France’s Rise in Infections Due to Increased Testing
Yesterday the Government removed France from the “Green List” of countries you can travel to without having to quarantine on return, along with the Netherlands, Monaco, Malta, Turks & Caicos and Aruba. From 4am on Saturday, anyone returning from France will have to self-isolate for 14 days. The reason? Rising case numbers. There have been an additional 11,633 positive test results in France in the past week, with approximately 600,000 tests being done, the highest number of tests to date. (On July 25th, the French Government introduced free PCR testing without the need to get a prescription from a doctor.) But in every department the percentage of infected people is still below the 50/100,000 threshold that in France would trigger a local lockdown. In addition, there’s been no corresponding rise in hospitalisations or deaths (see above). That suggests the rise in cases is an artefact of increased testing and not due to an increase in the percentage of the population that’s infected.
Also worth bearing in mind that, according to Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson, the standard PCR test is an unreliable diagnostic tool because of false positives. When the number of tests climbs above a certain threshold, the data becomes very noisy. (See this article by the Bulgarian Pathology Association for a robust denunciation of the PCR test.)
And, to add to the overall picture of incoherence, the Government hasn’t removed Gibraltar from the “Green List” even though the number of infected people per 100,000 is higher in Gib than in France.
I wonder what the Government would do if holidaymakers returning from France just refused to self-isolate en masse? There are approximately half a million Britons currently in France. How many random spot checks can the Government realistically do?
Meanwhile, just to make it crystal clear that Boris doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing, he also announced yesterday that the easing of lockdown restrictions that were delayed 10 days ago will now go ahead, with weddings, sporting events and indoor performances being permitted from tomorrow. Although he also announced that the maximum fine for those breaking the rules would increase to £3,200. No but, yeah but…
As I said about Boris in the Telegraph 10 days ago:
When I think of his handling of the coronavirus crisis I picture a child behind the wheel of a racing car. He’s overwhelmed by the data constantly popping up on his dashboard, has no idea what any of it means, so just randomly presses different levers and pedals, spins the wheel as fast as he can, and hopes for the best.
Government Finally Removes Wrong Data From Dashboard
Yesterday I pointed out that the Government’s coronavirus dashboard was still using the old, flawed method of calculating the daily Covid death count. Today it has finally stopped doing that – some 29 days after Carl Heneghan and Yoon Loke pointed out the statistical flaw in the way that PHE compiles the data and 28 days after Matt Hancock announced an “urgent review” of the anomaly. Instead of the wrong data, the dashboard now says the deaths page is being “redeveloped”.
World Leaders “Copied Each Others’ Lockdown Measures” – New Paper
This will come as no surprise to lockdown sceptics, but a new paper for the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has found that world leaders simply copied each other’s lockdown policies back in March, without giving any thought to whether those policies were necessary or whether they’d do more harm than good. Yahoo! Finance has more.
Decisions on implementing lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic were based on what neighbouring countries were doing at the time, a new study has suggested.
In research of 36 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – including the UK, US and New Zealand – Swedish researchers examined when world leaders made decisions on issues like school closures and restrictions on internal travel.
They found that despite differences in the spread of the virus, countries mimicked each other in a short space of time, with around 80% of OECD nations implementing multiple measures within a two-week period in March.
The researchers said this was “striking” given the differences in the scale of the pandemic in each country, the preparedness of their healthcare systems and the makeup of their populations.
Author Professor Karl Wennberg, from the Institute for Analytical Sociology at Linkoping University, said: “We found that the decisions were not based on, or had a very weak correlation to, standard epidemiological indicators such as number of infections, number of deaths, intensive care capacity etc.
“A much stronger determinant was whether many neighbouring countries had already implemented measures.”
Worth reading in full.
Annoying Lockdown Experience
A reader in Bradford has been in touch to describe one of the daily annoyances they’re having to put up with.
We’d heard good things about a sweet shop in our village so we took our grandchildren (illegally, as we are part of Bradford District) to choose a milk shake. They each chose a £3 milk shake from the menu. A young lady then appeared at the hatch to inform us that they were only taking online orders for home delivery during the pandemic and gave me a leaflet with the web site. We went home and found the desired milk shakes on the web site. I had to register… that’s bloody annoying in itself. Then I find that the online price was £3.50 each, with a 50p service charge. £7.50 for two £3 milk shakes. But it got worse. On checkout I was informed that the minimum spend for home delivery is £8. So I added a bag of Chilli Chips that I didn’t want for £1. Total £8.50. And finally I discovered a £2 delivery charge. So I paid £10.50 for two £3 milk shakes.
Anyone fancy a bag of Chilli Chips?
Postcard From Thornbury
A reader has sent a short missive from Thornbury, a beautiful village in South Gloucestershire that the local council is doing its best to ruin with pointless and incomprehensible Covid signage.
I live in South Gloucestershire. Thornbury is a nearby market town about 12 miles north of Bristol, a regular Britain in Bloom winner, home town of the inventor of Ribena and it has a castle which was once visited by Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.
Thornbury had a reasonably thriving High Street before Covid. Now the council is at loggerheads with local businesses over its agenda to pedestrianise the High Street on the back of the virus and it has been accused of not listening and not consulting before introducing changes.
During a mid-morning visit to Thornbury I found that the High Street looked pretty desolate, spoiled by unsightly barriers, patronising signs and a couple of discarded face masks.
New council signs have been erected which demand that people wear face coverings in shops, yet omit to mention the existence of permitted exemptions. My husband and I went into a shop without facemasks and were treated normally. It’s clear from talking to a couple of locals that people don’t realise that there are exemptions. It’s also apparent that the council would rather people continue to remain unaware of them.
The survival of Thornbury High Street depends on how well shops can attract people whom the Government and council have made irrationally scared of Covid, while not putting off people like me, who want to support them, but find a visit to High Street a pretty dismal experience, thanks to the council.
Round-Up
- ‘The Treatment That Could Crush Covid‘ – Interesting piece in the Wall St Journal about a promising new method of treating COVID-19
- ‘Oldham on brink of full lockdown as coronavirus cases surge‘ – More madness from Hancock and pals
- ‘Fewer hospital patients in COVID-19 hotspots‘ – No, really? Could it be that the UK’s epidemic is essentially over?
