The Re-Adjustment Bureau
Hats off to Carl Heneghan and Yoon Loke. Three weeks ago, they wrote a post on the Centre For Evidence-Based Medicine blog drawing attention to a peculiarity in the way Public Health England (PHE) recorded Covid deaths. They discovered that if you’d ever tested positive for COVID-19 and you subsequently died, even if several months had elapsed since the test, your death was recorded as being from coronavirus.
PHE does not appear to consider how long ago the Covid test result was, nor whether the person has been successfully treated in hospital and discharged to the community. Anyone who has tested Covid positive but subsequently died at a later date of any cause will be included on the PHE Covid death figures.
By this PHE definition, no one with Covid in England is allowed to ever recover from their illness. A patient who has tested positive, but successfully treated and discharged from hospital, will still be counted as a Covid death even if they had a heart attack or were run over by a bus three months later.
After their post was published, Matt Hancock announced a review into the way in which PHE collects Covid data and temporarily suspended its publication. Yesterday, that review was concluded and PHE has said that henceforth it will only record a death as being from coronavirus if it occurs within 28 days of a positive test. (Heneghan and Loke suggested 21 days.) As a result, PHE’s Covid death toll has been revised downward by over 5,000. This is more than even I expected. The BBC has the details.
The new methodology for counting deaths means the total number of people in the UK who have died from COVID-19 comes down from 46,706 to 41,329 – a reduction of 12%.
And figures for deaths in England for the most recent week of data – July 18th to 24th – will drop by 75%, from 442 to 111.
That 75% drop for the third week of July is astonishing. As Heneghan and Jason Oke point out in a new blog post, this doesn’t just apply to July 18th to 24th, but to the whole of July.
under the old PHE system, 2,086 deaths were reported in England in July by date of death, with the 28 days cut off this number is 574 – nearly a quarter of what was previously reported.
The same applies to August. For instance, if you look at the last two days, under the old reporting method 100 people were recorded as having died from coronavirus yesterday and 77 today. Under the new method, those numbers are revised downwards to 11 and 15. Heneghan and Oke have illustrated the difference with a graph showing the seven-day moving average for July.
Incidentally, the Government still hasn’t updated its own dashboard. If you look at this page, you’ll see that the number of Covid deaths recorded yesterday was 100 and the number today is 77.
Raise your game, Handy Cock.
British Public More Terrified Than Everyone Else
Does PHE’s over-counting matter? Yes, obviously, not least because it brings the official method of counting deaths in England into line with Scotland’s, making it harder for Nic Sturge-Un to claim she’s handled the crisis better than Boris. (Although she couldn’t have done much worse). More importantly, the over-counting may have contributed to the coronaphobia that has gripped the British public and which may in part account for why the UK has suffered a 22% fall in GDP since the beginning of the year.
The above graphs from the Economist show that the British are more frightened to leave their homes than the citizens of France, Germany, Italy or Spain, particularly when it comes to returning to the workplace. Not the sick man of Europe, exactly, since the UK’s Covid deaths per million are in line with those of France, Italy and Spain. Rather, the hypochondriac of Europe.
Excoriating Op Ed by Editor of Sunday Telegraph
Alastair Heath, the Editor of the Sunday Telegraph, has written a damning piece about the Government’s handling of the crisis in today’s Telegraph. Here are the opening two paragraphs:
So now we know: Sweden got it largely right, and the British establishment catastrophically wrong. Anders Tegnell, Stockholm’s epidemiologist-king, has pulled off a remarkable triple whammy: far fewer deaths per capita than Britain, a maintenance of basic freedoms and opportunities, including schooling, and, most strikingly, a recession less than half as severe as our own.
Our arrogant quangocrats and state “experts” should hang their heads in shame: their reaction to coronavirus was one of the greatest public policy blunders in modern history, more severe even than Iraq, Afghanistan, the financial crisis, Suez or the ERM fiasco. Millions will lose their jobs when furlough ends; tens of thousands of small businesses are failing; schooling is in chaos, with A-level grades all over the place; vast numbers are likely to die from untreated or undetected illnesses; and we have seen the first exodus of foreigners in years, with the labour market survey suggesting a decline in non-UK born adults.
Alastair has always leant towards scepticism, but this is his most sceptical piece to date. Great stuff. Worth reading in full (if you can get past the paywall).
No ‘Second Wave’ in Europe
We often hear alarmist reports of a ‘second wave’ in Europe, with rumours swirling about which countries are about to be removed from the travel corridor. According to the Telegraph, as many as 14 countries could soon be removed from the list, including the Netherlands, Gibraltar, Monaco, Malta and San Marino. But in the case of every ‘second wave’ country, all we’ve seen is an uptick in the number of people testing positive each day, no corresponding uptick in the number of daily deaths. I’m grateful to the FT for helping to make this point with a couple of graphs.
First the graph showing the increase in daily infections.
And now the graph showing the daily deaths.
In other words, the uptick in infections is almost entirely due to increased testing and nothing to worry about.
My Holiday in the Sun
As readers will know, I spent an enjoyable week with my family in Italy last month – three days in Venice, followed by four in the Dolomites. I’ve now written this up for the Telegraph and, as you’ll see, I wasn’t with my whole family.
After four months of living under virtual house arrest in Acton, I desperately needed a break. I know the lockdown is tough on everyone, but it’s particularly difficult to endure if you think it’s a catastrophic mistake. Since the beginning of April I’ve been running a blog called LockdownSceptics.org, pumping out daily reminders of the harm the lockdown is doing, whether to schoolchildren, cancer patients or elderly care home residents. Not that it makes any impact on public opinion. It’s as if the entire world is suffering from ‘psychotic delirium’, to use the phrase of Bernard Henry-Levi, the French philosopher.
My wife and I booked a family getaway, but we hit a lockdown-related snag two weeks before departure. No, our chosen destination wasn’t removed from the travel corridor – we’d arranged to go to Italy not Spain or the Bahamas, thank God. Rather, we discovered our 15-year-old son’s passport was about to expire. Normally, you can pay extra to fast-track the application or, failing that, stand in a queue for a few hours at the Passport Office. But not at the moment.
I sat down with Ludo and told him he had a choice: we could either scrap the holiday, or he could stay with a friend and I’d buy him a new gaming desktop. It took him all of two seconds to make up his mind.
There’s plenty more in this vein.
Alarmist ITV News Report About “Lingering” Effects of the Virus
A reader has written to object to a report on ITV News yesterday evening.
This is (honestly) the first time I have felt moved complain about a news report, but Emily Morgan’s piece on tonight’s ITV News at 6.30pm was a textbook example of the exaggeration, scaremongering and frankly, crap reporting that seems to have swept through the media in recent times.
The report was supposedly highlighting how several people who had recovered from COVID-19 were still experiencing negative health issues and implied that these were somehow unique to the virus and constitute a ‘hidden cost’ of the disease that is now now becoming apparent.
EVERYBODY PANIC!
These symptoms included chronic fatigue, an inability to concentrate and constant muscular pain. Exactly the symptoms of Post Viral Fatigue in fact – a condition known about for over 40 years (known in the 80s as ‘yuppie flu’).
The clue is in the title – a syndrome that you tend to get after fighting off a debilitating virus (usually the flu). There is plenty of information on the web should anyone at ITN bother to fact check (Hint: it’s usually better to do this before you broadcast the report).
I’d love to know what qualifications Ms. Morgan has relating to Heath/Science? I suspect the answer will be none, just like her equivalent at the BBC, Hugh Pym, who has a degree in PPE. How are these people supposed to critically report on their briefs when they don’t appear to have even a basic understanding of subject they are reporting on? Deborah Cohen (Newsnight) has a background in medicine and boy does it show – her reports are always excellent, balanced, never alarmist and because of this interesting and informative. Sadly, she’s one of the few.
Keep Two Sheep Apart
A reader gets in touch after spotting an unlikely sign in Folkestone.
I’m on holiday in Kent this week and whilst walking along coast path at Folkestone yesterday I couldn’t believe this sign was for real. Now they’re just trolling us.
Socially Distanced Cars
Another reader reports more madness: socially distanced cars.
I was chatting this morning to a neighbour whose wife is currently working from home.
I have no idea what she does, but he told me that her firm has said no one will be going back to the office until at least January and even then they will only allow 40% of the staff back. This is, according to the firm, because “the rules” say that not only must staff socially distance in the office, but cars must be socially distanced in the car park with only alternate spaces used!
As I’ve said many times in the past five months, the lunatics have taken over the asylum.
Round-Up
- ‘“State becomes more powerful and individuals weaker” with forced isolation: Alan Jones‘ – More common sense from our favourite broadcaster on Sky Australia
- Plan B Conference in New Zealand – One of the organisers of the Plan B conference in New Zealand (featuring Prof Gupta, among others) has got in touch to say anyone can attend. You’ll be able to watch it here when it’s broadcast live on Monday. Meanwhile, Saint Jacinda has announced that anyone who tests positive in NZ will be forced to quarantine in a government managed facility
- ‘The statistical quirk that means the coronavirus pandemic may never officially end‘ – The Telegraph‘s Science Editor Sarah Knapton flags up something I’ve often drawn attention to on this site: false positives will mean the virus will never be eliminated
- ‘Australia, How Have You Let it Come to This?‘ – Good piece by Professor Augusto Zimmermann in Quadrant
- ‘Mass testing results: Endless panic and false positives‘ – Another corking post from Daniel Horowitz in the Conservative Review
- ‘Flu and pneumonia killed five times more than Covid last month‘ – According to the latest ONS figures, there were 193 deaths reported in the week ending July 31st that had coronavirus mentioned on the death certificate and 928 people who died of flu or pneumonia in the same period
- ‘Partygoers put Oldham at risk of further curbs‘ – More needless misery is in store for the residents of Greater Manchester
- ‘A Tale of Two Tyrannies: Psychiatry and the public health response to coronavirus‘ – Interesting blog post by Gary Sidley, a retired NHS psychologist
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Two today: “Failed Exams” by Laxcity and “Ventilator Blues” by the Rolling Stones
Small Businesses That Have Re-Opened
A couple of months 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 re-opened, 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.
Now that non-essential shops have re-opened – or most of them, anyway – we’re now focusing on pubs, bars, clubs and restaurants, as well as other social venues. As of July 4th, many of them have re-opened too, but not all (and some of them are at risk of having to close again). 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 – particularly if they’re not insisting on face masks! Don’t worry if your entries don’t show up immediately – we need to approve them once you’ve entered the data.
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums that are now open, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of publicity. We have a team of moderators in place to remove spam and deal with the trolls, but sometimes it takes a little while so please bear with us. You have to register to use the Forums, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
I’ve created a permanent slot down here for people who want to buy (or make) a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and it has the advantage of not explicitly claiming you have a disability. But if you have no qualms about that (or you are disabled), you can buy a lanyard from Amazon saying you do have a disability/medical exemption here (now showing it will arrive between Sept 26th to Oct 6th). The Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. You can get a “Hidden Disability” tag from ebay here and an “exempt” card that looks like as if it’s been issued by the NHS for just £2.79 from Etsy here.
