to so many by such a screw up.
Plug the total population considered by Imperial and the IFR into the equation and see if you can get 3 million!
I’ve waited a long time for the Lockdown zealots to actually produce some evidence lockdowns work and finally it’s here, I thought, as I read the headline of the Mail article. Then I read the article and I realised, no it’s not … Just more unsubstantiated assertions.
But the zealots believe it!
Evidence that lockdowns work should have been the first thing produced before the lockdown, and that evidence should have been irrefutable. Without that evidence, the lockdown was indefensible.
Sadly, it’s impossible, because there couldn’t be any evidence, because nobody’s ever done anything so stupid as a lockdown before.
Texas and Florida are the Sweden of the States. So much misrepresentation to fit a political grievance. Florida is a massive success story. They protected their sizeable elderly population admirably. Unlike New York. But you just have to look at the people running those respective places to see why each get treated differently. Cuomo should be in prison for chucking out the infected elderly into care homes. Yet he is touted as presidential material.
Didnt Imperial say there wud be 50k deaths in sweden by june if they didnt lock down they have 4 k at the moment ant that is s statistic that can be proved Mr ferguson
Which means they saved 46k lives with looser measures.
It cud be infections are going up cos there testing more and even though infections are going up deaths are falling
.
Got to also point out that brazil have carried out 1 million tests and has half a million cases no it’s a crude way of estimating but that would mean half of Brazil’s population have had it brazil I think has a population of 200 millipn
They are wrong
The reputation of Imperial College must be in absolute tatters you’d think? I mean surely by now everyone realises that Ferguson is at best inept, at worst a huckster?
But no! Their backslapping “research” still makes headline new at BBC.
Meanwhile not a peep about the asymptomatic news.
Wonder why 🙂
Just looked over their nature paper. So they claim they have worked backwards from reported deaths* to work out the dailt infections. The deaths follow the curves we are all so familiar with, a sharp rise, a while of peak, a slow decline, all good and smooth. And yet they then make a sharp discontinuity in the infections curve on lockdown-liberty-loss-day, which has NO basis in fact. If you are working back from the deaths you expect to see a similar curve to deaths, just higher and earlier. There are rules in mathematical models of physical systems about when a sharp discontinuity can be allowed, subtracting time from a deaths series and multiplying by an inverse IFR isn’t a place where you can introduce such a discontinuity. You CAN plausibly introduce discontinuities in the R value as a kind of differential of the infections curve, but in the UK the infections curve had already peaked and begun to decline before out liberties were crushed, and it would be at the moment of peak when discontinuities would be seen. And the paper, to credit them a little honesty, admits that they can’t detect which government policy, or what public actions without… Read more »
Toby Young (08/06/2020) “Perhaps we shouldn’t be too outraged by this. After all, it means we don’t have to worry about a vaccine before we can dispense with social distancing measures. All we need do is proclaim our allegiance to a progressive cause and we’ll be immune from infection.”
ACE Speedway, North Carolina (06/06/2020) “This Event [ an evening of racing ] is held in PEACEFUL Protest of Injustice & Inequality Everywhere.”
https://www.newsobserver.com/sports/article243341871.html
Time to put up signs on every “non-essential”* business saying “we have re-opened, as per the old normal, in protest against injustice everywhere”.
*surely anu business which provides jobs to employees, profit to the founder or goods or services to customers is essential
Tonight Classic FM, LBC and other propaganda units will be pausing broadcasts at 9pm to honour a violent coked-up thug who once pointed a gun at a pregnant woman’s belly…
Might I suggest the minute would be better spent reflecting on how many lies have been told about the effectiveness of lockdowns and wondering how the hell we are going to climb out of the economic hole we have dug for ourselves?
Jesus wept.
More vitrtue signalling from a station I used to listen to. Still silence from them over my message to them pointing out the contradtiction and hypocrisy of their actions.
It’s making me feel physically nauseous now. Just shut up and open the dentists please.
Take a Knee and be silent!
Blimey, I can’t believe that. When is the hysteria from all sources going to stop? Did these stations pause their broadcasts when notable people in their own country died?
Good reason not to tune in to any of them.
Having been absent from this site for a while, and having posted a few comments today, I’ll have to take another long break.
I can’t stand it, you see. I mean, the utter prostitution of scientific integrity in the name of money and power. British science was once one of the glories of the world. Now it seems like a cheap tart opening her legs to the highest bidder.
Not that it’s only British science that’s been corrupted. This is a worldwide problem as some whistleblowers in the scientific community have repeatedly stated. There are many marvellous scientists but the ones corrupted by big business seem to have been given all the microphones.
I’m off to watch something spiritual on YouTube before I lose all hope in humanity.
I know how you feel. It all feels very hopeless.
Don’t give up. It will end. Heads will roll. We will win.
I wish you were right but know you are wrong. The number of heads rolling over this was, is and will remain a big fat zero. And bread and circuses will be the norm yet once again once this passes.
Same here Gracie. I went to bed on Sunday feeling relatively calm. Woke up about half an hour later feeling like I was going to die. Heart racing, sweating, and trembling. All the signs of a nocturnal panic attack which has never happened to me before ever. Decided yesterday to cut back a bit on following this insanity as I’m becoming obsessed by it. Not giving up, just taking measures to preserve my sanity. Thank God for this site.
Darkness before the dawn.
You want a laugh. Check out your blogs host Toby Young at the comedy club in London.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ioUAJUbhd4c
There is a ton of stuff on that channel
Comedy Unleashed YouTube.
Unfiltered very non Pc Don’t watch if you are a snowflake 😆
The truth cannot be hidden. There are a huge number of people out there who don’t believe a single word of anything that’s coming out.
Excellent article by Chris Larkin. I may be a lapsed Catholic but I was amazed at the speed by which the church caved into this and denying people who want and need it, spiritual comfort. Its cowardice of the highest order.