- ‘We are massively overreacting to new Covid “outbreaks”‘ – Ross Clark tells it as it is in the Telegraph
- ‘Is there a politician ‘with the spine to tell the truth’ on COVID-19: Alan Jones‘ – More common sense from our favourite broadcaster on Sky News Australia
- ‘Creeping mask tyranny is far more concerning than the rules themselves‘ – Excellent piece by Francis Hoar, Simon Dolan’s barrister, in the Telegraph
- ‘NY lockdown may have spread coronavirus, Cuomo admits‘ – Interesting piece from sceptical American website
- ‘The great contact-tracing apps mystery‘ – Just spotted this. The BBC’s round-up of ineffective contact-tracing apps around the world
- ‘A positive test does not make you a COVID-19 case‘ – Interesting post from Sean Walsh for Conservatives Global
- ‘Week 31 graphs from Christopher Bowyer‘ – Great set of graphs in Hector Drummond Magazine
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Two today: “Giving Up” by the Holiday Plan and “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask” by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention
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 30th to Oct 9th). 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 or 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 28,500).
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
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. Doing these daily updates is a lot of work. 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…
Is it time to cancel Tony Benn? An eagle-eyed reader was flicking through Benn’s diary from 1968 yesterday and found the above incriminating entry: “I went home, collected Melissa, and took her to the Victoria Palace with Kirillin and most of his delegation to see The Black and White Minstrel Show.”
Time to assemble that pitchfork mob, Owen Jones.
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Shall I be mother?
Not if you’re a bloke! 🙂
🤣🤣🤣
I can identify any way I wish!
If you cannot be mother, maybe you could be Prime Minster, we have not got one of those at the moment and desperately need some leadership.
Like The Avengers Mother?
Johnson’s decision making is appalling and seems to be based on fantasy not fact. He needs to go!
They all need to go!
They all need to be trialled.
In The Hague.
Johnson is acting as bagman for Bill Gates. Now roll up your sleeve.
According to Dr Vernon Coleman it could be here, have a tomato.
You go first.
Incompetence my arse, this is a deliberate controlled demolition of our society. Toby is suffering a severe bout of cognitive dissonance. 😷
Or you are? Who to believe? Who? Well, probably not WHO, lol. One potato, two potato, three potato, four… Eenie meenie miny mo…
Yes, the supposed incompetence is meant to distract attention away from the substantive introduction of a supranational totalitarian regime, under the cover of a planned and predicted flu like respiratory pandemic.
Nearly all governments have signed up for this fake pandemic shit show and now take their orders from the “great depopulator” and avid vaccinator, Bill Gates, who now controls the WHO.
We are currently living in what make a good plot for a James Bond movie, the difference being, that there is very little prospect of a happy ending.
Robert Fripp and the League of Gentlemen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2Fs-HnYiWg
You can’t explain the rolling quarantine program as anything else except as a deliberate destruction of the mass travel and aviation sector.Zero Carbon anyone ?
Interesting. though I’m not convinced importing thousands of migrants (and being told we need tens of thousands more, because talented young people in this country are incapable of working in the NHS & financial industry, apparently only migrants travelling in dinghy’s & paddling pools can do that) is congruent with the minimal carbon emissions thing…!
Mass immigration is needed to divide the country.Every heard of the kalergi plan.His dream of a brown underclass ruled over by an enlightened technocratic elite.Sounds far fetched until you realise the EU still gives out a honour in his name.Angela Merkel was a recipient recently.Immigration into this country has been running at over 500,000 a year.
Puts the plan in ‘plandemic’ in perspective.
Destabilise society through stacking uncertainty on doubt. Sow confusion through constant rule change. Rinse and repeat till people throw the towel in and blindly obey whatever diktats the commissars issue.
Exactly!
Which country in Americas has the highest death toll of C-19? US? Brazil? Mexico?
No.Peru.Highest in the world after Belgium and San Marino. But they don’t have an elderly population inside nursing homes? But they have elderly persons living in multigenerational households and more so the poorer you are.
Peru has had one of the most cruel military lockdown in the world. Mask mandate and even face shields extra in Lima Metro.
We know that most C-19 transmission occurs in household.
You don’t need to be an epidemiologist to consider that locking in poor people in multi generational setting could be more prone to transmission and deaths.
The WHO’s one size fit all lockdown has been even worse for poorer countries. Lock down is a killer.
The trouble is, we’re all shouting into a vacuum of logic and science. We’d be better off handing this over to the apes to rule the planet!
Well the monkeys certainly seem to be in charge.
Remember that when this is over, it is time to demand the defunding of the WHO. If I had my way, I’d sack the UN too, but we ain’t got the punch we used to!
Peru, may end up with the highest mortality rate, at the moment it’s not.
At the moment creeping nearer the world leader Belgium(can’t count San Marino)
How often do we see Johnson now? He pops up occasionally on the news to ‘explain’ a policy, but there is precious little sense that he has made the decisions he is defending or that he is really still in charge in any meaningful way. The Prime Minister is a peripheral figure these days, god alone knows who is directing this madness if anyone is.
Watch UK Column. They have some ideas, mostly involving several high-ranking ex-MI6 people ……
https://www.ukcolumn.org/
Any particular episode of UK column where they explain Johnson’s absence or about these MI6 people? I find UK column raises my stress levels so I try to watch as little as possible..
You just need to watch the BBC truth machine and you’ll be alright.
It’s excellent !
Johnson reminds me of the Emperor Caligula, he’s becoming more and more mentally unbalanced. So who’s going to be Cassius Chaerea and who’s going to be Claudius?
Or Nero – fiddling while Rome burns.
Hopefully he’ll suffer the same fate as Galba – whose reign lasted less than a year.
I love it when I’m among people who read the classics 😎
The last refuge of the truly civilised.p!
But if you aren’t a classics person, just stick a knife into the buggers, we’ll excuse you the quotes.
Et tu, Zombe.
Like Boris Johnson??
I’ll get my coat…..
No I don’t.
Agree with that and won’t be surprised if that happens.
and maybe he will replace Handjob as Minister of Health with a horse. Cant do any worse.
The horse will probably do a better job
true = all it needs to do is respond with “neigh” to everything that De pfeffel says
🤣 🤣 🤣
Horses have bigger brains than rabbits, even rabbits powered by Duracell.
Jacinta is already busy…
We may as well have a cardboard cut out of him for all the good he is. He’s a puppet there’s no doubt about it, Gates probably has his hand up Bojo’s back pulling the strings.