Don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face nappies in shops here (now over 28,000).
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
Meanwhile, probably not a good idea to wear unusual face coverings as an expression of your resistance to mask fascism. The Standard reports that the tech millionaire John McAffee was arrested in Norway for wearing a thong on his face.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. If you feel like donating, however small the sum, 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…
In my Spectator column this week, I’ve written about why I started “Love in a Covid Climate”.
It all began in April when I started a blog called Lockdown Sceptics. I wanted to create a clubhouse for that small band of dissenters who think that locking down the entire population, the healthy as well as the sick, is a violation of our civil liberties, particularly when our scientific understanding of how the virus is transmitted is so incomplete. It quickly started getting a lot of traffic, suggesting we aren’t such a tiny minority after all. On an average day, the site gets 25,000 visitors and to date it’s had more than 2.5 million page views.
The idea is that if you’re a Covid realist you don’t want to go out with a hysteric who frets about a ‘second wave’
Last week I got an email from one of my regular correspondents saying he was newly divorced and thinking of signing up with a dating agency. ‘It made me realise that a key criterion for meeting someone is that they absolutely must be a lockdown sceptic,’ he wrote. ‘I genuinely think that if I can find a girl as sceptical as me, she must therefore be marriage material. That’s how important (and sadly divisive) this issue has now become. I could never date (let alone build a relationship with) a lockdown zealot.’That’s when the lightbulb appeared above my head. Why not start a dating site myself? My tech-savvy collaborator, Ian Rons, had already created some discussion forums on the website, so all he needed to do was add a new page where users could post their lonely hearts messages. We decided to call it ‘Love in a Covid climate’.
Worth reading in full.
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.
I win, but what do I win?…
Two weeks in Leicester.
Leicester’s just fine dickhead.
Aren’t you clever!
Okay, mod.
Leicester is just fine. Your smug “humour” is NOT appreciated.
A cruise
On the Diamond Princess.
Or Bournemouth
We’ve had ships moored off the coast in Bournemouth, including cruise ships, since the ports are full. So combine the two.
Our great respect!
I don’t like crowing so I’ve sorted it Newest to Oldest just to spite Simon.
I always search that way too
One week at Butlins.
That might not be so bad. Forced encampment, have to abide by rules and can only go to the shop when allowed. Must take mandatory exercise at set times….. a home from home :>)
Good preparation for your future life under lockdown.
24 hours, nonstop, living in Nicola Sturgeon’s head.
There’s plenty of room…
Now that’s going too far.
Vaccination.
First prize, a week in Wuhan. Try some exotic delicacies from the wet market. Second prize, two weeks in Wuhan including a tour of the virology labs. Although these have no connection at all with the virus, of course.
And, finally, a proper Chinese funeral, CCCP style.
You win a win…it’s a win-win situation.
A day watching videos of Matt Hancock’s Covid updates 😀
Kill me now!
Would you like some COVID-19 with that? :-p
Hard-hitting factual article on BrexitFacts4EU website today:
https://facts4eu.org/news/2020_aug_con_us_virus
Extract:
‘…Have the Coronavirus numbers come anywhere near justifying the lockdown of our nation, the imposition of emergency powers, the denial of our civil liberties, the drastic shortening of lives because the NHS wouldn’t treat non-Covid patients, the closing of our schools and universities, the severe damage to the infrastructure of our cities and to our town high streets, and the utter devastation of our economy? No, the Coronavirus numbers have justified none of these.
Will we see far more deaths from other causes over the next few years as a result of the knee-jerk Coronavirus responses? Yes we will.
It really is time for this nonsense to end. We have always argued for a proportionate response. We urge the Government to look at the real figures that matter, stop the hysteria, and end this madness completely. Let’s get everyone back to work and back into education, and regrow our country again as quickly as possible…’
“We urge the Government”. And this is the problem.
http://www.frombehindenemylines.org.uk/2020/07/exiting-babylon-the-only-way-to-escape-being-prey-for-uk-government-in-perpetuity/
Quote from the above. Good points: Take a careful look at what your media tells you about “Covid-19”; does it reinforce the basic concept of the psyop, even if it quibbles about how deaths are recorded, or whether or not the disease is as dangerous as claimed? Does it say “Covid-19 is as dangerous as flu in the such-and-such age demographic”? It probably does. On the contrary, here at FBEL it is said that Covid-19 is a thing contracted by those whose upper respiratory tracts, but especially lungs express a high amount of ACE2. Certain people may happen to be more susceptible to the condition because of the state of their health terrain (and we deal with why in just a second). Does the reader see the difference? Only when one comes to the information that the FBEL reader is directed to (it isn’t invented) can one start to ask questions about why there is a prevalence of ACE2 in the body. The primary suspects for causation are the prescription drugs related to obesity, high blood pressure, and then further complications. Is it any wonder that ACE2 never gets an airing in any media when obesity – the gateway for the… Read more »
The ACE inhibitor link doesn’t get much attention although I am aware of it.
Interesting diagram at 9:35 in https://www.sott.net/article/438937-ExposeBillGates-Day-of-Action-2
Umm… stupid question, i know, but why not look at the cause of death? Cause it sounds to me like if you get hit by a bus in those 28 days, it still counts. Who makes up these rules?
Because that would mean that COVID-19 wasn’t this big scary disease that they’re making it out to be. They’re not just gonna turn off 5 months of lies after putting so much effort into scaring the majority of the population, and suddenly give us our freedom back.
And in the process admit they got it catastrophically wrong, have atomised the economy and caused hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths by closing down the health system for five months. They are in so deep now they might as well keep paddling because they can’t really cause much more damage and they might kid some fools into believing they are responsible for “beating” the virus.
‘They’re in so deep now…’ Not deep enough, they are digging deeper. Look what’s happening in Australia, look what Sturgeon’s trying to do. If Victoria can lock up its citizens for 23 hours a day with those pathetic figures (less than 250 deaths out of 5 million people) then don’t think it can’t happen here.
At least Australia is at the beginning of the epidemic. What they’re attempting to do is not worth it, and will probably fail, but Sturgeon definitely wins the award for monumental stupidity with her “Covid Zero” project.
Joint winner with Jacinda Ardern, who may yet win outright
My money’s on Jacinda. Can we get odds at William Hill?
The words after stupidity are redundant.
If they can grab power, they will grab as much of it as they can.
Mosside/Brixton/Hackney <> Victoria.
“they got it catastrophically wrong”
Perhaps not. It depends on the intention.
If you die in a hospice with covid in your system it is, somewhat ludicrously labelled as a covid death.
From my experience many people frustratingly continue testing + ve for months after their original infection. No doubt this would mean some people would have had covid19 in March , never tested at time, serious RTA in July and get tested on admission to hospital . Positve test in July and die of injuries… covid death . It really is insane..
I would never have a test for Covid once you’re included in their statistics you become a Covid statistic!
Just explained that new rule to my 14 y/o son and he made the exact same comment. He could probably run PHE better than these morons.
I have no doubt of it.
It’s another modeling technique.
(Repost from end of yesterday’s page.)
Beeb getting brickbats from rail industry about yesterday’s accident. The train was heading back North, for example, not continuing its journey. All we got on the news was clueless speculation. People are making the connection: “what else can we believe?”
Ironically it looks like the Stonehaven train crash might be a case where anti-Covid measures actually have saved lives, indirectly… (the train presumably being near-empty)
Having seen video of the wreckage https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-53759972 it looks horrendous, comparable with far more severe (in terms of casualties) rail accidents in the past. If there had been more than a handful of people on board, surely there would have been more than 3 deaths and 6 injuries (the latter all minor)
When I saw pictures of the crash site, and reports of the number of Air Ambulances which attended, I thought it fortunate this line hasn’t been electrified. They’d have had bugger all chance of putting down with 25kV overhead lines above both tracks…
Toby – to renew a teenagers passport (as you needed to do) takes 9-10 days, all done. There is no backlog, there are no delays.
It is another piece of scaremongering to make us stay at home and not make the effort to travel abroad.
Daughter’s passport renewal (with new photo) applied for on the 20th July. New one popped through the letterbox on the 30th.
Does the same apply to driving licences? Or is this another piece of scaremongering to prevent 17 year olds from becoming mobile and 70 year olds from staying mobile?
Hello, I’m 67 and my husband is 71. We live in a hilly, rural area and do not run a car and we are both very much mobile, thank you very much! If you drive a car all the time instead of using your legs, you risk compromising your actual mobility and your general health.
Think you missed the point there MW.
I think it is all part of a narrative designed & delivered to keep us in fear and under lock & key. It plays to all age groups but is bollox in reality.
I was also informed that car & van hire companies were not hiring out their vehicles as they could ‘not maintain C19 hygiene standards’.
This is also utter tripe – I have hired a van & cars three times since March without so much as a flicker of difficulty. My local car hire business has been flat out busy for months.
It’s all bilge. Just live your life as if all was normal and you know what? It becomes so.
Can’t say but DVLA were crap long before covid …..
I sign DVLA medical forms for people to return to driving. Had barely any from March to July but they’re starting to come through in normal numbers in the past couple of weeks.
My daughter’s passport renewal also took a very short time. Sent application off on the 28th July, new one arrived yesterday.
Best not to tell him that now that he has forked out for a gaming laptop and his son has lifetime rights to the “remember that time Dad when you went away on holiday without me ..” tale.
So if ive got this right, PHE still have the same problem but with a shorter time frame ? so from now on, if you ‘test positive’, then 27 days later you die of cancer or hit by a bus, it STILL goes down as a covid death ? its still bollox isnt it ?
It’s a fudge both ways. There will be deaths to which covid is not a major contributor within 28 days of infection, and deaths beyond 28 days to which it is a major contributor.
There’s no really bulletproof way of attributing cause of death, but far be it from me to imply that they have implemented this deliberate fudge in the hope and expectation that some intrepid bedwetter will go and find cases of death after 28 days to prove it is underestimating the deaths, thus enabling the paranoia and panic to continue.
Not forgetting of course that the test could be a false positive anyway. You couldn’t make it up… oh actually they are.
If that was the plan then they missed a trick by not using Heneghan’s reported suggestion of 21 days as justification for adopting that number instead….
That’s not really the case no, as is it not the case that they will test a sick person multiple times if still symptomatic etc and so they’d die within 28 days of most recent test. Happy to be corrected if that’s not the case, but I believe that’s the practice?
The good part of that is that there is now a great deal of uncertainty of any of the numbers. the efffects of now reducing them may make people start to think that they may still be over counting.