What’s also appalling are those CoE bishops and priests virtue signalling over BLM yet like those cowards in Classic FM and the Tate, very quiet over the erosion of our civil rights and measures that will accelerate the demise of their churches.
Actually vile. Not that I had much respect for the church as an institution anyway (despite having much respect for my local priests and priestesses – they are sound) but…. I really expected more.
Exactly. Given their dwindling congregations it would have been easy to practice antisocial distancing if needed be but I’m surprised how they caved in without so much of a protest.
That said I think it would have been harder with Catholic churches (as they have larger congregations given the immigrant population) but if there’s a will there’s a way.
Another very lapsed Catholic here. Churches are allowed to open for services in Spain at 30% of capacity. Most would struggle to reach 15% on a good day.
Utterly nauseating. If your stomach will stand it, take a look at the front page of the Church Times
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/
for a vomit-inducing splurge of nauseous anti-‘racist’ cant.
Not a word against violent mobs running amuck. Oh, no.
The Church of England is my mother and I cannot leave her, but by the Living God, ’tis pity she’s a whore.
AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!
Here is a better article from the church, to be more precise from Voice for Justice UK, entitled ‘The Poison of Bitterness’ (long article but good!) It is surely time for the culture of victimhood and entitlement to end. Over the last few days we have seen justifiable outrage over the killing of George Floyd – but nothing justifies the outpouring of hatred and cries for revenge that we have since witnessed in demonstrations across the globe. Bad things happen. They happen to all of us. For example, down the centuries women have been sexually abused and oppressed by men. Jews have been slaughtered in their millions, while an uncaring world looked the other way. Millions of innocent babies have died because they were unwanted… Anglo-Saxon settlers were killed and enslaved by Viking marauders … white farmers across Africa have been driven from their homes and sometimes killed by black tribesmen. Black people have been enslaved and treated shamefully. Yes, but so, in various ways, have all these others. So has every group on the planet, in fact, and there has to be a time to move on. Unfashionable as it is to say this today, let us not forget that Great Britain was at the… Read more »
Indeed. I am a woman. I have encountered a lot of obnoxious sexist men in my time. I have also encountered way, way more wonderful, respectful and thoroughly unsexist men.
But who cares that I’ve lived my largely unmolested, I deserve reparations for the deplorable treatment of all the women who went before me and had nothing to do with me.
Good one. They should be shouting this from the rooftops!
A church man with a mind, a brain and a conscience?
Hard to believe, innit?
Thanks for the new links today Toby! There seem to be lots which is great, as I’m waiting for Peter Falconio muder thing to come on (what a strange tale that is) and was in need of something to stop me going on YouTube and abusing people in the Talk Radio comments sections. It’s such a good job I no longer have social media accounts. It really is.
Anyone else contemplating going to be doctors but being put off by the prospect of being muzzled? Really I should go, don’t wanna become one of those people whose cancer wasn’t detected “due to corononavirus”
My God I really need to get a bigger phone for these fat fingers
Well, you should indeed go – masks are just for a few minutes, cancer could be for the rest of one’s life. The good guys need to survive!
[I went today: certainly irritating, but as I am on drugs which could (in the worst case) lead to liver failure, I put on a scarf, pointlessly of course.]
Wear a mask with something really rude written on it!’
I have a balaclava with a skull on it.
Ima go scare me some children.
Plague Doctor masks are available (quite cheaply) on ebay
I ought one for a tenner from Amazon the other day. I don’t intend to use public transport until all of this nonsense has gone away, but if I have to, I’m wearing that.
How about this one?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0865VNBXW?pf_rd_r=6GJEEN5K4JD49TGRAPSR&pf_rd_p=e632fea2-678f-4848-9a97-bcecda59cb4e
Not sure how you’re supposed to breathe in it though!
Agree. As infuriating as muzzling is, not having treatment for real medical problems is only going to harm yourself. Although, for the true covid zombie, cutting off your nose to spite your face has the advantage of reducing the chances of getting infected.
Hate to say it, but now is the time you need to have social media accounts. Horrible isn’t it? I have even taken to bloody Twitter and I bloody hate twitter.
Most heartening has been Youtube have to say… a growing army of angry folk sticking the boot into the BBC news, Sky news and the government every single day
Open the gyms!
After a good weekend, today I must have lost the will to live.
Went to Sainsbury’s in Camden and its such a different experience from my local albeit small one – a few of the staff were so uptight, one of them even jumped back when I approached her to ask a question (she looked at me as if I was crawling with disease). There were also those patronising announcement every five seconds. The only positive aspect was that the supermarket was fairly dead and no-one was following the arrows on the floor.
Then it was back home via the underground and I could have committed hara-kiri with the announcements on social distancing and face coverings from 15 June. Makes you yearn for the old “see it, say it, sort it” ones.
Finally it was an announcement from my manager over proposed social distancing measures for our putative reopening soon which also reeked of a suicide announcement (at least in my view).
Will no one take us out of this Nightmare on Elm Street???
Yes, IT WILL END.
I’ve decided to give up on supermarkets and shop local. Less choice, maybe, and a little more expensive, but it’s well worth it to be treated like a human being.
And have some fun making straight for people and seeing how many are prepared to step under a bus to avoid you. Actually, in my experience it’s a minority of, usually, young people (!). Exchange a smile and friendly word with all the others.
As they say in the store I no longer go to, ‘every little helps’.
Unfortunately the high street has long disappeared in my area hence there are no local shops and independent cafes. Not even charity or chicken shops believe it or not.
That said I am glad for the Morrisons and small Sainsbury’s that I have here, the staff are more relaxed and are only paying lip service. Ditto M&S.
I’m finding butchers and delis are more expensive (but, my word the quality is better). Good greengrocers are cheaper on balance – especially since you can buy the amount of potatoes and carrots you want, rather than a sack that you could only carry to your car in a trolley – and the quality is better.
The smaller shops are friendlier, they recognise you after you’ve been there a few times (though to be fair, I’ve been to the ones I’m using on and off for about 15 years). You still have to queue to get in, but yes, it’s nice not to be treated like an inconvenience once you’re through the door.