What has Boris been promised for going along with all this though?
A job with the Gates Foundation?
Isn’t he on holiday, making sandcastles somewhere?
More appropriate than bridges anyway!
Someone posted a link yesterday to a brilliant youtube video regarding the notion of a casedemic. This is what we are in now. The video described previous casedemics, e.g. the panic re swine flu, and how PCR testing creates casedemics.
I’d like to suggest that we try to get this word – CASEDEMIC – out into the media, as it’s a good one word summary of what is now going on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU3OibcindQ
Anyone here have the wherewithal to make T-shirts, badges, caps etc with just the word CASEDEMIC on them?
It was me. Ivor Cummins has been brilliant through this whole thing. I, too, love the term casedemic as that’s what we are suffering through at the moment.
Brilliant video. Thanks.
The government has quietly removed 1.3m coronavirus tests from its data because of double counting, raising fresh questions about the accuracy of the testing figures.
In the government’s daily coronavirus update on Wednesday, it announced ……. The adjustments have been made as a result of more accurate data collection and reporting processes recently being adopted within pillar 2.”
The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) said the changes affected data reported between 14 May and 12 August. …… The problem was acknowledged by the DHSC on 6 July but the tests were removed from the data on 12 August.
….. Allyson Pollock, a clinical professor of public health at Newcastle University, said: “The government needs to make clear what they mean by an adjustment and why the change has taken place. There are also big questions that should be asked about the Randox contract, and the one with Deloitte is still not published, we should really press for that.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/14/government-quietly-drops-13m-covid-tests-from-england-tally
At the bottom of article they’re still bragging about how we’ve built capacity to test 300,000 a day, without ever stopping to ask themselves why or if we even _should_… when will they wake up to the farce of mass testing (at huge huge cost to us taxpayers) healthy people. It’s another scandal yet to be caught up with by our wonderful Media outlets – no surprise there either.
All the Covid-19 data is bullshit, every last bit of it. And yet still the oppressive policies driven by this continue to intensify, almost daily, worldwide.
Is there going to be a tipping point at which the sheer scale of the lies causes the whole house of cards to collapse, or are we indeed living in a “post-fact” world where truth is meaningless?
I feel your latter grim diagnosis is the case.
I’ve mentioned that I’ve spent a fair time sitting around in hospitals this week. Watching masked medical staff jumping through directional, distance and mask hoops is truly worrying – because these are people who, by and large, I know through experience to be good at there pretty complex jobs, but who have been imposed upon to perform this Scary Fairy dance, against all scientific evidence and, indeed (in the case of masks) against fundamental medical ethics.
The BMA has been shocking in its response to this fakedemic.
Agreed, all our institutions have utterly failed us. I can’t think of any organisation that has performed anything but atrociously throughout. But then we should have already known that our society was fundamentally broken and rotten to the core before this. Perhaps this is the lesson that we all deserved.
Those Common Purpose dudes have performed pretty well.
Indeed. We need a new Establishment, a new public sector, and new politicians.
We’ve been a post-truth society for some time now. Hysterias such as man-made global warming (I’m old enough to remember the hysteria over man-made global cooling and the coming ice age) are growing more common.
However, there is always a tipping point. I knew a revolutionary Communist in the early 80’s who always cheered on Margaret Thatcher. His reasoning was that the more people who lost their livelihoods and could no longer afford their cars, colour TVs or fitted carpets, the more would turn to his way of thinking. If people kept all those things, no revolution could ever take place.
I understood his logic but, unfortunately for him, he had a crystal ball made by the same company that made crystal balls for all the other prophets.
But there is definitely a tipping point…
“or are we indeed living in a “post-fact” world where truth is meaningless?”
The lies will undoubtedly keep ramping up, but it’s unlikely the sheeple will ever notice, or even care if they do.
All too soon, they will be lining up, masked and two metres apart, feeling so lucky, while waiting for a shot of Uncle Bill’s toxic special brew.
We are so totally fcuked.
There’s no need to believe any one thing the UK Government says about testing. Casedemic, as someone called it above, is about inflated case numbers being used in the same was as the bogus death toll was. The article linked to below is old, but it shows how the goal posts have changed. In its last report, ICNARC said there were about 300 people in ICUs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland with Covid-19.
The Covid-19 death toll is for abusing the deranged masses; it’s the other data that’s important
http://www.frombehindenemylines.org.uk/2020/03/the-covid-19-death-toll-is-for-abusing-the-deranged-masses-its-the-other-data-thats-important/
Anyone know where I can buy a yellow t-shirt with Vernon Coleman’s mantra printed on it, as per this pic from twatter
I suggested something similar a few days ago, which got a few upvotes, which I think would work well on T-shirts, badges or caps, or even, as the government has kindly afforded us advertising space by their “law”, printed on plain white face masks using the government’s dashed lines design:
STAY AFRAID CONTROL THE PEOPLE SAVE BORIS
up-ticks are easy peasy – its action thats the difficult bit
I found this, not quite got the yellow
https://teespring.com/get-distrust?tsmac=store&tsmic=anarcht&pid=389&cid=100029
Thanks, I came across that site but choice was limited unfortunately.
There are many online websites where you can design your own t-shirt but what I don’t have is the text and chevron border in a suitable graphic to upload.
Are there and graphic designers amongst us willing to create the graphic in a suitable format for those of us who want to print it on a choice of merchandise – t-shirts, caps etc.?.
Here you go….
It is high res. It has been compressed on here automatically.
I prefer this one. Great.
I’ve given up looking for this t-shirt but did discover you can order one-off t-shirts online and provide your own artwork. So what I have done is reproduce the UK gov propaganda design with Vernon’s mantra using my limited tech/design skills.
There are numerous free online file converters if you need to convert the attached png file to another file format e.g. jpg.
This pic has the yellow background and the one that follows a transparent background.
You are free to use them as you wish.
Uncompressed pics available here
Transparent background pic.
The only good news is crowds back at the snooker this weekend. Not really about snooker, this is a test for reopening theatres in general. They’re aiming for about 300 in the 900-seater Crucible. Masks don’t have to be worn once you’re in your seat.
What? Masks don’t have to be worn in seats? Does that mean people in church under similar circumstances can take them off as well?
Covie is very clever. He knows he can infect you in church but he can’t in a theatre once you’ve reached your seat.
Once again I’m having very unChristian thoughts about our authorities.