If it was increased people may think, and lets face it we know they will, that the total must be higher.
Either way, trust is broken and that will switch people more to our way of thinking.
Anecdote =/= data, but I’ve heard two things that make me wonder whether this will be the actual reaction. The first was weeks and weeks ago when someone (a primary school teacher) was telling me that I shouldn’t believe the official story that kids weren’t dying and that she had a friend who was a nurse at GOSH who knew “what’s really going on”. The second was some bed wetting tweet quoted here yesterday (by Mark, I think) where the idiot quoted was saying that the “real” numbers were much higher than the official figures.
Both of which make me concerned that many people will just think they’re being tricked _even more_
Oh yeah there are plenty of people still desperately hoping (for some reason) the figures are _worse_ and they believe it’s all being downplayed! Not sure how anyone could think that, but there you go
I think with the teachers it’s propaganda coming from the unions. Anything to stop schools reopening.
No. It’s just one aspect of the induced fear. It’s (unfortunately) genuine.
Promoting this idea that the Government is deliberately under-counting and “hiding” COVID deaths would be a job for the 77th boys
Once you start lying, all credibility goes.
Yes I think that’s what Guy de la B. was saying. Nobody trusts the government so will believe what they want, including that things are much worse.
“Nobody trusts the government” EXCEPT THOSE MORONS THAT WILLINGLY WEAR A MUZZLE
I refuse to believe anything this lying government has to say about anything! Most certainly, what little trust I had went at Lockdown!
Umm, no. Quite the opposite. People will be: “Ok, fine, you had good reason to be skeptical. But look! Now they made the numbers all better! These are the real numbers! Stop arguing!”
And this is what the exercise was for.
Trouble is, I’ve talked to a few terrified people who believe that the government is deliberately UNDER-reporting the deaths, which they take as evidence that this government can’t be trusted and the virus is much worse than we are being told and we’re all gonna die!
I had a Twatter conversation the other week the poster was saying that because world deaths were 654,000 the virus was going to kill us all. I posted that the virus is less virulent now & that the number was only 0.008% of the world population.
The poster came back with that the deaths are vastly underestimated & 3,000,000 had died in the UK.
You really can’t help some people.
One year’s worth of normal deaths every month? Well, the mass graves should be easy to spot, perhaps he can show you. 🙂
I actually think you are right. You can’t help quite a few people and that’s really the shocker because you imagine that just a basic assessment of the facts would quell their fears but it really is something more than that. Its actually akin to a psychiatric disorder – a complete deviation from reality. I remain amazed on a daily basis to hear intelligent, thoughtful people talking as if C-19 is a deadly virus that you are highly likely to get from all manner of routine contact. They genuinely believe it and they just assume that you believe it too. Even people with OCD are usually aware that their obsessions are irrational and unhelpful. I’m not at all sure what will help apart from time i.e. ‘I haven’t died yet or know anyone who has, maybe this isn’t as bad as I fear?’ type questioning. I think most people are in too deep, I’m afraid. It’s like a spell or something.
I’ve had similar feelings about 9-11 for nineteen years, Alison.
‘Basic assessments of facts’ vary depending on the person, the facts, the sources, and the degree of their interest/involvement.
I take your point JB.
3,000,000!! FGS what a cretinous comment. Where do these people get their information from?
exactly – encouraged by the face nappy wearing
I love that how they say “the government can’t be trusted” then do everything that the government tell them to do and spout very single government line and slogan!
I don’t see how under reporting death figures would help the government. High death figures can be used to justify the lockdown and terrify the population.
To quote Diana West: The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the Revolution.
They don’t care about accurate reporting. They care about generating as much fear as people are willing to accept.
Exactly.
It’s confusing, inaccurate and continues to be putting out false numbers. IF there are no other long term chronic conditions known or unknown then Covid can kill and sometimes does. Because there have been so few post morteums the clinicians (and Drs on this site please correct me if I’m wrong), have not been able to study in depth what happened to the major organs and if there is a treatment they can apply to stop it happening. It has got much better as the medics have been exposed to ill patients.
pressed return in error. What I wanted to continue to say was that one of my relatives (retired pathologist and seriously knowledgeable about viruses) was called back into her local hospital during the early panic and she says that some of her patients unexpectedly died when ‘they’ – the medics – thought they were on the road to recovery. She was particularly saddened to lose a mid 50s patient (overweight male) suddenly and overnight and there was nothing they could do about it – then. But what I want to see in big bold black newsprint in the MSM is the tiny numbers (what about 1700?) of people that have ‘only’ died of Covid without other contributing additional illnesses and old age. We have been appallingly served by our government, media and pubic health. Time for a reboot. BTW going to the mask free march in Hull tomorrow if anyone else is around?
Lets look on the bright side then 4000 people have suddenly recovered from Covid and risen from the dead? surely time to celebrate?
I suspect that when the real figures are finally totalled up another 20000 or so will be back amongst those who didn’t actually die of “the virus”. The tragedy is however the 20000 and counting who have certainly died of lockdown related causes. May I suggest some form of national memorial to the victims of government incompetence? a memorial wall with the names of every patient who died because of withdrawn cancer treatment, every shopkeeper who committed suicide…. that might just be enough to stop the politicians of the future making rash and ill considered panic decisions on the advice of disgraced statisticians
Make it a time capsule and bury the incompetent politicins inside it.
Yes
Thank you Toby for all the articles you have been posting by lockdown sceptics in Australia, it is much appreciated and I am very glad to know they are around.They have yet to have any affect from what I can see; I am currently in Melbourne and don’t know anyone who will believe anything other than what they see on the news. Too upset to comment on it further at the moment. This is an article that truly alarmed me – https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-trump-vaccine-idUSKCN24V3KY The U.S. government is planning to launch an overwhelming COVID-19 vaccine campaign in November.The campaign will likely be compressed into a short period of time, around four to six weeks, to eliminate any lag between when Americans are alerted to the vaccine and then they can get vaccinated, the official said during a press conference. There is every indication this will be rolled out globally, with reports that vaccines have already been purchased by governments around the world. The UK, for example, has already purchased 190 million vaccines, even though the trials have yet to conclude, never mind safety approvals. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53469839 (last paragraph) The vaccine push will be supported by a clinical trial conducted at Yale University to assess… Read more »
US vaccine “distribution” is between the Pentagon and CDC:
https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/2311177/operation-warp-speed-on-track-for-end-of-year-vaccine-delivery/
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/trump-admin-sidelines-cdc-to-give-pentagon-unprecedented-role-in-vaccine-distribution
Why the military?
Makes my head spin
Operation Warp Speed – sounds like something out of a 1960s kids tv show like Thunderbirds.
“I think it will be a very effective vaccine. That’s my prediction,” Slaoui said. “My personal opinion, based on my experience and the biology of this virus, I think this vaccine is going to be highly efficacious.”
He THINKS?
His PREDICTION??
Very worrying!
This is very important information that we all need to digest. No one can complain that we were not warned in advance that this was coming in 2020. For all those who will not be taking the vaccine, we need to prepare for our greatest challenges yet, far worse than anything we have so far experienced with masks. Our ability to function at all in society (i.e. work, purchase or travel) is likely to be stripped away completely.
Not to mention public shaming.
Interesting and well-considered article about rushing vaccines into use without proper testing:
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/11/researchers-rush-to-start-moderna-coronavirus-vaccine-trial-without-usual-animal-testing/
Shocking. And effective and inexpensive treatments are banned.
The propaganda aspect of that roll out was posted towards the end of yesterday on LS ie early thurs am.
Very nasty 10 point summary of reasons to accept it, worth a repost but I don’t have time to and can’t copy’n’past with an Android.
Thanks for that, I will have a look for it.
You will see there my bet that the UK NHS will never buy vaccine to do a complete, mass, all age range programme. Their Quality of Life Years cost benefit analysis will never come up positive for that. IF a safe , successful vaccine is ever produced, it will likely be offered to the vulnerable, like our flu vaccination is.
Unless – as has already been posited, I think in the US? – they realise the vaccine is ‘too much’ for the vulnerable and is likely to result in negative outcomes (and could even kill them). Then they will foist it on the healthy population who will be charged with ‘protecting’ the vulnerable by taking a jab for the team. A little collateral damage will be acceptable among them.
I think we only have to look at the ‘I wear mine to protect you’ mask rhetoric to realise this is a possibility. In the normal world they’d strive for a flu type vaccine. That’s still the most likely scenario. But….. If They discover by doing that they’re likely to to very obviously kill the over 60s in mass numbers that they can’t hide (they’re not in care homes), and they still have millions of doses of vaccine to shift…….
I am not sure I what you mean? According to news reports, including the BBC website I linked to above, the UK govt has already purchased 190 million doses of vaccines.
We know we don’t really need to be jabbed against covid.
However, they are hellbent on jabbing SOMETHING into us all.
They have jabbing us for the past five months.
That BBC link doesn’t work. Maybe they had to take it down because it was wrong.
Sorry about that. Thanks for letting me know. Here it is last paragraph
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53469839
Does anyone know how to edit their comments? I can’t find a way.
It hasn’t. It has agreed to purchase them if the vaccine works. Not quite the same thing.
The BBC article I link to above says
These have been paid for even though it is uncertain which, if any, of the vaccines may prove effective for immunising a nation with 66m people.
I read about this in several different publications, I could find nothing about the purchase. being contingent on safety approval
Sylvie, they have already purchased enough doses to jab the entire population. We aren’t dealing with people that make cost benefit analyses, unfortunately. I think they’ll “offer” it to all of us. The question is how many of us are reluctant and just going along with the whole face mask thing because what the heck, it isn’t really that big of of a deal but a jab in the arm with a hastily “tested” vaccine against a virus that isn’t that threatening … well, it will be interesting to see how many people are prepared to ‘just go along with it’ then. I think it will flush out a fair few people who are what I call closet sceptics but I also see a lot of people who have swallowed the narrative hook, link and sinker. It’s going to be a hell of an end to an extraordinary year. Everyone, buckle up!
No they haven’t. I doubt a dime has hit the table, except for govt contributions to research.What has happened is:
‘The UK government has entered partnerships with BioNtech/Pfizer and Valneva who are developing vaccines to protect against COVID-19. It has also secured early access to treatments containing COVID-19 neutralising antibodies from AstraZeneca, in order to treat those unable to receive vaccines, such as the immunocompromised or elderly.
As a result of these partnerships, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland could have access to enough doses to vaccinate and protect certain priority groups, such as frontline health and social care workers and those at increased health risk.
The government has secured access to three different types of COVID-19 vaccines that are being developed in the UK and abroad, which the UK Business Secretary Alok Sharma said should give the UK the most likely chance of getting access to a safe and effective vaccine at the quickest speed.’
https://www.europeanpharmaceuticalreview.com/news/123998/uk-government-secures-early-access-to-90-million-doses-of-covid-19-vaccines/
The BBC article says ( last paragraph)
These have been paid for even though it is uncertain which, if any, of the vaccines may prove effective for immunising a nation with 66m people.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53469839
But it is wrong. It’s the BBC. Don’t be surprised.