I say all this with hardly any frame of reference – I do virtually all of the food shopping for the house last time I went to a big supermarket was two weeks before lockdown, when I took my little one with me as we always used to do after his rugby on a Sunday. It was like shopping in Beirut and I’ve gone out of my way to avoid going back since.
I was in the park last week and a young girl, about 9 years old, was jumping on and off a tree stump in the grass. She paused to let me socially distance past her. I smiled and said thank you but normally the child would have been absorbed in her game and wouldn’t even have noticed me.
Another child (younger, riding on the pavement) actually crashed her bike into a hedge to let me past.
I asked if she’d done that to give me space and she said yes. I said she didn’t need to do that, as nobody can catch anything from someone just passing by outside. I asked if she’d hurt herself and thanked her for being considerate.
I suspect my shock of grey hair doesn’t help, I probably look ancient to a youngster. However, I think it’s very sad that the children have been drilled to respond so dramatically. It’s more sinister than merely being considerate.
I’ve told my kids to pay no attention and that grown ups are just being silly and they’ll get over it soon. They seem to like this.
Empowering your kids and teaching them discernment. Good for you!
My wife had a briefing today on her office reopening. Apparently, no stopping to talk with each other in person at any point. No use of meeting rooms. “Self cleaning” coatings on door handles and similar (huh?). All meetings to be done over Teams, not in person. Kitchen closed. Someone cleaning all the loos every 15 minutes.
What’s the point of going to an office?
Your wife’s office is giving me a feeling of foreboding. However there is still time before we reopen.
Give it a week, then see if all that hogwash still. applies.
All those measures are ridiculous and serve no purpose except reinforcing the myth. Hasn’t anyone told them they can’t get gonorrhoea off a toilet seat?
I think there’s going to be an epidemic of asthma and eczema with all this disinfectant freely being sprayed and applied everywhere.
‘the 3.5 million figure came as a shock to Boris, who is supposed to have said, “Christ!” when told the news. If the Prime Minister was surprised to discover that the lockdown is causing job losses – and will cause many, many more – he hasn’t been paying attention.’
If Boris Johnson didn’t know this, he really shouldn’t be in charge. Oh wait. . . . .
If he is in charge and really wants to abolish social distancing, couldn’t a handy SPAD easily find him some of the evidence available to anyone with a computer which shows that it’s not based on ‘the science’ and could be scrapped tomorrow? After all, his chief SPAD knows bloody well that it’s all bollox!
Meanwhile, is it possible that it will be pressure from business leaders who bring about some semblance of sanity? There also seems to be a change of mood in the press now – has the advertising money from HMG run out? I seem to remember the contract was for 3 months.
Apparently there is a legal challenge over social distancing from the hotel and restaurant sectors. It’s been estimated that around 3-4 million jobs could go if the hospitality sector collapses.
Not to mention that even if they’re shut they’re still paying rent and you can bet that’s all coming out of reserves which could be running out already.
That’s fantastic news. I get the feeling that this govt thinks it can get away with absolute bollocks because they are in charge for the next 5 years. Let’s hope the judges rule in favour of the people. PS I used to be a Tory voter.
Ditto. Both sons, both Tory voters (younger one only just missed voting age last year) said they will both vote for Keir Starmer. Well done Boris, two young people who were on-side have switched and they will not come back anytime soon.
There’s also the case that BA has filed so looks like the government will be kept busy with lawsuits from all and sundry.
Meanwhile it has also been reported that quarantine has been in shambles.
It shouldn’t require legal challenges with all that entails in terms of wasting time and money to bring them to their senses. There is absolutely no strategy, it is a random set of ideas that do not hang together. An ill-equipped, inexperienced Cabinet has been captured by ‘the science’, by which I mean a group of pseudo-scientists supported by some deeply sinister funders. If there is any merit in legal challenge it might force certain documents into the public domain – the SAGE minutes are incomplete and a sanitised version of the originals.
It will be interesting what comes out. The fact that the minutes are so sanitised means that they’re afraid of what could come out and that they will be lynched when the public realises that they’ve been had.
I’ve said this before, but the big court case, testing the legitimacy of the lockdown must happen. We can’t allow this precedent to stand – it’s far too dangerous.
Spotted this comment this morning int he Torygraph: This new UK quarantine locator form introduction does not look fit for purpose. Here are just a few questions for the Home Secretary. 1.How does a non-English speaking person complete the contact locator quarantine form, which is in English and on-line only? Why is it not available in some other languages? 2.What options are there if the traveller has no access to the internet or a printer? 3.How does anyone complete this form when carrying an open date ticket which may be booked within a few hours of air, train or ferry travel? The form indicates that it must be completed 48 hours before travel. 4.Why is the whole form unavailable to print out? It should be available to be printed blank and then completed in ink with accurate data at the time of travel and handed in to border control on arrival? 5.What if the traveller is staying, say, for 3 to 5 days? How do they quarantine for 14 days? 6.It appears it is only available on-line. The traveller must find the webpage first which cannot be discovered using most search engines. Must then set up a password protected… Read more »
Looks like its been set up so badly like T&T that it was doomed to failure from day one.
I saw the reports too. Nobody knew about it, massive queues, people taking tube etc and ‘infecting’ people on the way home, etc etc. British public sector incompetence on display once again for the world to see. All because they can’t admit they’re wrong and want to appease the masses they terrified into lockdown in the first place.
This is fast becoming one farce after another. It will be interesting to see what also happens from 15 June.
This quarantine edict came from so far off-planet that I don’t think you can blame public sector incompetence.
I think the front benchers should be put on a 4-hour flight, then made to stand in a 2-hour queue with small kids from aforementioned journey.
Malevolent aliens from the Delta Quadrant ? I knew it !!!