Better than very clever…according to David Lammy, the virus also appears to be blatantly racist, but instantaneously can distinguish anti-racism protestors from other crowds such as those congregating for a football match.
If masks prevent droplets presumably you are allowed to sing if you have a mask on… A subtle addition to the recent exemptions – those leading prayers (and presumably bible readings etc) are now exempt from the sillyness. Still weighing up whether I really want to attend our first post lockdown service next week.
The singing thing is guidance. Your church should ignore it as mine does. We have adapted how often we sing but we’ve been open for 6 weeks with no problems.
Our church has said that anyone not wearing a mask is presumed to be exempt and will no-one will ask you about it.
Dave, you must go to church. When you are there all the worries will melt away and you’ll enjoy being among brothers and sisters. It’s absolutely vital that we begin meeting together.
As a non church-goer, I congratulate your members on sticking to sanity.
It should be a marker for all social groups – a great big figurative V-sign
I agree 100%
Congregate and celebrate!
You SING?
God bless you!
Of course. We have a higher authority that commands us to.
I absolutely love this comment and I think you’re right, many of us (whatever our spiritual belief system) have a higher calling that this nonsense.
I mentioned your comment to my OH who is a member of a COE church. He said you definitely aren’t COE or even Methodist but he thinks you’re pentecostal or something … would you mind telling me what strand of Christianity your church is because I think he’d really like to take it up with his own COE church – closed pretty much since March.
You’re right that I’m not an Anglican or Methodist. But I’m not a Pentecostal.
Presbyterian. In England.
Opening takes some effort what with doing a risk assessment and arranging the building but it has to be done. Our church found that just over 60% of the regulars were ready to come back and we’ve had a family come whose church is still closed join us. Overwhelmingly positive.
Covie likes religious people, but is scared of the noise snooker balls make.
Implies you need them at all points except when sitting. Madness.
Because you don’t breathe when you’re sitting down.
Poor Aruba at the top of the list -looks dreadful – but total number of deaths there- 3! What is all this nonsense over number of cases
‘Cases per 100,000’. But the population of the whole of Aruba is only just over 100,000.
Well – if you think about it rationally (a rare skill these days) – it’s absolute proof about what we’ve been saying about the nonsense of the ‘case’ definition.
Quite good news really.
It’s only good news if government see sense, but it seems they are determined not to.
Been annoying people on the Daily mail website in the comments section about Boris and the increase in fines for repeat non-mask offenders.
Lots of pro-mask comments so put in my tuppence with quotes from the studies that proved they are either useless or negligible at protecting people.
Lots of down votes so posted a few more quotes and so on increasing the numbers of down votes.
I count every down vote to a fact as a point won and a little bit of annoyance to the trolls, sheeple and 77th/13th warriors trying to direct the debate.
Good for you! And thanks from all of us for wading through the cesspit of DM comments for the benefit of The Cause!
Unfortunately the Daily Lie Machine uses bots in its comments section, so the “votes” are pretty well meaningless.
A bit like in our “democracy”, then.
How so? Are comments generated by bots or votes? I ask because I also haunt the DM comments section and have seen lots of posts that look like they’re posted by bots. And the swing to anti-lockdown has been quite interesting – and I’d struggle to know why the DM would use bots to upvote anti-lockdown comments.
Maybe the more the bots post pro-lockdown, the more the real people refute them. Could actually be helping The Cause now. How ironic!
AFAIK the comments are posted by humans (whether readers or employees), but the scores are certainly subject to manipulation. It’s hard to see because the controversial comments sections fill up so quickly, but a comment can have many hundreds of votes removed or added within a very short space of time. In some cases a comment that is only 2-3 minutes old can even accrue thousands of up-votes.
I monitor the daily mail comments regularly to get a sense of general opinions on things outside my normal social circle (and to er get some sleb gossip). I noticed that early on in the year (March) they were very much supportive of lockdown and anyone who dissented was torn to pieces.
The situation started to change in May and now I would say that the vast majority of top ranked comments are highly lockdown sceptic. It’s been a remarkable swing in opinion. They’re not especially well informed (so thank you to awkward git for educating them) but really the view on masks and whatever is increasingly aligned with here. The government should really look at this. The tone is getting increasingly belligerent and dissent is brewing. It’s rather encouraging from my perspective….not if you are Boris though.
The only thing that raises more ire than lockdown with the DM readers are the immigrants coming across the channel. Especially now that anyone else coming from France will have to quarantine.
You can bet the farm those commenters are going to be PR operatives.
Don’t forget to remind the 77th Brigade at every opportunity that they must go to jail.
http://www.frombehindenemylines.org.uk/2020/06/the-77th-brigade-must-go-to-jail-part-one/
May be of interest – my letter published today in British Medical Journal Rapid Responses: Re: We can change practice—can we also change culture?Re: We can change practice—can we also change culture? Fiona Godlee. 364:doi 10.1136/bmj.l108 Dear Editor This has been a most instructive correspondence [1] and doctors may in the near future have to consider what rational advice they can give to members of the pubic regarding a plethora of new products just a few months in development, some involving entirely new technologies. Reuter’s recently reported the words of a Trump administration official [2] : “The fine line we are walking is getting the American people very excited about vaccines and missing expectations versus having a bunch of vaccines in the warehouse and not as many people want to get it…You may not hear a lot about promoting vaccines over the airwaves in August and September but you’ll be overwhelmed by it come November.” The danger is, of course, that health policy is being driven for political ends and we may be about to see the first vaccine election. Also, being “excited” is no way to approach Informed Consent (supposing the vaccines are not mandated). Likewise, in a recent House of Commons answer… Read more »
Yeah right!
https://www.gponline.com/biggest-overhaul-gp-vaccination-payments-30-years-new-gp-contract/article/1673383
That whirring noise you hear is Hippocrates spinning in his grave.
.. to the sound of a very old word :
“CORRUPTION”
Doctors have been little more than drugs pushers for a good few years now.
Vernon Coleman has written much on this (albeit he has some other views a disagree with). Nice to see his name and views mentioned increasingly.
It’s sad to say it but you’re right!