I hope you’re right Sylvie!
Don’t be surprised if online access is severely curtailed to prevent mobilisation of a push back. If you think we are alone now, think again. I fully expect all dissenting voices, web sites, online platforms will be shut down when the vaccine rollout begins in lockstep around the world.
Question is, how will we communicate and coordinate under such restrictions?
in person? by post?
Maybe all external means will be stripped away or blocked.
But part of all of this thing-19 is will I consent to die from fear by reacting as if what I fear is coming is already fact?
In English?
Gotta form those local groups asap.
I agree, local protest groups are the way to go. Just talking about it has its limitations so if we don’t start now we won’t have any momentum when it is sorely needed.
This is the first time in my life I have felt the need to go out and protest, damn the consequences. Failure is not an option for the alternative is not worth contemplating. I am not particularly concerned about my future, it’s my daughter and grandson who still have a full life ahead that I think about. I can’t imagine them living in an open prison system if the globalists get their way. They unfortunately live in Melbourne of all places and we know which way they are going!
Anyway, I live in Ireland and intend to travel up to Dublin a week Saturday to attend the Protest for Change gathering at Customs House. This will be the start of my new found protesting career and will give me the motivation to do something in my local town in Cork, the ‘rebel county’. Who knows how it will pan out but at least I’ll give it a good go.
Pre-internet, people used to use bulletin board services for communication. The bulletin board would be hosted on a single separate server housed at someone’s home or business. You would then use the telephone lines to dial up the server. You can also use Telnet to connect to some of them through the Internet. Many people my age (60s) used BBSs for years.
I certainly don’t have the technical skills or a server to set up such a service, but I suspect that there are already such services in existence. You just have to find them – which is easier to do now while the internet is still available. Of course, lots of us don’t have landlines anymore, which is a prereq, but there may be other options available that I don’t know about since I haven’t kept up with the field.
Leaflets. Posters. Graffiti. Word of Mouth.
You’re in Melbourne?
God help you. I mean that quite literally.
Thank you !
🐑🐑🐑 + 💉💉💉 = ⚰️⚰️⚰️
Del Bigtree (google ‘The Highwire’) and Robert F. Kennedy have done some excellent journalism work exposing the safety trials of vaccines. Del won a legal case so the the vaccine tials must now be tested against a saline placebo. The vaccine co’s have tried to manipulate results to make the results look better than they really are (the opposite of how we originally recorded covid deaths).
For sure. Robert F. Kennedy’s articles don’t beat around the bush do they ? Essential reading in my opinion.
One of the best blogs today I must say. Thank you Toby.
In order to fix the grades crisis next week for GCSE, it’s simple.
1. Use the teachers own submitted rank order of candidates ONLY. Teachers should have taken into account t their estimated grades and all other factors in deciding this.
2. Award the grade boundaries per centre as last year, I. E. If a centre got 5% grade As or 9s, similarly this year.
3. Allow centres to appeal whole cohorts ONLY if they can prove this years cohort was significantly better than last.
Too many beaurocrats and too much data adjustment has not helped, though I blame teachers most of all. I am one. Good results = increase in pay. Massive grade inflation. Is unfair to candidates.
It’s unfair to candidates, honest teachers, honest schools, employers (how can they trust any exam achievement?), universities (ditto) – everybody except the cheats and the corrupt s..ts in government and the exam boards who let it happen
I was a principal examiner for years and fought unremittingly against grade inflation, but with little success. In one paper I saw the threshold mark needed for an A grade drop from 50 to 42 in a couple of years.
Has any one done any statistical research in to the change in cases to hospitalisation rate?
For example, if you take the number of identified cases in April & May, and calculate the hospitalisation rate for those cases, then compare against the same date for June & July.
It seems like we are finding 1000s of cases per week, but hospitalisation is far lower. Surely this would assuage fears of a 2nd wave, or might even tell us something about the virility progression of the virus.
E.g In April/May, if there were 50,000 cases found and 2000 hospitalisations, then that would be a hospitalisation rate of 4%.
The problem is that ‘cases’ are simply people having certain bits of RNA in their system – bits that have only s possible relationship to a virus, let alone an actual infection or illness.
Thus it doesn’t form a firm basis for judging the actual level of infection.
It was never designed for that purpose.
Don’t let truth get in the way of a good story!
/sarc
Hi, yes I’ve recently started plotting the hospital admissions per 1000 positive tests,using figures from the coronavirus.data.gov.uk website. I’ve been doing other graphs as well (of NHS England & ONS deaths etc) & sending them to Hector Drummond to post on his website, but what with holidays etc so far he hasn’t been able to upload any of my latest graphs, which include the admission rate graphs.
I’ve uploaded the latest graph here
?dl=0 As you can see, the hospitalisation rate was fairly steady up until late June, but since then has steadily fallen by 75%!
Edit – if you click the “comment image” bit, it does take you to the graph I’ve uploaded to dropbox – even though it looks like a broken link!
Thanks for this – I think that is quite a powerful graph and ought to be wheeled out whenever people fret about “cases” – a “case” now has very different consequences for healthcare than a “case” back in March/April, and we should treat the numbers accordingly, weighted in some way.
Thanks Julian, please feel free to use/post the graph anywhere you think it might be useful – and the same goes for everyone else! I’m not on twitter, and I’ve avoided Facebook since getting abused by lockdown zealot now-ex friends back in March/April, so the only place my graphs have been published is on Hector Drummond’s website – but if they help, please do share them!
Excellent analysis. Glad you didn’t include the ‘suspected’ cases which Wales count as admissions which get fed into the UK total on the Govt. Dashboard and then onto the headlines of the MSM… they are so high they sometimes exceed (on a daily basis) the total number of infections found in the whole of the country in all settings – often doubling the UK daily admissions total (despite only linked to only 6% of the population).
I just cannot understand why our official numbers (UK) are so diverse from one country to the next – well paid number crunchers wouldn’t get away with this sort of thing in the private sector – it would be P45 time!
Thanks Christopher. I’d missed your posts!
Considering there’s so much more testing going on, your graph is extremely eloquent!
Thanks Cheezilla, that’s really kind of you 🙂 Hector’s now back from his holidays, and I sent him the Week 31 graphs on Tuesday afternoon, so they will hopefully be up on his site before too long!
I’ve uploaded the graph of hospital admissions here
?dl=0 and the graph of lab-confirmed tests here
?dl=0 so you can see how they compare. The hospital admissions are decreasing exponentially, as are the positive tests until late June – but then the tests start rising while the hospital admissions keep falling.
The two sheep sign … well, here in Torquay we get plagued by complete nonsense from our local council like “two Hercule Poirot walking sticks”, “one Basil Fawlty”.
Oh God…jaunty humour whist our civil liberties are destroyed.
I’m pretty sure it’s a joke image used by other sceptics as a criticism of the sheep-like mentality, not an official sign put up by local authorities.
You can buy the same image on a T-shirt from Carl Vernon here:
https://teespring.com/socially-distanced-sheep?tsmac=store&tsmic=official-carl-vernon&pid=377&cid=100074
I don’t know whether Carl Vernon actually created the image himself or is just using it from other sources.
I thought you might be winding us up but I’ve checked it out and they did tweet that about Basil Fawlty!
Reposted from yesterday late
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8617293/Fauci-says-new-study-key-dies-COVID-19.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailus
Fauci has discovered the T cells
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/08/04/science.abd3871/tab-pdf
Fauci is a curious old cove. He will be 80 this year . He reminds me of an 80 year old doctor I once worked with ; rather set in his ways, long since given up reflecting on any changes , prone to errors, slow and not really very good but given a lot of slack because he had become a part of the furniture .
I was amazed Fauci was still in such a senior position after so many administration changes and his age. Then when you look into his background and contacts he suddenly looks pretty untouchable. How much he will benefits financially from the crisis via his personal shareholdings and patents are also far from clear.
It crosses my mind tgat stimulants may be used by certain super human ever lasting polticals. There are a few suspicious ‘out liers’.
Why bring in new blood when you can get er new blood!
US and especially Fauci doesn’t believe anything unless it is done in the US. He could never swallow the national humiliation that the French discovered HIV and not his disciple Gallo who wanted the patent in testing to get rich but never discovered the virus. They did not trust any non US PCR test for C-19 until after several blunders they finally got it. Many articles on T cells immunity published outside US but this one from California. And most importantly even the Director of NIH,Collins, wrote recently an article about T cells immunity in C-19.
Fauci ‘discovered’ that AIDS could be passed by casual social interaction putting the frighteners on Gays, their families and friends for years in the process.
Such a kindly demeanour – he could be your Godfather.
Protecting the Model, of the invested Establishment, for the Protection of the people, may look like a racket, but its really one big Family.
There is a book by Ghislaine Lanctot – The Medical Mafia – that would likely find a much more willing and appreciative readership today.
In checking I had her name spelled right I met this link:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/canadian-doctor-h1n1-vaccination-a-eugenics-weapon-for-massive-targeted-reduction-of-the-world-population/14312
Don’t let the extreme (?) wording of the link deny you the wider view.
“I am emerging from a long silence on the subject of vaccination, because I feel that, this time, the stakes involved are huge. The consequences may spread much further than anticipated,” writes Lanctôt, who believes the A(H1N1) virus will be used in a pandemic concocted and orchestrated by the WHO, an international organization that serves military, political and industrial interests.
Lanctôt warns that the elite and their minions will introduce a compulsory vaccination that will contain a deadly virus and this will be used specifically as a eugenics weapon for “massive and targeted reduction of the world population.” Moreover, a pandemic will also be used to further establish martial law and a police state, according to Lanctôt, and activate concentration camps “built to accommodate the rebellious” and eventually transfer power from all nations to a single United Nations government and thus fulfill the sinister plans of the New World Order.
Hmmm. I was just suggesting this might be the real 2nd wave a couple of hours ago! When Uncle Bills says, gleefully, that we won’t miss the next one…….
Is this something to do with supporting the new vaccines? Fauci is up to the neck with Uncle Bill so I can’t believe this is as innocent as it looks.
Over the last 1-2 weeks I have been re-reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago and the following passages are very, very pertinent and relevant to the insane times we live in: If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well- considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions. Ideology- that is what gives evildoing its long sought justification and gives the evil doer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps make his act seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honours. We have to condemn… Read more »
I see the lockdownistas and the mask zealots very much in the second and third quote – they think they’re doing good but in reality they are very much an active participant in this evil. We have to resist them at all costs, even doing one thing like telling people that they’re exempt from muzzle wearing when we see them in obvious distress and helping them find ways to get a lanyard or boycotting companies and writing to them why, etc.Perhaps through our words and deeds, we will get through other people especially the young that they have a duty to resist and that we will never be forgiven if this tyranny is allowed to embed itself.