I wanted to begin publishing The Tobiad, Being an Epic Poem in Several Cantos Treating of the Heroic Struggle of Lord Toby and the Knights Sceptic Against the Hordes of Evil, Darkness and Godless Tyranny, but my muse, a wayward creature, instead produced something that might have done a little credit to Patience Strong: To a new arrival on this site Welcome, my friend. We feel your pain. You’ve found the refuge of the sane. Here scepticism sets the rules, And guides our strife with lockdown fools. Reason and Passion, without vanity, Set forth our case against insanity. Here tireless TOBY seeks for truth, Here POPPY makes the case for youth, While BIKER dissects Loathsome Sturgeon With the precision of a surgeon, ANNIE reports from Gulag Wales, And countless others tell their tales. RDAWG indites to his MP Letters of stunning quality, And countless other people think It’s good to post a useful link. We’ve doctors who explain the virus, With copious details that inspire us To strive the harder to discover What rot the NHS puts over. Others post graphs which, loud and clear, Reveal the lies that beat our ear, And with all kinds of expertise… Read more »
Well done. Looking forward to the second installment
Not the dreaded “second wave”?! 😉
LOL!!!
Excellent work.
Ha ha. Standing ovation 👏👏👏
Annie that’s brilliant!
Love it! Looking forward to the epic 🙂
Bravo 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 Take a bow!
An important point about R that much of the media doesn’t seem to have cottoned on to is that _it will be around 1.0 for ever_. That’s what happens when a virus is endemic. It remains at a constant low equilibrium level, with new hosts being provided on average at the rate at which people are being born.
I hope that the Independent, Guardian and BBC will continue to report on this number faithfully and hysterically as estimates of it fluctuate between just above 1.0 and just below it for the next thousand years at least. Ideally I would like to see regular updates until the extinction of the human race, although there is a somewhat concerning risk that from that point SARS-COV2 may continue to live on in the bat population.
Exactly, but the media and the government have weaponised the R number, knowing full well that it is a complex scientific model that the most of the non-scientific members of the public have never heard of and do not understand, in order to obfuscate and give the impression that we are in imminent danger if the R so much as edges above 1. It’s interesting how they moved straight to the R as soon as the daily reported death toll started declining, the latter of which is an empirical figure rather than a model fed with conjecture and assumptions.
Right back at the beginning (doesn’t that seem like a long time ago? I remember epidemiologists chuckling in interviews and saying things like “it’s hard to believe we’re talking about things like R0 on prime time news! Well… let me explain…”
It’s now fairly clear that was the beginning of the fetishisation of an obscure and incalculable indicator.
Still dont understand how they calculate the R must be a lot of guess work involved as nobody knows how many people have been I fected in the uk
The ONS are doing relatively random testing. So you just compare the percentage of tests which were positive last week to the percentage which are this week to get an estimate.
But they are also apparently doing some opaque “modelling” and coming up with ridiculously precise estimates like “1.01 in the North West”. This sort of thing risks breaking my bogosity detector as the needle slams so hard against the upper stop.
Does that mean that once no-one gets tested, the R number goes down to 0?
;o) No, because as guy says, the virus becomes endemic. Therefore the R number is modelled bollocks.
R is basically the slope of the curve times a duration for infection. The endemic R = 1 is the final state, but classic epidemiology would have us reach that value by a slow and steady replacement of new people to infect. We’re probably not even on cycle through that process. The only bit that matters is whether the epidemic is growing, shrinking or staying constant. And how confident one is about that. The absolute number is not that important. The modellers built it up and are now stuck with it. Doubling time and halving time is much more intuitive.
Cases and deaths are currently halving every 10-14 days. They were growing every three. In Sweden they are roughly constant.
‘According to Tim Shipman and Arthi Nachiappan in yesterday’s Sunday Times, the 3.5 million figure came as a shock to Boris, who is supposed to have said, “Christ!” when told the news. If the Prime Minister was surprised to discover that the lockdown is causing job losses – and will cause many, many more – he hasn’t been paying attention.’
“Christ” would be my mild response to knowing that our PM is clueless about the impact of lockdown if he’s surprised at the possibility of millions of job losses.
So, It’s finally sunk in to Johnson that his genius policy of mass imprisonment, and economic shutdown is causing job losses on a catastrophic scale. Obviously, the only way out of the mess is to introduce “safety” measures which will make it impossible for businesses to function. What an absolute cretin!
Me too. It would take an honourable PM to take ownership of this.
https://twitter.com/aginnt/status/1270045283418697732
Spain’s govt now says the difference between COVID (27K) and total excess fatalities (43K) are lockdown related (16K). “One could be those people with chronic illnesses who were too scared or waited too long to go to the hospital” – Fernando Simón
More and more countries admit this now.
Haven’t we been saying this for weeks now? The comments on this site should be recorded in the annals of history.
Meaning that more and more governments and health services are confessing to manslaughter?
The lawyers are going to be busy with malpractice suits.
He’s also on record as saying that non covid excess deaths were due to an enormous traffic accident, when they were at a “mere” 5,000. Court case starts tomorrow centred round the government’s decision to allow a demonstration to mark International Women’s day on the 8th of March, a demo where attendance was estimated at 350,000. It’s very frustrating that criticism of government policy in Spain is based on the belief that coronaflu really is as dangerous as the gov says it is, that the real number of Covid deaths is much higher, and that imprisoning the whole country was done too late. The 8th of March demo is believed by many to have been responsible, in large part, for the high death toll. Simon says that the effects of the demo were “marginal”. The question is, if a march of 350,000 people was not a problem, which is probably correct, why did they decide 6 days later to place the whole country under house arrest with some of the harshest restrictions in the world. The government cannot have it both ways and their critics are spectacularly missing the point. Hopefully, this case will bring some of the truth to… Read more »
The fact is that most of the people who were killed by covid-19 would have died of it whatever was done, some were in a weakened state already, some were perfectly healthy with just an underlying condition of a kind which would not normally impact their life. Lockdown did not save those who died of covid-19. It seems a fairly plausible statement that if we hadn’t locked down covid-19 might have spread more widely, or at least more quickly, but most of the people vulnerable to severe effects from it have been infected in our actual history, in any counterfactual we may suppose the number of people who would have got serious effects from covid-19 but didn’t in our history is pretty low indeed. So lockdown has not saved lives. The difference between excess deaths and confirmed covid deaths, and there is a good chance they are overcounting covid deaths by accident but no chance they are undercounting covid deaths, are casualties of lockdown who would have lived if we had not locked down. They outnumber the people who would have been vulnerable to a severe covid case but did not get one.