It might be an interesting legal point that they exercise the carrot and stick coercion on GPs and claim Informed Consent is operative. In fact, no one in their right mind would agree to many of the products if they just had the risks listed in the Patient Information Leaflet as they have legal right under the Montgomery ruling of 2015 (which government perpetually ducks). Who, for example, would give their baby three doses of Bexsero Men B vaccine if they read the PIL and found there was a 3 in 1000 risk of them developing Kawasaki disease?
https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6447/rr-2
Thanks for that information.That is really a high risk of side effects of the vaccine for a still, rare disease Men B. Must be too high risk of side effects for such a rare disease.
But then how sure are we that K syndrome isnt a flare up , common to both vaccine and wild virus infection, which is commoner than perhaps previously recognised? there’s a US paper I will try to find, looking at it in relation to CV19, which seemed to bear this out.
I think KD should be reportable – we don’t know what’s happening with it. The government always sites meaningless out of date data about rates but parents need to be seriously alert to recognising signs (particularly after vaccination).
You seem to have been following this, I wonder what you make of the fascinating treasure trove of emails linked to in Swedenborg’s post below between Anders Tegnell and colleagues in Sweden, Finland etc? What about, for instance: ‘Corona virus has an unfortunate property that gives antibody dependent enhancement (which you can google on if you do not know about it). That is, antibodies do not protect against infection but help the virus enter the cells instead where it can multiply. This is the reason why they did not succeed in creating a vaccine against SARS (SARS-cov-1). It was found that a low concentration of antibodies was not protective but instead helped the virus into the cells. Cecilia’s email shows that it was the same with the vaccine they tried to create against bovine corona. I really hope that you think about it here when you try to develop a vaccine against covid-19. I’m sure you can get around the problem. But you unaware flock immunity zealots should have it clear to you that this can be a huge problem in Sweden. Antibodies to covid-19 decrease over time. A low concentration of antibodies helps the virus to protect itself. There is thus a very real risk that in the… Read more »
This is just one virological opinion.There are many others that antibody level itself not so important instead T cells and a new exposure of the virus would lead to a massive increase of antibodies to stop the virus.Other corona viruses has not shown this pattern. This virological opinion is based upon the concept of dengue fever where second exposure can be delterious and problems with dengue vaccine.So there are different opinions and not being a virologist these is just a crude description.But this is much more complex now with the T cells response maybe of more importance than antibodies.
But this was a frank discussion between scientists but a leked e mail with a sentences above would of course be useful and welcome for Project Fear
Exactly. I thought it was worth drawing to the attention of J Stone who appears to be someone interested in vaccine/autism.
It’s difficult without being able to read the actual emails, but from what you said, it sounds like Tegnell and others were saying what any commonsense person here might. (I speculated a while back that our best strategy would be chickenpox style parties (held in my youth) for the younger ones, lots of social contact for the teens and 20s, normal life to 70, more care thereafter.)
The timeline is very interesting, seems UK were blown off course in the fortnight up to our lockdown. I can see decision making in an international hub country 6 times the size of Sweden is harder, too. Prolongation of our lockdown beyond 1 June is my personal gripe.
I am not a virologist but even with industry’s very low standards it is beyond credibility that there could be a safe product any time soon. If something has only been tested for weeks or months what can we possibly know about the long term effects? If it is only semi-effective that in itself makes it a hazard. Meanwhile, the government presses on with the flu vaccine programme without having researched the real possibility that it could increase COVID susceptibility.
Yes it is just one opinion, and as I just wrote to Sylvie, if cv19 really is a new coronavirus, how could they have known so long ago that the antibodies decrease over time?
Historically coronavirus vaccines have shown issues with enhancement. Some people have believed the reason might be antibody dependent enhancement or ADE. This is where the antibodies are sticking to the wrong part of the virus and end up helping them infect cells, sometimes other cells, or causing other issues. It happens with Dengue as swedenborg says. But I don’t think this was the reason for the enhancement with the coronavirus vaccines. This paper investigated in detail the problems with SARS1 vaccines: https://doi.org/10.1172/jci.insight.123158 They found that the antibodies induced by the vaccine worked in the sense that those monkeys cleared the virus. SARS1 patients who died also had lots of neutralizing antibodies and cleared the virus. But then they had a lot of lung inflammation which is what killed them (this is often called “the cytokine storm” these days). There was some evidence in that paper (and in earlier work done on the RSV vaccine which had a similar problem) that the problem was that the vaccine resulted in a “Th2” dominated response, which basically means biased towards antibodies and away from killer T cells. It’s not so much that the killer T cells are necessarily helping all that much with… Read more »
Continuation as I have gone on too long and exceeded the limit for a comment: One of the leading Chinese vaccines on the other hand, is a good old fashioned inactivated whole virus, you know, the kind that’s usually really bad for coronaviruses. This is what they wrote in their paper (https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.17.046375): “No antibody-dependent enhancement of infection (ADE) was observed for any vaccinated macaques despite the observation that relatively low NAb titer existed within the medium dose group before infection, offering partial protection.” Right. But to be honest we weren’t really expecting ADE. Th2-dominance is more likely the cause of the problem. Anyway they reckoned that was also fine and went on to remark: “The serious pandemic of the current COVID19 and the precipitously increasing numbers of death worldwide necessitate the urgent development of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, requiring a new pandemic paradigm.” If I was going to have either vaccine I’d take the Oxford one. But I think it’s sensible to wait a couple of years and then assess the risk again. I’m unlikely to die of Covid in that time. There was some speculation early on in the literature that cross-immunity from other HCoVs might be making SARS2 worse,… Read more »
“If I was going to have either vaccine I’d take the Oxford one…” personally I’d be a little worried about that, after an Oxford professor said recently they were concerned about developing a successful vaccine, on the grounds it might not be diverse enough.
Will anybody really get a choice in which vaccine they get?
There is going to be a surreal range, by no means equivalent.
I don’t see how any of these products can be ethically licensed as either safe or effective on the timescales proposed – then they want to give them to billions of people despite the fact they haven’t properly been tested. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister prattles on about “brilliant scientists” and being “all out” to find a vaccine (Express today) like a rather tongue-tied Royal.
Also, this is to miss the point of the entire criminal episode. Everyone should have gone back to work many weeks ago but we are being strung along so we can all be rescued by these wonderful products long after the effects of the disease have dwindled. It’s the biggest racket the globe has ever seen.
Yes the vaccine story in no way justifies the ridiculous overreactions and all the harm those have done and are still doing.
It is likely that SARS2 will come back every few years and having a vaccine to add to the collection of flu vaccines we use might be beneficial. But there is no reason to panic and rush it out early.