It’s the young that are the greatest zombies. Masked, trembling, cowardly, hopeless.
Agree. Unfortuately you get the same in the age group that ought to know better as well.
They are not shown Solzhenitsyn, especially not at University, too dangerous.
The fear-believed evil in our own heart and mind splits the mind. Fear of hatred within is condemned to seek love ‘without’. But masking in virtue only hollows and lays waste – while seeking and finding scapegoats and enemies and threats amidst diversionary strategies of a masked agenda driven by fear of evil within. When we cast out in story we create the script. The projection of the hated as a means to get rid of it or to attack and deny it in others is the way to KEEP it or persist in a split mind while claiming moral necessity or justified grievance. Jesus said ‘resist ye not evil’. He meant – do not become defined and polarised by what you hate and fear. He says a lot that becomes recognisable to a willingness to heal a split mind. But it is our recognition at the heart that is key – not in appeals to authority. Language can be used differenty – and more so in translation. I see that what we resist, persists. And that what we neglect or leave unused or unchosen, fades from non use. The basis from which to accept a choice or decision wisely… Read more »
Allister Heath’s piece is brilliant but he does seem to misunderstand that the Swedish strategy is also about reaching herd immunity: “Politicians can react in one of three ways to a pandemic. They can do nothing, and allow the disease to rip until herd immunity is reached. Quite rightly, no government has pursued this policy, out of fear of mass deaths and total social and economic collapse. The second approach involves imposing proportionate restrictions to facilitate social distancing, banning certain sorts of gatherings while encouraging and informing the public. The Swedes pursued a version of this centrist strategy: there was a fair bit of compulsion, but also a focus on retaining normal life and keeping schools open. The virus was taken very seriously, but there was no formal lockdown. Tegnell is one of the few genuine heroes of this crisis: he identified the correct trade-offs.” There is also still a widespread failure to appreciate that the epidemic in many badly hit countries including England had peaked and gone into decline well before lockdown or even much social distancing began, as Prof Carl Heneghan has pointed out. This is presumably due to already in mid March reaching the herd immunity threshold.… Read more »
“There is also still a widespread failure to appreciate that the epidemic in many badly hit countries including England had peaked and gone into decline well before lockdown or even much social distancing began, as Prof Carl Heneghan has pointed out. “ Was thinking about this a day or two ago. My recollection is that very early on the figures suggested this – I floated it on Peter Hitchens’ blog in around mid-April I think, based on the decline in death numbers being too soon to be a result of the lockdown. That fact didn’t get as much attention as it should, but I seem to recall you were on it early as well. Then I remember there were a couple of studies questioning whether the time to death numbers were wrong for Europe (it should be longer), and this was used to cast doubt n the argument that the downturn was actually before the lockdowm, but more recently I’ve seen no references to those studies and the early downturn seems generally unquestioned. Is that correct, or just a reflection of my own closer attention to sceptical opinions? What happened to those studies suggesting longer times to death? Or am I… Read more »
Yes, this has been clear from as soon as the deaths peaked in mid-April. Not sure about those studies though I have heard the same. But if the interval is longer then that puts the peak even further before lockdown.
Sorry, mis-wrote, meant shorter, obviously.
Just dug through my messages and found the studies in question, together with an explanatory note I copied that someone (possibly you, or someone using a similar name here) wrote here back in early May, I think:
“The survey ‘Features of 16,749 hospitalized UK patients with COVID-19 using the ISARIC WHO Clinical Characterization Protocol’ finds average 4 days of symptoms pre-admission and 7 days hospital stay (all patients, both deceased and surviving). The incubation period averages 5-6 days – see the Covid-19 wiki article for references. Also in NYC the death curve lags the admission curve by 5 days. The report ‘Characteristics of COVID-19 patients dying in Italy’ found average 10 days between symptoms and death. Put this data together and you get average around 16 days from infection to death corroborated from a number of sources.”
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.23.20076042v1
https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-COVID-2019_20_marzo_eng.pdf
Right, yes, that was me. I put this to Nic Lewis the other day and he came back with a helpful comment: Unfortunately the first paper you cite gives no information about the time in hospital for those who died, so it cannot be used for estimating the time from admission to death. One commenter asked “What was the median number of days between admission and death”. The reply from the senior author was “We removed this value as it is not informative when many patients have not completed their admission.” I’m not sure that the apparent lag between hospital admission and death curves is a fair measure of the mean delay between admission and death given that the distribution thereof is long-tailed. I’m familiar with the Italian report you mention. You say it found an average of 10 days between symptoms and death. That is not correct. It found the median to be 10 to 12 days (depending on the date of the report). For a long tailed distribution, the average (mean) is somewhat higher than the median. I think there was probably considerable variation between different European countries in the distribution of the time from symptom onset to… Read more »
OK thanks.That discussion meant I backed off using that point for a while and depended more heavily on other data from eg Germany to make the point that lockdowns came after the downturn in infections. But as time went on and I didn’t see them used against the point, I assumed they had either been withdrawn or superceded. More recently I have taken the view that it’s pretty uncontroversial now that the infections turned down before lockdown, here and in other countries.
Let it rip through to reach herd immunity? Social Darwinism?
Haiti did that. No lockdown(a few days in May,they gave up). Nothing.
Very quick wash through.No mass deaths. Haiti is probably as bad as it has always been.Not worse.This is a much more complex issue.
https://twitter.com/Covid19Crusher/status/1292486892823470084/photo/1
Which is why Whitty and Vallance delayed lockdown for a long as they could. They were doing the right thing at the time. They turned into Tweedledum and Tweedlevee after the lockdown.
What do people think about creating local branches of Lockdown Sceptics? We could meet for real, and give each other confidence and encouragement in talking to coronaphobes, as well as sharing, maybe, things like strategies, handouts and resources for talking to/giving to frightened people, as well as providing emotional support, handshakes, and even, where appropriate, hugs to each other (and that’s from someone who was not the hugging type, but I am now). I’m in the south west.
That’s what I was trying to do with “A Bit Fishy”. Trying to get locals together to change their friends, families, neighbours, etc minds one by one.
Given how reasonable the discourse is here compared to the comment trails on the newspapers, I think I’d definitely get on with a lot of the people here. And I’m not generally that sociable…
I feel the same.
Agree with this!
Ditto!
Coronaphobes -I love it ! much better than bedwetters, I think, more precise.
Also, more tactful. I do not like the term bedwetters, as it is mocking people with continence problems. And, frankly, as someone who initially bought into the government’s Project Fear, I wasn’t far from shitting myself in the early stages.
One term I really do not think is helpful in any context is ‘sheeple’ it is both arrogant and patronising , there may be many reasons someone does not share your views, but lumping all such people together in the same woolly flock does not help your argument along one little bit .
Valid point, Tonys. Apart from that, as a farm vet’s daughter it is also insulting to sheep, which in general are more intelligent and discerning than people think! (They wouldn’t approve of masks either, because sheep rely quite heavily on face recognition to distinguish individuals from each other – applies to other sheep, people, dogs and some other species they have been tested with)!!!
Sorry, folks, but this is a sceptics’ site and we will call our enemies what we bloody well like.
What you call them, here and elsewhere, is equally your business and I won’t quarrel with it.
Pejorative terms serve private mythology and don’t serve addressing the issue truly. (But divert to a blame agenda).
Consciously discerned language would do a lot to clarify and unify our minds – but the emotional demand to let off steam is the lack of a better option – or the indulgence of a sense of temporary reality adjustment in which the frustrated or intimidated one venets their splee amidst company that sings in the same choir.
I prefer true witness – that can of course be open to question and dialogue.
Why be framed in the narrative of false or erroneous assertions? – IE as an ‘anti’ or ‘denier’. I don’t see the support for, and the substance of, the covid-19 assertions, but I see a LOT of noise targeted to induce emotional investment by reaction – that used somewhat trusted institutions to persist in its ‘reconditioning’ that for the most part are still doing so.
The ‘political’ agenda of which has a lot of support from the identity set in managed fear and protection.
The state is a PPP under global jurisdiction. But ‘partnership’ implies free agreement rather than an offer you cant refuse.
It’s a useful shorthand for discussing among ourselves. As you say, a tad patronising to use to someone’s face.
Who lives the world in form but has terror stalking at his heart?
When a feared shadow is revealed harmless we laugh in relief and release – but the fear is not undone.
For many here it shifted from a virus to a top-down agenda of deceit and coercion that has set in motion (or removed the chocks) to a crash that has unprecedented change and challenge. Although near extinctions are not unprecedented nor collapse of civilisations.
Well done for seeing the light.
I am not keen on the bedwetter term myself, as it is unlikely to change any minds. Those in positions of power deserve our vitriol, arguably so do the most aggressive lockdown and mask zealots, but the neutral/gullible/apathetic masses we should probably try a less ad hominem approach on.
Agree. We are not going to win anybody over by calling them a bedwetter. Coronaphobes, hopefully, in increasing numbers, will find their way to this site. If they find their fears being mocked they will turn away. If we show compassion towards those millions of people who have been done over by our government then they will warm to us and our messages.
A phobia is an irrational fear. I therefore doubt that bedwetters will take kindly to that term.
Yes, I agree with your criticism of me! I’d had that thought myself. Calling someone a coronaphobe is just as unlikely to win them over as calling them a bedwetter. Maybe slightly less mocking. I’ll try and think of a suitable term.
Moving sideways from this – and I think readers will like this – my son has come up with a great response if he is challenged for not wearing a mask. He intends to tell the challenger that he suffers from ovinaphobia: the fear of sheep.
Even coronaphobe is condescending. Don’t forget that these people are the majority and so encompass educated, decent people in the main. To be called a coronaphobe would be insulting and may put them off.
If you want to go out and change people’s minds then you must aim to change the low hanging fruit first not the staunch believers of the official narrative.
There will always be a loose edge like stripping wallpaper. They will already have a few questions. Answer those and they may be won over.
The more who are won over then the more who go home and seed doubt with their partner or work colleague. Then they in turn become curious, etc, etc.
We MUST change the minds of the ordinary people one by one ourselves. The MSM will never do it until they fear the people. Like that comedy (Bananas) where the news reporter had the photo on his wall and flipped it around to show whatever leader took power that day.