More probable bullshit from Imperial College: Lockdowns had a dramatic impact on the spread of coronavirus in Europe with strict controls on people’s movements preventing an estimated 3.1m deaths by the beginning of May, with 470,000 deaths averted in the UK alone, researchers say.Outbreak modellers at Imperial College London said that lockdown slashed the average number of people that contagious individuals infected by 81% and lowered the reproduction number, R, of the epidemic below 1 in all countries they observed.When R is less than 1 the epidemic is in decline because on average, each infected person transmits the infection to less than one other. As countries ease out of their lockdown, scientists are watching R closely: if it rises and remains above 1, the epidemic will grow exponentially.The Imperial team pooled data on Covid-19 deaths from 11 European countries including the UK, Italy, France, Spain and Germany, and worked backwards to calculate the extent of transmission several weeks earlier, to account for the time lag between infections and deaths. Lockdown at the end of March reduced the reproductive number of the UK epidemic from 3.8 to 0.63, they calculate.The model shows that by 4 May between 12 million and… Read more »
Bet they can’t prove that.
Did the 11 countries include Sweden!?
Note ‘then you have no control’.
Control.
That’s the word.
He is even less of a scientist than Ferguson. He is a mathematician who plugs any dataset he is given into a multivariate statistical model. Unfortunately that can lead to quite erroneous outcomes if the dataset is not what it proports to be. Have they learned nothing from all their previous mistakes!
I suspect they are being paid not to.
If the R0 was at 3.8 until lockdown was imposed, why were infections falling in London several days before lockdown was imposed?
You can see that they were, because deaths peaked and then dropped steadily less than 4 weeks after lockdown was imposed.
The only two possible answers are either that lockdown was not the primary driver, or that the R0 is meaningless.
This is a load of crap. Imperial can see that they’re in for a substantial slice of the blame and they’re trying to defend themselves.
R0 is not meaningless. But it’s not 3.8 either. It’s more like 1.25 to 1.5.
Sorry, I’m being flippant today. To be clear and more balanced, what I really mean is that any official and semi-official guesstimate of the R0 to date has been meaningless.
Didnt ferguson predict 500000 at the start then kept changing it?
Ferguson predicted 520,000. 470,000 plus the 40,000 actual deaths = 510,000 so they were right all along! I’m ashamed I doubted them…
and of course , BBC, the doom-mongers in chief, feature this on their website under heading Coronavirus: Lockdowns in Europe saved millions of lives. No questioning…. no journalism, just repeating the press release…
One headline I saw said the report “revealed”, not claimed or suggested, the saving of millions of lives.
defund them. If you have a direct debit, cancel it. Imagine if millions of us did that….?
That is positive action that can be taken, even while locked up.
I refused to renew my tv licence last week.
Almost certainly so! 3 million saved…in what circumstances? Circumstances where nations did literally nothing in response to the virus? Yep that;s probably their “validated comparator”.
Sweden has done lots of things to address the spread of the virus and protect the most vulnerable – it just didn’t opt for a general total lockdown that they knew would destroy their economy and compromise other medical services. Its death per million figure is lower than ours, so this must be BS, with lots of tweaked assumptions built in to give the right answer.
They are shameless!
Let me guess….. absolutely no estimate of how many deaths lockdowns CAUSED?
Tells you all you need to know.
Pretty sure if they factor in all the starving people in the third world over the next couple of years we’ll get into the millions. Dead BECAUSE of lockdown, regardless of how many covid deaths it ‘saved’. (I don’t think it saved any, but even if it had those saved would be wiped out many times over by those killed/ruined by lockdown).
This was my comment in the DM:
“Weather forecasters predicting rain saved millions from getting wet. Then it didn’t rain…”
—
Regarding the saving lives. I always go back to Sweden on this one. If lockdowns saved lives based on modelling then Sweden must also have saved lives based on similar modelling.
Hold on, I’ve just read the article on BBC News site:
“Their equations made several assumptions, which will affect the figures.
They assume nobody would have changed their behaviour in response to the Covid threat without a lockdown – and that hospitals would not be overwhelmed resulting in a surge in deaths, which nearly happened in some countries.”
So it’s just Fergusons original do nothing model minus the deaths we’ve already had.
Or reverse the logic and scale the difference in deaths between Sweden and Norway, Finland and Denmark. Thus if every country had done the same as the latter three and not the former, you can estimate the excess deaths one might have prevented.
Sweden 467/M
Denmark, Norway, Finland 44-100/M
Difference is about 400/M for a population of EU (513M) means an extra 200,000 would have been saved.
If U.K. (602/M) had been more NFD we could have saved 33,000 as a conservative estimate.
I’ve prevented myself from murdering 1,000,000+ people, maybe i deserve a commendation because it could easily have been different if i hadn’t used tried and true prevention methods like not killing people. This is just an estimation based on figures and projected numbers. Let’s hope it continues to work.
I can’t get over the WHO report that asymptomatic infections are “very rare” and that governments show focus on people with symptoms. Out of the many extraordinary things that have been said over the past few months, this has to be number 1!! Wasn’t THE WHOLE POINT of lockdown that, unlike normal infectious diseases, COVID transmitted through those without symptoms, so you have to quarantine everyone cos anyone might pass it on!? If governments only have to worry about people with symptoms, that’s fucking easy!!!!! Quarantine the sick. End of. Problem solved. No lockdown, no social distancing, nothing!! Aaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhh!!