Many thanks for your excellent reply.Once again expain it clearly and easy to follow.
Many thanks for this! So much exciting research to come, too. Never having had flu in my life, nor taken that vaccination till recently, I doubt I’d bother with this one.
I wonder also about individual susceptibility to these things. Anecdotally, one of my parents and one of my children share a striking inflammatory response to challenge, both natural (bee stings, mosquito bites), and to vaccination (no lasting ill effects). Perhaps a more effective response to CV19 lies in early diagnosis and effective treatment, rather than mass vaccination.
Today, 15 August, thinking of my father, who had dengue, malaria, dysentery, and cholera in the camps along the Death Railway, I do wonder whether all the effort and money going into relatively insignificant respiratory viruses is worthwhile. Some, certainly; but clean water and better sewage treatment worldwide seems a higher priority. (Maybe less air pollution too, for the good of the lungs. I notice the smell of cars all the time now, it having been so low for 4 months.)
Yes, but the vaccine neither prevented the animals catching the disease or presumably spreading it – this fact was suppressed until weeks into the human testing. A New York Times report in April said they had shown no signs of the disease:
“Scientists at the National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Montana last month inoculated six rhesus macaque monkeys with single doses of the Oxford vaccine. The animals were then exposed to heavy quantities of the virus that is causing the pandemic — exposure that had consistently sickened other monkeys in the lab. But more than 28 days later all six were healthy, said Vincent Munster, the researcher who conducted the test.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/world/europe/coronavirus-vaccine-update-oxford.html
This story was contradicted three weeks later:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8331709/Oxford-coronavirus-vaccine-does-not-stop-infection-experts-warn.html
Meanwhile, billions of our money is being sunk into this product.
They gave the monkeys a huge dose of the actual virus so it’s not that surprising that they didn’t get complete protection from the vaccine. It probably makes a better test this way as well. If you give them a realistic viral load the antibodies might mean they hardly get infected at all and then you risk not shaking out any of the enhancement issues you’re looking for.
I think the biggest concern is still enhancement. There are encouraging signs why it should be OK, but although there are theories nobody really got to the bottom of what was going on and questions remain. What if you only start to get problems in patients who are more vulnerable anyway, a few months after the vaccine when antibody levels have dropped a bit? We’re not going to know that if we rush something out this autumn.
I agree that they had to give the monkeys a substantial dose of the disease but I don’t believe they were happy with the result otherwise there would not have been the fake report in April. Or did they just lie in order to launch the next phase? You are right that there are serious practical/ethical implications – we were discussing earlier in the BMJ correspondence that children were being given nasal flu vaccine not to protect themselves but to protect their grandparents, which did not make sense because the PIL warned that the recipients should avoid contact with the immunocompromised! Perhaps, the real purpose then was simply to unload loads of products on the public at its own expense without practical rhyme or reason.
https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l108/rapid-responses
Yes I think they were hoping for higher antibody levels. This may be why in the human trials they gave everyone the maximum dose of the vaccine, to make sure that the antibody numbers looked good. But I think there’s good reason to think that a “Th1-dominated” response (which means fewer antibodies and more killer T) may actually be better.
They really need to just give everyone the facts and let them make their own decisions. This is probably going to become a big issue very soon when they do start rushing these vaccines out.
Thinking about that arrogant idiot Olsen some more, natural immunity has just been trialled on millions of people worldwide in the last 8 months or so and so far it seems to be working pretty well. And she wants to put more trust in the immunity from a vaccine that has only been tried (with a challenge) on about 8 monkeys?
People need to balance what is now a very well-known risk level from the disease with a theoretically smaller but much more unknown risk from the vaccines.
I think people are unlikely to be adequately protected against making poor decisions by the licensing process, given commercial and political pressures. I, for example, take supplements like Vitamin C, D, zinc etc which protect against all infectious disease (and contra government experts don’t need to be trialed against COVID) but once we have all these new products it really will be roulette even if they are tested a few weeks longer than Sputnik5. If I have any choice at all I am unlikely to be persuaded to take any one of these products but I fear what it all might mean on a population level. Of course, the disease itself is only a relative known given all the background noise surrounding and it is also quite likely that it will retreat into harmlessness anyway.
Sorry – only just seen this!
Interested in the part about antibodies to covid19 decreasing over time – presumably these are ‘old’ emails, so how did they know this so long ago???
Antibodies always decrease over time (at a somewhat slow rate for IgG). It was reported in the media like it was some special new feature of Covid that was going to result in carnage, whereas in fact it was good news: it meant that more people had been infected than their tests showed and we were closer to herd immunity.
Just looked at that email thread in more detail. I was too busy wanting to refute it that I started on my reply without noticing that somebody called Erik had already done a great job shutting down this frightful Mikaela Olsen character.
Her email appears to be dated August 14, which is yesterday! She should have known better. She’s arguing for the “precautionary principle” but seems to take it on faith that natural immunity will somehow cause enhancement but vaccines won’t. All the evidence is the other way around.
Erik points out patiently that the UCL study showed that children, who evidently don’t get worse disease have the most cross-immunity. So antibodies probably aren’t toxic after all. He also gives a good explanation of the vaccine situation. Then, apparently regretting his decision to treat her with more politeness than she deserves, sends another reply an hour later calling her arrogant and stupid. She calls him a racist and it goes downhill from there.
We’ve just plunged into the start of a severe economic depression (despite what the MSM are calling it) and here are our esteemed leaders playing silly political games. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns!
Boris Johnson will stamp major schemes in Scotland that are paid for directly by the UK Government with a Union flag from next year, The Telegraph can reveal.
The flag will replace the European Union symbol, which has been used to denote when a bridge or road has been directly funded by Brussels.
The idea has been backed by the new Scottish Conservative leader, Douglas Ross, who said Tories north of the border needed to be “unashamed of our investment in Scotland”.
But it was greeted with dismay by senior SNP politicians, with one accusing Mr Johnson’s Government of “posturing of the worst order” and “trying to force the union flag down people’s throats”.
The Union flag will be used to highlight when UK central Government money has been spent in Scotland. It will not apply to Scottish government spending, even though a proportion of that derives from an annual block grant from London.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/08/13/boris-johnson-stamp-major-scottish-projects-funded-uk-government/
That’s been in the pipeline for some time. Especially given that EU contributions are usually the smallest between UK, Scottish Executive and EU, yet two flags appear on the boards, but one does not. This one has my support.