I agree with all this, LT, and the above comments. Slagging off people who have fallen victim to the constant fearmongering will not help us. Talking to them as human beings just may help them start to see the truth. This is our task – talk to people as much as we can and spread the word. On that subject, I might mention that I absolutely hate going in shops now and I really have to nerve myself to go on a bus. I do not in the least fear people having a go at me for not wearing a mask but I find the sight of all the blank, faceless shoppers and passengers very depressing if not enraging and I have to restrain myself from having a go at them for being collaborators with the encroaching totalitarianism. All my instincts are to stay at home, order online, avoid the hell that ordinary life has become. We are compromising a bit by avoiding going to the largest town in the area and asking for a home delivery of some items from 2 local shops but we’ll continue to brave other local shops and supermarkets, modelling our maskless state as much… Read more »
It’s intolerable isn’t it. A sea of pointlessly masked up compliant fools, everywhere. Shopping was never that great but now, well. Why bother. I bought shoelaces on ebay yesterday. I have avoided town since just before face-nappy day. I might give it a go when I feel up for a fight. However that said, there is NOTHING I want from any of the shops in town. They are all crap.
This crap has definitely stopped any frittering away of money we used to do, not to mention it’s knocked-back what was a bit of a cafe habit when we were out shopping! It’s the businesses I feel sorry for – the decline of real shops will continue and the online giants will profit. Plus, we see far fewer people now we’re not regularly on the buses and in shops which I believe is really bad for both our physical and mental health. (Mind you, we do walk and cycle more….)
If these shops don’t make it clear in their mask demand notices that they understand there are exemptions, they’ll deserve to go bust.
I feel the same. As I’ve said here before, I’m currently taking the soft option and wearing a snood when doing essential shopping. I’m not going to go into detail, but I’ve never been mentally ill in my life before, but lockdown has damaged me seriously, and I’m trying to manage my recovery carefully, so I don’t want to risk a setback by getting into a confrontation. I’m not a coward and will gladly take people on (verbally), but I would anxiously ruminate for days over such challenges. So, I know wrongly, I feel embarrassed for myself and somewhat ashamed, as I did last night in Tesco, wandering round the shop with my face covered. I imagine people thinking “look at that tosser, just like all the rest”, but, of course, I know rationally that they are not. For one thing, I’m over-estimating my own significance! The specific reason why I’m responding to your comment is that I too see the faceless masses as corroborators and unthinking, but I reply to my own depressing thought by telling myself that they are just playing the game: almost all of them pull off their masks the moment they step out of the… Read more »
I sympathise with your predicament. Nothing is easy in this situation. I know several people who don’t want to wear a mask but they go along with it because they don’t want a fine or don’t want confrontation etc. Unfortunately, this is a cop-out. If more people don’t stand up to this, the oppression will only get worse.
As a way out, I strongly recommend losing the snood and getting an exemption badge or lanyard. You have no legal need to explain why you’re exempt even in the unlikely event of being asked by a police officer. Nobody else can legally ask you and it’s illegal for anyone to challenge someone not wearing a mask.
Once you’ve done it once, it gets easier. The only horrible thing is seeing all the others!
I appreciate your suggestion. I’ve seriously considered an exemption badge, but that feels a bit like buying into the farce, accepting the government’s rules. As someone else said here, though, if the rules are stupid, then have no qualms about abusing them. I suspect, however, that the rules on exemption have been deliberately written vaguely to allow anybody to ignore/circumvent them. The gov.uk website says “where putting on, wearing or removing a face covering will cause you severe distress”, so I certainly qualify for that one. As I said though, I’m just not up for confrontation just now in my fragile state. I really don’t know.
Do what you can.
Be free in your own mind. Everything else follows from that.
Aremen, I found your comment very touching and I totally get where you are coming from. I nearly lost it mentally when I knew the mandatory gags were going to happen. I stocked up on shopping so I wouldn’t have to go out as I knew the first couple of weeks of this would be when the zealots would be about. My first muzzle fee shop was nerve racking but fine and it’s got easier since. Today, I breezed in and answered with a smiley ‘No thanks, I don’t wear them!’
I know how you feel. I have been avoiding non-essential shopping since 15 June but the mandatory muzzling has just hardened it. I have also been avoiding museums, art galleries and heritage sites, in fact I’ve just written to both the British Museum (where I am a member) and the British Library(where I am a reader) informing them of my boycott. Funny as I work in a museum as well and I do feel sorry for our visitors especially those I see obviously in distress and very uncomfortable. What really makes me angry though are children being muzzled and I really shudder to think what damaged is being done to them and to be honest, I won’t be surprised when they wake up and they turn on the very people who betrayed them – their parents and society at large.
Yes, children in muzzles: Cruel and heartless.
Our society will never be forgiven for that.
I agree , but I am not having much success changing people’s minds. It’s helpful when fellow LS post their success stories here.
my success story from yesterday was first weighing out and collecting my vegetables from out local organic community farm veg collection space without a muzzle (we have ridiculously been asked to wear them, in a barn!) but then I just stood there by the entrance and smiled at people as they approached and waited their turn (only 3 allowed in at present.also ridiculous), almost everyone took off their mask to smile and talk. A few asked if they needed to wear a mask. I responded with ‘only if you want to. I didn’t’. All of the people who asked then felt bolstered enough to not wear one. I think most people just want to stay on the right side of the rules, don’t want to upset others and maybe haven’t given it any critical thought?
‘Educated and decent’ perhaps, but they have allowed and encouraged a fascist takeover.
When speaking of them, the term is ‘Fuck ’em”. When speaking to them, obviously a more civilised approach gets better results.
We simply need a term to symbolise “them” as opposed to “us”. “Us” is simple – we are lockdown sceptics.
I suppose non-sceptics is inoffensive and could work?
On the other hand, while many of the non-sceptics are genuinely scared because they have been successfully brainwashed and haven’t had the good fortune to discover alternative sources of trustworthy information, plenty of them are positively revelling in the drama of it all and deserve every derogatory term we can throw at them.
Name calling will help its targets justify denying credibility to the witness, messenger or evidence. But only if they want to seek and find all the justifications for persisting in their current state.
Name calling operates a masking in virtue – as the ‘judge’.
Narrative competitions run polarised identities.
Those who frame the dominant narrative farm the energy of such human batteries. Currently ‘populism and globalism’.
Name calling that is adopted and used as currency operates a ‘mind capture’. Not unlike hacking the unwary by back-door exploits so as to set up a bot-net to activate as needed.
Aren’t they more “coronaphiles” as they are loving really being able to bully people about it. From what I can see it’s mainly the FBPE brigade and Europhiles using this for their own agenda, as they believe destroying the economy mean it’s more likely that our only option will be to rejoin the EU again so that the economy recovers.
Coronafile- I like it, as you say for the bullies, the enforcers, the corona Karens. I think it’s possible to be both a coronafile and a coronaphobic at the same time; those ones in the supermarket queue giving the corona death stare: don’t stand so close to me, get back there on your corona floor spot
Public Health people are phobia driven neurotics.
Love the pic!
‘The New Normals,’ as suggested by a writer at Off Guardian.
sounds good Aremen – i’m in Bristol – but can travel (have campervan and can go wherever)
I’d go for this idea. I’m in Berkshire, wife also a sceptic, and we’d be happy to meet up with other like-minded people within reasonable distance. Also another scepticla couple up the road from us would probably take part.
Cardiff, Bristol, Berkshire so far, allso ‘south-west’, though not sure how far SW. Suppose we meet up somewhere just off the M4?
I’m in the south west too.
Somerset..looks like there’s something about the south west and scepticism!
Yo. Bath. Have wheels.
great idea. I would definitely be up for that.
I would be up for that – great idea. I’m in Cardiff.
Look at KBF forum. We’re in the middle of getting the West Yorkshire people together. So far, we’ve found a suitable daytime venue. Waiting for people to respond now so we can set a date …….
Look up your local area. https://www.keepbritainfree.com/forum/kbf-local
Thanks for that. However, nothing in Berkshire so far, it seems. I’d have to start one. OK, someone has to.
Great idea – linking up with the Keep Britain Free supporters.
It is indeed. I spend more time here, this site is unique. But the kbf got the local groups thing going first, and here in Sussex it is going well.
Good idea. I’m in Wiltshire and would be honoured to shake your hand. We have to fight back.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078949v1.full.pdf
“The Chinese version of the RT-PCR test had a conspicuous rate of false negative results, likely missing between 15% and 29% of patients with COVID-19. For a patient with a prior probability of COVID-19 greater than 18%, at least two negative test results would be needed to lower the chances of COVID-19 below 5%. Caution is advised in generalizing these findings to other versions of the RT-PCR test that are being used in diverse geographic regions”
I think Drosten’s test in Germany and other current ones all have problems with sensitivity although not of the magnitude as in the Chinese tests. New Zealand and Faroe Islands all require two negative tests to leave the quarantine. Also in clinical practice during the pandemic, clinicians never relied on one neg PCR test in a typical C-19 case and always took a second PCR test to rule out C-19.
The interesting question, reading this now old paper from April,is that the Chinese missed 20 % of the infections. Really believe that they have extinguished C-19?
No, but we already knew that China – just like every other country – has had many undocumented infections. That’s one of the things serology studies tell us. China probably missed at least 90% of the infections.
Really heartened to see the stock of the excellent Professor Heneghan rising in the MSM. The revision of the death toll still over exaggerates people who have died “from” rather than “with” covid but it is good news that people might be beginning to realise that the criteria for registering deaths related to covid vary enormously from country to country and the figures are completely unreliable. The article in the Telegraph about false positives is an excellent piece of clear journalism that made it clear and explicable to my ten year old son how testing is unreliable when done in such high numbers with so little actual virus left.
The governments all over remind me of children who were deprived of playing with new toys: they got a new toy, now they just can’t put it down and it’s the only toy they’ve got!
Clinical practice is out of the window altogether: you don’t test people for a disease unless they present with signs or symptoms of that disease. That’s the end of it!
If the virus is so deadly, why do the government need to test over a hundred thousand people a day who are not ill in order to find cases?
Indeed—so deadly that you need to have a sophisticated test to determine whether you actually have it!
If you only tested people who were ill in hospital you would just be proving that the disease is almost gone as the numbers are falling off a cliff.
Testing allows them to create the narrative of a second wave.
Testing will also be used to conflate flu and Covid come November.
Actually, it doesn’t look like they are conflating colds and flu with covid in the official stats currently. Thankfully.
If the disease has simply disappeared then the politicians can’t take credit for “beating” it; indeed it will make it even more explicit that the Swedes were right all along..
Autopilot and wilful confirmation bias. You’ve got a narrative – God forbid it’s a fiction.
And why are scientists advocating deliberately infecting people with the disease to test a vaccine? As for the new nonsense about long term impacts, obviously none of these people have ever had a proper, lose a stone and a half dose of the flu…
You bring up a good point. Those vaccines might end up creating another virus or a new wave of infections different than Covid-19. We must refuse all attempts to vaccinate us. A categorical no way José.
Because they love to pretend that they are concerned with your well being and wasting your tax monies at the same time.
What is slowly becoming apparent is that for all the pomp and circumstance of scientific theory, scientific reality is a lot more ‘ugly’ and down to earth.