I’ve had chronic asymptomatic bubonic plague, sweating sickness, ingrowing toenails and epizootic sniggers since birth, but the world appears to have survived me.
BTW, somebody just published a new list of high-risk groups for the Covibug:
. bald men
. women whose breasts are not quite symmetrical
. left-handers
. coffee drinkers
. tea drinkers
. drinkers
. parents with children whose names begin with a letter of the alphabet between t and z
. gerbil owners
. people who have visited the Turk and Cacos Islands, but only since 2010 and when there was an r in the month
. members of the Gryffindor gobstones club
. people who have read War and Peace without skipping a single page
. people who like people
. people who have noticed dogs trying to sniff their armpits
. everybody else.
If you fall into one of the above groups, p BEWARE
Dammit, I was all clear until Turks and Caicos.
14 days quarantine for me.
Turks & Caicos has not had a CV-19 case for some weeks, yet it’s still not possible to travel inter-island by air or sea between, say, Provo and Grand Turk or Provo and South Caicos. So many people are stranded on islands which are not their natural home. All very odd.
Coffee drinker extraordinaire … I’m DOOMED!!
Exactly. Screaming into the void still! What the F$&K are people thinking!! Wash your hands, stay home if sick, protect our care homes. That’s it!!
They were estimating an asymptomatic rate of 25% a couple of months ago…WHO seems as clueless as everyone else.
Seems? Then there will be an ulterior motive.
Just got to ask people on this site how is all this going to progress will we have constant hysteria for the foreseeable future will the virus just fade away or will we live with it and have a low number of deaths every day.
Also for how long are we going to have to put up with all these restrictions which we all know is making life impossible.
I mean we are still are not allowed to stay at another household for the night not that iv taken any notice!
But what about all those B and Bs which are shut wen will they open again?
So many questions so many problems its endlesss
In my happy moments, it looks like this: everyone suddenly realises that it’s all been a farce from the beginning and then the government realises that nobody is scared anymore and it’s ok to open everything again, and we can all go to the pub next Wednesday and not worry about getting too close to anyone.
In my less happy moments, this goes on and on forever and we’ll all be socially distancing in caves by February 2022
I can feel in my water that the tide is turning. Engineers came to service our lift today. I had to sign their report, digitally, on their phone. One held the phone while I signed it. No-one cared about touching and we weren’t even one metre apart. So we’re not going to be antisocial distancing in 2022 Matt, can’t be policed and no-one’s going to take any notice. Where I live – on the coast – it’s pretty much ignored (apart from the odd zealot who still fears the black death.)
See here for what the powers that be are planning: https://home.solari.com/the-corbett-report-june-5-2020-the-injection-fraud-with-catherine-austin-fitts/
And this if you missed it before: https://home.solari.com/deep-state-tactics-101-the-covid-injection-fraud-its-not-a-vaccine/
It seems so far on a par with a very bad flu pandemic but nothing like the Spanish flu of 1918/19 which struck down the young and fit. I think by the end of the year the “excess deaths” figure will be quite small. So my bet would be that by the end of the year this may all be going down the memory hole.
Truth is, no one really knows. The thing seems to mutate like crazy. But if we were to further destroy our economy and wilfully reduce our GDP, deliberately pauperise the population…well that would be fantastical, insane. Boris has proved a huge disappointment but surely even he would be woken from his torpor and begin to lead. I can’t see us returning to general total lockdown, so that must mean we are going to start living with this.
I’m so very worried about having state-enforced muzzles and anti-social distancing forever now… surely they can’t always keep spinning this stupid project fear, especially when the doomers’ beloved ‘second wave’ never happens?
Johnson couldn’t lead a dog on a leash
It doesn’t really mutate much at all actually. But coronaviruses are not great for imparting lifelong immunity (unlike measles).
70-100k excess deaths by the end of the year. I don’t see why the remaining 85+ will live longer than they would otherwise.
We all relax, head back out and behave as we did in February and 200,000 over 65’s die.
We all remain a little cautious, limit our contacts but try and resume normal life, and we end up with about 10-30 deaths per day until treatment/vaccines help clear it up.
Or something in between.
You are Professor Neil Ferguson and I claim my £10.
No, he supports at least trying to resume near normal life, and he has the stomach to accept some levels of deaths. He can’t be Prof Ferguson, he may not be as sceptical as some but he’s more sensible than that so-called scientist can ever be.
How is R0 calculated? Does anyone know? Is it a state secret? They had a talking head professor on the Andrew Marr Show yesterday and, maybe I misheard this, but I think he said that PHE include a mobility factor in their modelling. In other words, if road traffic volumes are increasing, or if Google tell them that people are moving around more, this will affect (i.e. increase) the R number in their model. If this is right it is truly astounding and outrageous. Did anyone else see this interview? As I say, maybe I got the wrong end of the stick, but this is what it sounded like.
I think the process goes like this:
Chris Whitty opens the window, licks his finger and then sticks his hand out the window. Then Whitty stands back (at least 2M) and Patrick Vallance also licks his finger and sticks his hand out of the window. They then sit down at a (2M wide) conference table, wearing masks and doodle on a pad for 5 minutes or so before writing down the first number that comes into their heads, providing its as close to 1 as possible.
Exactly Matt. That’s the science.
I’ve certainly heard that there are many different models for calculating the R rate. What a surprise! One crucial issue that rarely gets attention is that a large proportion of the population are able to see off the infection with their first line defences ie they are exposed to the virus but don’t develop the antibodies. But how do you ascertain that proportion? If it’s 60% of the population it’s going to have a huge effect on your policy making. If it’s 1%, not so much…
There is no evidence that people exposed to the virus do not form antibodies. They may have some cross reactive protection from immune cells, but they do go on to seroconvert.
I think they nean that quite a few people in this country are still alive.