Apologies if covered before. Who is he to be talking like this – https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-bill-gates-covid-vaccine/ Bloomberg: How confident are you we’ll have a working vaccine that can be widely distributed by the end of 2020? Gates: Well, the initial vaccine won’t be ideal in terms of its effectiveness against sickness and transmission. It may not have a long duration, and it will mainly be used in rich countries as a stopgap measure. We’d be lucky to have much before the end of the year. But then, in 2021, a number of other vaccines are very likely to get approved. The strongest response will probably come from the protein subunit. With so many companies working on it, we can afford quite a few failures and still have something with low cost and long duration. […] For years, people have said if anti-vaxxers had lived through a pandemic, the way their grandparents did, they’d think differently. Whoops. The two times I’ve been to the White House [since 2016], I was told I had to go listen to anti-vaxxers like Robert Kennedy Jr. So, yes, it’s ironic that people are questioning vaccines and we’re actually having to say, “Oh, my God, how else can… Read more »
I am not fundamentally against vaccines. But share the views of many, I don’t want a medically under-tested shot against something I don’t think I am at risk of in the first place. It will be interesting how they handle the flu vaccine this year at our surgery – normally just a turn up and get it clinic but with the front gate still firmly locked who knows…
It is not just about this vaccine – it is about the principle of mandating all vaccines
It’s about both. The Mengele Society needs to be opposed.
I’m not fundamentally against surgery but I am totally against FGM!
I don’t have children and will never be a father so it’s not my issue whether parents vaxx their kids or not. Not my business at all.
I will fight to the death for my freedom to not have a syringe jammed in my arm for this particular cold virus. My preventive medicine is about diet, exercise and tapping into the power of the mind. My immune system doesn’t need help from a for-profit multinational drug company thank you very much!
It would have been interesting if the interviewer had asked Gates which of the vaccines he would be taking!!!
Gates’ doctor said (some years ago, I believe) he did now allow his children to be vaccinated.
I know! But it would have been good to see Gates try and wriggle out of answering the question!
What is it about Public Health Chiefs?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/13/eat-out-scheme-muddles-covid-messaging-says-leicester-health-chief
The public health chief managing the Covid outbreak in Leicester has raised concerns over the government’s “eat out to help out” scheme and called for more localised testing and tracing.
Prof Ivan Browne, the director of public health at Leicester city council, said the messaging around Covid-19 needed to be clearer, given the potential for the infection rate to take off once more.
“This has not gone away, it is still here,” he said at an online event hosted by the Royal Society of Medicine.” “I have huge issues with things like eat out to help out. I understand the economic issue of it, but when I am walking up my road and I am seeing people queuing up, it is a concern.
“We have just got to get a very clear narrative of where we are, be in control, be cautious, make sure that we are not giving this virus the opportunity to pass on – because it will.”
We can’t blame de Piffle and Poppycock while idiots like this are in charge on the ground – and there are a lot of them about!
NEVER EVER do a Covid-19 test (the test is unreliable and many false positives).
Hear, hear!!
That little slogan – ‘want a lockdown – get a test’ is something we should be sticking up everywhere!
What a miserable git.
What a miserable life he must lead.
Now he’s trying to make everybody else’s equally miserable.
There’s a lot of them around.
Whatever they say, do the opposite.
I don’t really understand why PHE/NHS has reduced the number of deaths. Looking at the PHE website, updated 12 August, so on the date the numbers went down, it states: b. There are 2 definitions of a death in a person with COVID-19 in England, one broader measure and one measure reflecting current trends: 1) A death in a person with a laboratory-confirmed positive COVID-19 test and either died within 60 days of the first specimen date or died more than 60 days after the first specimen date, only if COVID-19 is mentioned on the death certificate 2) A death in a person with a laboratory-confirmed positive COVID-19 test and died within (equal to or less than) 28 days of the first positive specimen date So a death in a positive-test person who died either 60 days ago, or more than 60 days ago, or less than 60 days (anyone else losing the will to live?) with C-19 mentioned on the death certificate? Plus ANYONE who dies within 28 days of a positive test. What about all those people who died in care homes and GPs couldn’t even be fagged to turn up, leaving it to the unqualified with socks… Read more »
Coronavirus: All New Zealand’s confirmed COVID-19 cases to be put in quarantine facilities from now on
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/08/coronavirus-all-new-zealand-s-confirmed-covid-19-cases-to-be-put-in-quarantine-facilities-from-now-on.html
Internment camps – ran like, say, care homes? Go and die there?
15 minute video of what a 2020 stasi state looks like. See you in the Gulags folks, UK covid Act gives them the right to take you to such a location if they ‘suspect’ you to have corona.
Again apologies if this was covered yesterday, I haven’t been able to keep up.
News from my NZ relative is that a family in a ‘camp’ with ‘guards’, ‘escaped’, they were chased and ‘captured’, going to court next day where they hoped for a lenient sentence as they were there for a funeral, but the general opinion was a stiff sentence as a warning. It caused quite a lot of excitement, not a lot going on down there now.
I think we start changing the language – even more than ‘internment camp’ does.
‘Concentration Camp’ seems appropriate – concentrating ‘undesirables’ away from ‘healthy’ society.
can boris be put in the gulags? doesn’t he have corona?
good god we’re screwed
On Gov.UK they have Mask Exemption PDF’s to put on your phone and to print out. Hancock repeating in Parliament that masks give people confidence to shop and use public transport, while shops report footfall drop and transport runs around basically empty, obviously not seeing it from his ministerial car.
And museums and heritage sites not exactly swamped with visitors either. Went past South Kensington station last Sunday – platform was empty, no-one exiting or boarding the tube and to think both the Natural History Museum and the V&A were already open!
Difficult to get them to see the big picture though isint it, in their ivory towers
Not only that but our politicians must come from another planet or galaxy altogether.
It is most certainly not Planet Claire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOjAzI5zALo
I’m cancelling my membership of galleries, museums etc until they grow some and tell the govt to p*** off.
I’ve written to a few of them telling them that I’m boycotting them until this insanity is over or they grow some backbone and tell the government to stop killing the museums and heritage sector.
Buses round here are back at their old 20 minute or so frequency. I make a point of looking at them – they all have 2 to 4 people on.
Same here, still Hancock trots out the same old nonsense.