One being: If you don’t have the right tools to measure stuff don’t be saying you know things when you don’t.
It’s even simpler : know what you’re measuring.
Such as : don’t assume that strings of RNA indicate a viral infection.
He’s great. I sent him an encouraging email the other day and got a reply!
The Telegraph is one of the very few papers that is actually trying to challenge the official narrative!
Sky News Australia (Alan Jones) has been really good too!
The madhouse in going into overdrive in New Zealand. If you want to see a real life horror film watch St Jacinda in action. All covid+ people are moved into ” quaratine sites ” with their close family members.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/video.cfm?c_id=1&gal_cid=1&gallery_id=223078
This is the only logical conclusion when you set a “one life is too many” approach to a virus. Jacinda has set the terms and been lauded for it in the MSM but now she and the New Zealand people have to live with the long-term implications of such a simplistic approach.
I wonder what NZ’s ‘flu mortality is at present…
Saving lives at all costs is utterly immoral and unnatural, and has never been what human societies and civilisations have done throughout the whole of history. Plus it doesn’t work, making it doubly immoral.
What’s happening in NZ is pure evil.
Spending the rest of eternity giving terrified glances over their shoulders.
Of course it is obvious now that HandyCock’s decision to enforce masks in shops was based on what looks like a slower declining death toll, if we are to give him any credit for anything (please redirect your rotten tomatoes!)
But now it looks insipidly stupid
I thought it was all and only about making people feel safer to shop. I am sure BJ said so.
He gave two reasons when announced to the HoC.
One was a weasil worded argument that some evidence now exists that they may possibly reduce transmision. Maybe.
The other was, as you say, to increase confidence in people using the high street. They probably had an Imperial College computer model showing that 500,000 extra people would go to the local shops rather than buy online if the law was introduced. Unfortunately, due to a bug, the model crashed when trying to calculate the number of people who decided to no longer bother. So they just assumed it would be zero.
Actually, one moment’s thought would have seen that as a monumentaly stupid hypothesis : widen use of a symbol of fear to reassure people!
Hence proof that it’s a psy-op!
I thought it was all and only about making people feel safer to shop
But both my sister and a near neighbour have said that (anti) social distancing in shops now seems to have gone out the window – as if people are SO convinced that muzzles give them protection that any, previous, sensible measures are no longer needed…
Sensible? shrinking in terror from anybody less than six feet away from you?
Do you remember how the ludicrous six-foot rule was derived?
Sorry, not the best choice of words! By “sensible” I meant not breathing down other peoples necks, and just keeping some distance – the sort of thing the Swedes were doing without being ordered.
Fair enough.
Brits never did like to get too close to other people.It ‘s built into us.
My OH has been out and about on his bike buying eggs from local farms this morning. He met an elderly LS who we’ve become friendly with since this rubbish started. She is the widow of a doctor and she told him that people used to phone day and night and her husband would always go out even if it seemed minor because ‘they sound worried’. She says she is grieving for the NHS, as well she might. So many people have no idea that it is as good as gone and will not be coming back. She also told him that her NHS worker daughter won’t even enter her garden – they have to meet in the park. Our friend described her as ‘brainwashed’. Her son, meanwhile, has come over regularly even during the first few weeks and he always hugs her. She says she’s struggling but always glad to talk to the likes of us! OH told her we’re struggling too and there are two of us. Speaking of brainwashed, he then went in the PO. The owner, cringing behind his plastic screens with his visor on is someone we would have considered at least a close acquaintance,… Read more »
Enjoy. There’s little enough around!
Cheers!
The sturgeon daily puke has now become political. The recent train tragedy is currently been spoken on in concerned hushed tones. I am sick to deatb her muscling in on the nations daily life. At least westminster got that right. Today. The return of the R! National R rate is 1.3 according to the un named model she is spouting at us. Don’t we wear masks in shops what is she talking about? Key word ‘model’. Noticing her right eye seems possible under stress. Orkney cluster. Didnt catch numbers. Clusters are inevitable and prove our test and trace works wonders. Don’t unduly alarmed but don’t be complacent. This virus will spread quickly… Blah pubs … blah… hospitality. Considerable risk … house parties 8 people from 3 housholds only under 12 you cant get within 2 metres above no, no. Its harder for us to enforce inside peoples homes. We have evidence unspecified that the virus doez like a boogie in the lounge with sharon from next door. PPE. Scotland will be making its own 223 sugical masks. Skull and bobes 233. Other masks being made and saving money too… gee why did you not do that before pissing our money… Read more »
Questions just happening now… this is daily it is a horror shop. Just told the nsyion Westminster need to either give more borrowing powers to Scotland or else send a money transfer. Sturgeon would help but cannot.
It’s a good measure of an idiot : talking R numbers when they haven’t a clue that it’s a soft theoretical concept, whilst *never* looking at the available hard data.
Can we just separate from Scotland and let them get on with their stupidness.
Just fucking ignore her. Ignore every word that comes out of her tartan cakehole.
Do not ask
If people in the crashed train were masked.
They were
I will swear.
The train may have derailed
But the corpses’ face masks never failed.
I thought you might be interested to read the response I received from my local MP regarding an email I sent her asking why the government (and indeed the world) were continuing to scare the living daylights out of everyone, and failing to notice the generation of global poverty, death, and misery that is on the doorstep. I’ve had to post it over 2 posts as I seem unable to post two photos at a time. Incidentally the 2 responses I previously received (both by email) were:1st: a heartfelt personal plea to give tattoo studios a date to restart. (My daughter has her own studio) which was met with an email stock reply which only got my back up even further; 2nd:a letter in support of a campaign to try and get our local lido open, which was met with an email which was considered and conciliatory, but still missed the point, and really shouldn’t have got the time of day; and now this actual letter. I feel a letter may have been sent as it is harder to share? I particularly like the start of paragraph 8 that states, ‘Lockdown has also ensured a speedier economic recovery,…’ but I… Read more »
“Lockdown has also ensured a speedier economic recovery”
I think that this is about as Alice Through The Looking Glass as you can get.
I mean …. there’s bullshit and then there’s … Cuckoo!
The reply shows that our MPs are not of this world – they’re either from another planet or galaxy.
They have long tails and vertical pupils.
From Heath’s piece: “They can do nothing, and allow the disease to rip until herd immunity is reached. Quite rightly, no government has pursued this policy, out of fear of mass deaths and total social and economic collapse. “ Was this fear plausible at the time? There was never really any convincing (non-modelling) suggestion that this was a disease that could cause mass deaths (depending on what you mean by that term of course) or societal collapse. Obviously you could make up scenarios in which that could happen, but the most plausible assumption in February backed up by the early data from China (interpreted reasonably) was that this was a flu-level disease. This is not just hindsight, it was said at the time by experts (such as Wittkowski) who, with hindsight, were the best guides to how we should have responded. You can certainly argue that government should take a precautionary approach to some degree, and in that light I don’t strongly object to the conclusion that Sweden’s approach was probably correct. but even Sweden has lost out quite a lot by undue fear. Seems to me if we had adopted an aggressively unfear-based response, refusing to change behaviour much except… Read more »
“out of fear of mass deaths and total social and economic collapse”
Which is exactly where we are right now🙄
Absolutely not plausible. The Chinese CDC released a large data set in late February (almost 80,000 patients) and the Italian government released a smaller data set early in March. Both showed very clearly that severe illness and death from Covid-19 have a very strong age gradient and that the vast majority of these cases have pre-existing conditions. There is no way anyone could ever have predicted societal collapse, mass deaths etc having seen this data, and the IFRs that were written up in a SAGE document of 2 March show that the government knew this.
If this fear was ever plausible it was plausible for a month, MAXIMUM.
Then the facts flooded in and all demonstrated a mild flu-like epidemic in most countries, a bad flu season in the hardest hit places. Doesn’t even qualify as a pandemic in my head- if it does tecnically, it shouldn’t (the WHO have declared another another pandemic fraudulently imo).
TPTB routinely ignored these facts in favour of the narrative that justified their initial overreaction and none of them have the leadership props (except Norway and Denmark and perhaps Italy in a roundabout way) to admit their mistakes.
The facts flooded in – see my post above – very early, way before lockdown.
page 2
Reading that article in The Quadrant it strikes me that Victorians (or perhaps even the whole of Australia) ain’t gonna get their democracy back until they take it back. And if that means annihilating the careers of these cockroaches then it’s no less than they deserve. (Actually prison is what they deserve.) It’s patently obvious to anyone with a modicum of common sense that they are using Covid as a cover for a fascist coup. When the flu is killing more than Covid and these measures are in place you know something is wrong. The State is using violence against its people, how’s that going to pan out?
I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again.
We need to make a list of who said what before this happened and in the early days.
Then look at who was right and who was wrong.
Then look at who the government is listening to or following now.
Then call them out and maybe take action.
At least Hancock has listened to CH. That’s a start.
It’s quite easy the whole of Parliament and the entire MSM media bar Peter Hitchens Toby Young Alison Pearson and Sherrelle Jacobs.All Guilty
Sounds shockingly sweeping, but it’s not far from the absolute truth.
Tory backbenchers are finally sharpening their knives! Interesting recent report in the DT live section: Conservative MPs have warned that Downing Street is getting “the guillotine ready-made” for Gavin Williamson, amid the chaos over today’s exam results. …. Tory MPs warned that if the chaos was not resolved, Mr Williamson’s job could be at risk. One said: “Clearly they are getting the guillotine ready-made. However I think things depend on grades and appeals, and also school return in September… and whether it becomes a big mess. The mocks change came at lastminute.com and should have been done weeks ago.” A former minister said: “He’s clearly seen the chaos in Scotland and is trying to move to prevent that scenario. Instead he’s just made himself look panicky and incompetent. “In short, he’s justifying his own sacking… the question is how scared Boris Johnson is of him – he’s bloody nasty when he’s in a corner.” A third backbencher added: “It’s a farce, it’s a disgrace and Gavin Williamson should hang his head in shame and resign. He was a useless Defence Secretary and even worse Education Secretary. “You can forgive Track and Trace, you can forgive PPE, because we were dealing with things we have never dealt with… Read more »
Part of me is encouraged because dissent has been so lacking that any dissent seems positive now, and if they dissent about stuff like this then maybe they will move on to the most important issues.
But my gut feel is that we should not be encouraged, because this isn’t significant dissent on the central issue which is, in short, we should have done what Sweden did and we should now be doing what Sweden is doing, and we are a million miles from that, and UK Govt is fully signed up to the coronapanic agenda.
I prefer not to make the best the enemy of the good in this regard. They’re all guilty and if we can nail one on any basis we should do so. Never forget, never forgive.
But also, when people get sacked they sometimes get bitter or vengeful, and lash out. That’s when we are more likely to find out about some of the dirty laundry covered up under collective responsibility.