The WHO’s statement saying asymptomatic people can’t pass on the virus is a game changer. They even say we should be concentrating now isolating infected people suggesting they no longer think lockdown is the way forward. As we can’t rely on the mainstream media to run with this we have to make them. Everyone on this site should contact all major newspapers and media outlets over the next 24 hours and tell them this announcement and get them to press for an end to lockdown but it needs as many people as possible to do it. I would also suggest contacting local newspapers who may be slightly independent and more concerned with businesses in their area who may advertise via their newspapers. Local radio stations may be a good idea as well.
We should also contact the Federation of Small Businesses, the hospitality sector and even churches to let them know there is now need for social distancing or lockdown and get them to start campaigning for an end to the lunacy. You could try your local MP but in my experience they don’t give a damn.
This could be the smoking gun.
Where can I find this statement?
https://www.pscp.tv/w/1BdGYnjWodAJX
From about 32:00 in.
It’s quite something. I haven’t yet worked out how you can continue to justify any of the “social distancing” measures at all for even one more day, if this is the case.
I suppose I’ll just have to wait to watch BBC Breakfast tomorrow to find out just how much the garbage from Imperial is being excitedly promoted and just how little anyone remembers the WHO exists for a few days.
Also, remember, as it’s the WHO, they will have changed their minds by Wednesday lunchtime. By Thursday, anyone who does not have symptoms will be dangerously infective _whether they have the virus themselves or not_
I did see this earlier, but now I can’t find it in The Guardian, The Telegraph or on the BBC website (maybe I need to look harder). I found something on CNBC. Here are a couple of quotes:
“Coronavirus patients without symptoms aren’t driving the spread of the virus, World Health Organization officials said [on] Monday, casting doubt on concerns by some researchers that the disease could be difficult to contain due to asymptomatic infections. “
““From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said at a news briefing from the United Nations agency’s Geneva headquarters. “It’s very rare.”
So we have “rare” and “very rare”, but that’s not “never ever never”, and because it’s not, and because the ‘lockdown’ narrative has been set in stone, I suspect this will make no difference. I wonder how Lt Gruber would respond if asked; “since this is the science, and you are following the science, is the ‘lockdown’ ending tomorrow?”
Is this the CNBC report – it has a link to video conference hosted by Dr Kerkhove:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asymptomatic-coronavirus-patients-arent-spreading-new-infections-who-says.html
Yes, that’s the one.
Message to Toby… Since you’re a man of boundless energy and since we are now being subject to constant lying from the mainstream media, BBC and the rest, about lockdowns, racism, BLM protests, Brexit and all the rest while free speech is being slowly, no speedily, strangled and our culture is under sustained attack would you consider this: Once this site becomes a historical footnote would you please put your mind to setting up a free radio station (to go with your Free Schools)…we need a radio station that doesn’t promote fake science, that allows a range of opinion, and that doesn’t peddle the wrongheaded PC globalist ideology. I think you’re the man to do it. You could crowd-fund it and start it on the internet. Maybe get Rod Liddle, Brendan O’Neill, Trevor Phillips, Julia Hartley-Brewer and Melanie Phillips on board as well. Make it a wonderful mix of good music, interesting conversation, informative talks, objective news, fine drama and literature and – of course – free speech. I am sure you could crowd-fund a million to get this going. People are so heartily sick of the propaganda on the BBC, Sky, ITV and now even… Read more »
Melanie Phillips? You mean the Melanie Phillips that wrote this in May:
“Ignore these siren calls to end the lockdown. The ‘economy-first’ lobby are twisting the facts and trying to bounce the PM into a huge gamble.”
Well I did say a range of opinion. I don’t agree with everything she stands for. But she has confronted the PC lobby many times and has lost friends because she hasn’t played the PC game.
Anyway, that’s not up to me. I was just suggesting that if Toby decided to go forward with such a project, there would be others who might be prepared to join in – experienced broacasters. Rod Liddle has also been suspect on the lockdown thing, seemingly backing it to the hilt by the way.
Yes, I thought you might say something like that – and I see where you’re coming from. But let’s play devil’s advocate.
How about having someone with what you describe as “wrongheaded PC globalist ideology” presenting?
You know, have “a range of opinion”. Would that still suit you?
Of course it would.
I would be happy to have anyone who accepts the rules of the democratic game presenting.
The problem is that most of the BBC, Sky, ITV, Guardian, Times, Mail, Labour Party, Lib Dems and a large section of the Conservative Party don’t any longer subscribe to democratic norms (as we’ve seen in their reaction to the violent BLM riots). They don’t believe in free speech, free association, elimination of electoral malpractice, or equal citizenship. They believe in controlled speech, preventing meetings they disapprove of taking place, allowing electoral malpractice to continue and in differential rights for citizens.
Of course “presenting” is different from “taking part”. Presenters to some extent represent your station’s values. I wouldn’t mind full on Marxists taking part as long as they aren’t directly advocating violence. But I wouldn’t want them presenting since they implicitly reject democracy.
In a word, they don’t believe in human rights. Remember when we had human rights, set in stone and bolstered by legislation aand convention at every level both international. and national?
“I wouldn’t want them presenting”
This is highlighting one of the fundamental difficulties with free speech.
Who gets to decide who has a platform?
I’d like to see somebody bouncing Mad Boris’s seventeen stone.
And not Rod bloody Liddle
That’s a terrible idea.
Sheeesh!
That’s a terrible comment because it has a terrible absence of reasoning.
If the defund the BBC campaign succeeds, they may well be selling a lot of their equipment off cheap.
It’s called Podcasts. The future isn’t radio or anything covered by OfCom, who’ll chase you like a dog with a stick. Podcasting is such a low-cost and highly informative medium, it’s been such an amazing resource. People like James Dellingpole and The New Culture Forum, The Tax Justice Network etc etc are putting out wonderful stuff with patreons which is a better model than upfront subscription costs (at least initially when the audience is building).
Just had a look at the newly published Ferguson et al article in Nature. Interesting comment underneath questioning aspects of the dataset:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2405-7#article-comments
Even assuming this model works, and has been validated, it seems to be more ‘garbage in garbage out’.
Can be safely ignored!
It no more “works” or can be “validated” than any other model. My lego town “works” and is “validated” too. That doesn’t mean it has any genuine claim to reality.
Please PLEASE those without science degrees STOP giving any creedence to this dishonest pseudo intellectual garbage. Imperial is engaging in damage limitation!
Not sure if you are directing the last para at me – I have a science degree! I agree though, ICL is doubling down, because the funding demands it.
“Not sure if you are directing the last para at me”
Did I say so?
Predictive models are not science, they are crystal ball gazing. They do not follow the scientific method which requires experimentation and verification while at the same time allowing others (peers) to challenge the findings so I agree that this paper and its predictions can be safely ignored. The trouble is that it will not be ignored and will be used as ass covering for the politicians along with the people advising them who claim to be scientists.
The other thing I notice is that there are a lot of names quoted as authors of the document. Similar to SAGE, which has 50 members, groupthink (likely led by one dominating character) is the likely reason for many of their daft decisions. It reminds me of the old adage that ‘a camel is a horse but designed by a committee’.
All but three of the authors are part of Imperial College. There is just one from Oxford University, a statistician. I note that there is no representation for the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford who have been exemplary in my view for just publishing material which is based, not conjecture, but the effin evidence and facts!
“Predictive models are not science, they are crystal ball gazing. They do not follow the scientific method which requires experimentation and verification while at the same time allowing others (peers) to challenge the findings…”
This is undoubtedly correct: it must therefore be equally applicable to climate change models. These too have been consistently and hopelessly wrong- and there have been thousands of them. So what does that tell you about the quality of science today and how politisised it has become. R.I.P. the scientific method.
Sadly, predictive models are science because science does not require experimentation and verification in of itself. The Scientific Method is a philosophical method where as long as your assumptions and concept, methodology (which can be though experiment for example) and conclusions are consistent your argument may be valid.
It’s when you apply these things to the real world or even just start extrapolating beyond the scope of your exercise is where the problem starts.
So experimenation and verification comes into play when your argument makes a claim about a measurable quantity. Then it becomes testable and more importantly falsifiable.
Most of these models are between supposition and hypothesis (it can be falsified). It also means that any derived modelling or behaviour, such as epidemiology models or climate models, require the source data to be of sufficient precision to meet the assumptions you are making.
And as we have seen from how Covid-19 is “tested” and attributed, that isn’t happening.
Flaxman, S., Mishra, S., Gandy, A. et al. Estimating the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in Europe. Nature (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2405-7
Download citation
· Received30 March 2020
· Accepted22 May 2020
· Published08 June 2020
Then there is another publication on the same date in Nature
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2404-8
The effect of large-scale anti-contagion policies on the COVID-19 pandemic
That article is from a US group and the first from the Ferguson group The second article also quotes the 38% exponential growth. The two articles must have been co-ordinated.Look at the first submission. The ICL article 30th Mach and the second article 22 March
When I saw the ICL paper I was struck by the date of submission (30 March), as that is the same date as the ICL Lancet paper was published on-line (Estimates of the severity of coronavirus disease 2019: a model-based analysis https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30243-7/fulltext).
With regard to the two Nature papers, are they part of a Special Issue collection?
“A paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine about the first four people in Germany infected with a novel coronavirus made many headlines because it seemed to confirm what public health experts feared: that someone who has no symptoms from infection with the virus, named 2019-nCoV, can still transmit it to others. That might make controlling the virus much harder.” This gave impetus to the fear that asymptomatic infection could occur hence the importance of facemasks and social distancing. However this article had a flaw, they never spoke with the index patient(A Chinese woman visiting Germany) directly. “They told us that the patient from China did not appear to have any symptoms.” Afterward, however, RKI and the Health and Food Safety Authority of the state of Bavaria did talk to the Shanghai patient on the phone, and it turned out she did have symptoms while in Germany. According to people familiar with the call, she felt tired, suffered from muscle pain, and took paracetamol, a fever-lowering medication. (An RKI spokesperson would only confirm to Science that the woman had symptoms.)” https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/paper-non-symptomatic-patient-transmitting-coronavirus-wrong# But Science is an MSM ally so they dutiful says the following: “This… Read more »
Not to mention the completely discredited study published in the Lancet rubbishing the use of hydroxychloroquine which has had to be retracted. It was pretty much completely made up by non-scientists but the Lancet was only too eager and ready to publish it. They’re happy to kill people if it’s anti-Trump. They’re also very selective about which black lives matter….
It’s a disgrace. Black lives do matter and particularly where Covid-19 is concerned. I’m French and have been watching reports from the French professor who had great results combining Hydroxycloroquine with Zinc and an antibiotic – they could have at least looked at this study, it could have saved hundreds of lives particularly in the BAME community. Scandalous!
Baffling the BBC would think anyone would believe these latest predictions out of Imperial. Could it be butt-covering on the part of Imperial?
Coronavirus: Lockdowns in Europe saved millions of lives by James Gallagher
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52968523
Oh, I think it might just be that !
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/08/schools-may-stay-shut-beyond-september-matt-hancock-signals/ Now, the government tells us that schools will not open til September AT THE EARLIEST!! Presumably by then, the cold weather will have started to set in and RTIs will be increasing so it’ll be decided just to give the winter a miss and open up … next May?!? How are we going to solve the schools’ problem? Hancock brilliantly says we’re “going to require ingenuity”!! No shit, Sherlock!!
These people are crazy.
They are the perfect storm of narcisstic (protect….. the….. NH- our reputations!….at…. all….costs) and dumb as pigshit (did a scientist or overpaid mathmatics hack say it and does it fit my agenda? IT WILL BECOME LAW!)
Would love to know who is paying Hancock off in the background (vested interests). No sane person will make these decisions/statements.
To be fair it is impossible to run a school properly with social distancing might as well shut them all down and save some money or they could stop this distancing nonesemse
Well they are all shut in July and August anyway for the most part, so there is not long left of the Summer term.