Let’s hope we see some of that
I fear that you’re right, Julian. Besides which, people are now innocculated with the Fear/Panic virus.
Again – total agreement. Williamson is a safe diversion – the snotty little test in the playground. And exams aren’t the issue – only one symptom.
Sorry ‘ test’ is ‘twat!
I agree. The whole exam debacle is a very convenient diversion while they plan their next scare tactic.
Kind of him/her to demonstrate how education has failed people.
page 2 again
Every sentence of this filth is literally diabolical. Diametrically opposed to the truth. A small crumb of comfort is that anyone in the political hierarchy who thinks they are doing the right thing by defending their superiors is going to get thrown under the bus along with everyone else.
“Lockdown has also ensured a speedier economic recovery” WTF!?
The lockdown caused the economic collapse you fucking moron.
Sorry, but that’s the stupidest thing I’ve read today.
It also contains the standard face mask nonsense. Interesting read, as this is my local MP.
MP = Mendacious Pillock?
The Tales from the Madhouse blog post by Gary Sidley is excellent (see link in Toby’s peice above). I was just browsing comments underneath it and found this, posted by ‘Kelly’:
“For those doctors and nurses, all healthcare professionals, there is a protest on 29th August 2020. They are delivering a letter to Downing Street for lockdown and restrictions to be lifted – needs hundreds to turn up to stop this madness!In small numbers they can be dismissed but not in their thousands.
Each person in NHS and any health care setting needs to stand up and be counted against these draconian measures that will only get worse as they boil us slowly in the pan.”
I hope, hope, hope…………
I guess this is when they tell us the next stage, Jan 2021:
https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/about
“MAINTAIN HUMANITY UNDER 500,000,000 IN PERPETUAL BALANCE WITH NATURE”.
Current world population = 7,800,000,000.
Required reduction = 7,300,000,000.
Seems totally fair, just and dignified.
God help us.
Assume all the people on the WEF will be first on the list to be culled? Maybe they should set an example.
Those at the top are having way too much fun to sacrifice themselves, but some of the lower level staff in the WEF will be for sure.
…. the World Economic Forum will draw on thousands of young people in more than 400 cities around the world (the Global Shapers Community)…
That’s why people over 45 will be redundant. They’re the ones who will question and oppose.
Well, theoretically at least. If their reaction to the covid fiasco is anything to go by they won’t question at all, they’ll just grab their towels!
The cull has only just begun and if you haven’t read 1984, now’s the time to do so because it’s the script.
I’d be interested to know where this quote is from
Georgia Guidestones.
It’s a weird monument in Georgia, USA, which is covered in these kinds of statements. To my knowledge, the person who commissioned it’s construction is not known.
If there is one critical lesson to learn from this crisis, it is that we need to put nature at the heart of how we operate. We simply can’t waste more time,” said HRH The Prince of Wales.
Considering that Big Ag and Big Pharma are key players in this, it’s hard to see where “nature” will get a look in!
The economist has got the wrong end of the stick. I’m not frightened to leave my home and I’d happily go back to my office tomorrow if it were the same as it was back in March but I’m not going anywhere that needs a mask and I’m sure as hell not going back into a “socially distanced, mask wearing, queue to use the facilities” office when I can work happily from home.
Totally agree.
Exactly. People working from home are getting some unfair stick. Like you say a lot would happily go back to the offices if they were either a) actually allowed and/or b) the offices were normal and not depressing, antisocial over the top “Covid safe” monstrosities.
I hate it. I have no division between my work and my now non-existent social life.
I used to walk to work, which gave me a nice bit of exercise every day and a good way to clear my mind.
Working from home was alright for the first fortnight, when I realised I could get a lie in and do chores at lunch etc. but the novelty has long worn off.
I’ve loved it, but feel bad for you and for my colleagues and all those who don’t like working from home. It suits some, but not all, and it should not IMO be imposed by employers. We’re planning to offer staff the choice.
I’m all for flexible working practices. Other than getting teams and colleagues together at least some of the time, flexible options solve all kinds of issues.
I wouldn’t mind if I was out of the office half of the time, for instance, but the permenance is what I’m having difficulty with.
Yeah I miss the routine of getting up early and going into the office and seeing people. Before this I was working from home 1-2 days a week, which was good. All the weekdays blend into one now it’s 5 days working from home.
totally agree with you – it’s nice to have the option but working from homw all the time and work/home all blur into one never ending existence within the house!
our office is open now but optional to go in. We don’t have many employees about 100, and only about 4 are choosing to go in on any one day so not a great take-up. I went in for first time this week and was lovely and quiet and aircon was great in the heatwave and caught up on some gossip with the IT crew!! 🙂 Nice to have a change of scenery.
Workspaces now are psychologically damaging to sceptics. Not to mention the damage to your tongue from all the biting you’ll be doing while Karen from accounts says she won’t send her kids back to school in September.
I speak to colleagues very little other than on work matters now, for exactly this reason. It’s easier to avoid awkward conversations if you’re working remotely. I am one of the bosses so feel it inappropriate to rant at staff.
I remember early March when we were still in the office and people were beginning to panic. I was finding myself saying on a daily basis “will you shut the fuck up about Covid, I’m sick of hearing about it”
My boss asked me just yesterday how I was feeling about returning to the office – said I’m happy to return to Normal or continue to work from home – but the “New Normal” (masks, distancing & all the myriad rules) sounds depressing and anti-social to me. He agreed – so perhaps if people keep feeding this kind of thing up the chains it will eventually sink in with the powers that be.
(However, I avoided getting into any kind discussion about scepticism – seems reasonable enough to say how I feel without debating the necessity of the rules. They keep telling us they care about employees feeling after all.)
Our staff are saying similar things, and would welcome it if staff said they didn’t want us to put distancing measures in place – though the big bosses at our place would never stand for it sadly.
A lot of them who say they prefer the office don’t want to come back until things are “normal” and seem to expect this to happen soon. I keep telling them it won’t.
We got a 1-5 survey of how confident are we to return. My ‘not at all confident’ answer was obviously due to the masks and general silliness, but no doubt they assume it’s fear of the virus!
Yep – had similar surveys – there is never an option to say you’re not a bedwetter, but just don’t want to return with all the nonsense rules.
We didn’t ask our staff for reasons, or levels of confidence, just about what they would prefer to do long-term.
I’ve formally refused to consent to the new “Covid-safe” workplace policies which were distributed to all employees a couple of months ago.
Only a second wave will prevent me from being forced to resign for refusal to return to the office. No worries whatsoever then!
It’s completely illogical to tell people their office is now so hazardous that PPE etc is mandatory, but it is also perfectly safe so is reasonable to force people back there to work (especially if you were never hired to work in a hazardous environment in the first place). Constructive dismissal?
Ask for their risk assessment then rip it to shreds – lots of ammo on here.
Use the Health and Safety legislation and ask for proofs their mitigations will work and for the science behind it.
Remember Prof Dingwall said social distancing was “conjured up out of nowhere” and there is no scientific evidence anything stops a virus. Not acceptable for a risk assessment, there must be proof the mitigation will work – for example do not stand under a suspended load. The proof – if it falls then if you are standing clear you will not be hit, it’s as easy as that.
Under HS&E legislation if you do NOT agree to a risk assessment you have the right to refuse to work and then write your own risk assessment and use those mitigations to prove you are working safe.
As long a long a you can prove you have thought about the risks and documented same you are covered.
The government cannot or will not supply the science behind their decisions and I have it in writing from councils they have no risk assessments etc from either themselves or central government.
And also demand to see proof that wearing masks for long periods doesn’t cause any side effects – which, of course, they do…
Choice is key. 😊
I’m back in the office when I don’t have to be (which isn’t as much as both our offices are now open- only one was before) but am blessed with a sceptic boss who thinks anti-social bollox is bullshit. Strange, you’d think IT workers would be all board with working from home but many of them seem to hate it because they’ve spent much of their careers having the option and turning it down- and have chosen to work for my boss who favours an office presence (evem if most of the stuff we do is remote). It’s interesting, I think only a few people with health issues and one pregnant lady are still at home out of us, and there’s about 60 of us.
One of the 20 odd measures that have been introduced in my office (I won’t name where) includes…and honestly I am not making this up and I quote..”when passing in circulation areas turn your head to face away from oncoming colleagues until they have passed”. This is clarified later in the ‘protocols’ with the following, “ establish clear routes throughout the workplace to maintain 2m social distancing. Where this is not possible I.e. walking amongst decking stations where staff are working, staff should take the following steps to:
The 25 page document continues in this vein.
we are not allowed to sit next to, opposite or behind anyone so office capacity is currently 10%.
So yes, I too will continue to work from home for as long as possible and the other alternative seems to be to sit there with a bag in my head and carry an air horn warning system
Brilliant! I think my office has topped that though with a rule that you cannot exit the building via the fire escape, when the fire alarm goes off, without wearing your face mask.
In addition, one lift is designated the “fire lift” which disabled (or mobility impared) people may use instead of the stairs in the event of fire. The new COVID-safe rule is only one disabled person at a time may use this in an emergency, so you don’t catch the corona on your way out. I guess if there is more than one person they have to draw straws to see who goes first?
That sounds much like the picture someone posted recently of 4 stickers on a lift floor, directing all occupants to face the corners, (presumably) to avoid the risk of inhaling any nasty virus. I wonder if there is supposed to be a “dedicated” button pusher?
Good point. They’ll have to bring back dedicated lift operators to press the buttons. Obviously wearing a full hazmat suit.
That reminds me of a true story – a few years ago I was sharing a multi-story car park lift with several others. As we reached an intermediate floor a synthesised voice announced which level it was. A blonde lady (sorry to any who might be reading) piped up: “Is there really someone saying that each time?” To this day, I’m not sure if she was joking or not…
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ3fTg-WxuEEQPqTwnKN1evfqvj3erL52ACKKekzfY0lw&s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjC_lv7A8Us
safer than not facing the corners… Masks dont work for this either
Great clip. Thanks for the laugh.
so standard rules for evacuations is dont go back for coats , phones, computers etc. Just leave immediately. However if you forget your mask, of course you must go back inside the burning building to get it. Thats ok.. masks make you indestructable.. thats why Batman wears one.
What happens when work cracks out the Swastikas and the portrait of Der Fuhrer, and insists on everyone taking part in the morning Seig Heiling – and no more working at home where the party can’t inspect your loyalties? Going to quit?
Thanks to their own stupid rules they can’t get more than 33% of the staff into the building on any given day. We’re split into 3 weekly groups as they also need to spend the entire weekend “deep cleaning” the place (whatever that is) before a new group is allowed in.
They’ve already confirmed the next review of the stupidity will be in November and have strongly hinted it will carry on until at least next spring so I’ve got a while yet before I need to practice my Seig Heiling.