Even saw one bus in my area where there were no passengers at all.
Some buses here in Bournemouth are running with more passengers but services are still reduced, so it’s hard to know if that’s the reason.
I rode again today with my exemption card. Another maskfree woman, but also a bizarre sight on the way home – a man with a visor on plus a chinstrap mask. I have to admit I was staring at him for most of the journey. Happily from a seat at the back of the bus.
On the flip side, there is a mini boom coming in terms of car sales. A couple of friends & acquaintances in the industry have told me sales in the industry are skyrocketing since the mandatory masks on public transport; some showrooms reporting 1 months’ typical sales (pre-covid) are now happening in 1-2 days.
I can tell that car usage is up. The air quality here in Bournemouth has been getting worse and worse over the past few days. Of course, some of that is the heat wave, but the smoggy haze is aggravated by the number of vehicles. So much for concern about the vulnerable. Those of us with lung conditions suffer more from vehicles emissions but no talk of restricting their use – nor would I ask for that consideration.
Do face masks cause you severe distress?
Do you live a reasonable life?
Do you enjoy random acts of normal kindness?
Do you make evidence-based decisions?
Do you respond to risks proportionately?
Join the Old Normal Club.
Everyone welcome!
Wow! I’m putting that in my car window! Big letters!
Thanks. It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that the silent majority are fed up with the current situation and the fact that they have no political representation. I’m hoping the Old Normal Club will be very popular.
The Old Normal Club.
I LIKE IT!!!
Count me in!
My friend is currently in Europe and will be driving back to this country next week. She sent me a message this morning. “France on the quarantine list. Fuck them. I’m not self isolating for 2 weeks”
Our daughter and her family plus friend and son have decided they’ll continue with their camping holiday in France, starting on Sunday. Good for them!
Ignore the quarantine. I had friends who returned from the USA (via Canada) during the early months of the Lockdown. They were supposed to quarantine, but no one checked on them.
Makes a lot of sense. Increased infections but not increased hospitalisations/deaths and we know PCR tests are not reliable and have a lot of false positives.
Cannot find the clip with Michael J. Ryan the WHO spokesman by himself stating it’s time to remove people from families and homes from a few months ago but it is mentioned on this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ5Xo3NAUE0&t=0s
Prophetic or New Zealand following orders?
Having read the Wall St Journal article, I’m now puzzled. We already have MSC’s in our body. Evidently more MSCs are helpful under certain conditions. If they’re a natural treatment, then it sounds wonderful. However, I’m intrigued as to where the administered MSCs are being produced. From animal “donors”? Will they be cultured like lab-grown meat? Any of you scientists have suggestions? …. one of the most promising therapies for Covid-19 patients uses “medicinal signaling cells,” or MSCs, which are found on blood vessels throughout the body. In preliminary studies, these cells cut the death rate significantly, particularly in the sickest patients. With a powerful 1-2-3 punch, these cells eliminate the virus, calm the immune overreaction known as a cytokine storm, and repair damaged lung tissue—a combination offered by no other drug. This type of regenerative medicine could be as revolutionary as Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine. …. In one pilot study in March, doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York treated a dozen severely ill Covid-19 patients on ventilators with MSCs. Two infusions modulated their hyperactive immune systems, and 83% of those patients survived. …… MSCs were first identified and named by Prof. Arnold Caplan and colleagues at Case… Read more »
That is exactly what optimised Vitamin D levels do
How do I post a graphic (jpeg)?
It’s an image of STAY AFRAID CONTROL THE PEOPLE SAVE BORIS
Grrrr. Have just received a letter from the House of Commons. Ooh, thought I, it’s a reply to my request that the Department of Transport provides a health and safety assessment on mask wearing which I had asked my MP to provide. You may recall from previous posts, I had received two replies without any sign at all of a H and S policy attached, just the usual blurb about mask efficacy and government rules about wearing them.
Well the letter did involve transport, but it was a round robin letter from the MP hoping to restore the local rail service and setting up a petition for reopening. As our son has also received one, I assume that it has been sent to all constituents.
As an MP, the lad is really doing his best for the local area, I admit, but in these times local transport is NOT my priority, or anyone else’s, I would imagine. I just want to know when we can all get our lives back, stop having to wear face nappies and when we can get the economy working again.
Then there’s the cost involved of sending these letters…………
“I just want to know when we can all get our lives back, stop having to wear face nappies and when we can get the economy working again.”
Agreed Margaret, planning anything now is impossible. I’m literally existing sorry living one day at a time now. It’s very draining.
And what is it with MPs and sending letters? I emailed my MP twice and both times he sent a letter back. Admittedly the letters are getting shorter but usually if you get an email you respond with an email.
Part of getting the old normal back includes local transport. It’s easy for car users to forget the thousands (millions) of us who rely on public transport. That was how we go to work shop, have a day out, etc. etc. Now we’re second-class citizens dealing with reduced services and the inability to enjoy a simple, relaxed day out.
I want an end to gob rags as much as anyone and, of course, we need the economy functioning, but it seems like a chicken and egg kind of thing. Those of us without cars need transport for our economy to function. And despite the fact that I could easily afford to buy one, I refuse to get one simply because the government has decided to abuse transport users.
They’re making it hard for car users too.
My local council have blocked off the road to my bank, so disabled drivers can’t get anywhere near it!
It also means there’s no access to a lot of town centre parking spaces for anyone.
Nuts!
Listening to Mike Graham and how London is a ghost town. A lot of people are afraid to come in on public transport.
If there was ever a moment to highlight the idiocy of all this, it’s now.
CoronaPhobia will be the end of civilisation at this rate.
Unless a blood sacrifice is made
Many are not afraid but just can’t deal with masks and social distancing nonsense
I’m really not convinced it’s many. I think we on here are a small minority (though growing), I think the majority just begrudgingly accept it (shown both in NI and England by the minimal take up when not mandated) and there’s a minority (bigger than us though shrinking) who are genuinely shitting the bed on a daily basis terrified of everything.
London is a ghost town cos companies arent forcing people back to work because they can’t be dealing with making offices ‘covid secure’ at their own expense, when everyone office based can work from home, as it turns out. Than in turn will drive hospitality and retail to the brink, and then even less will go in. That’s my theory anyway.
That’s pretty much it, Mark. It would be great to think that loads of sceptics are out there, refusing to go along with the shite, but the fact is the majority are made up of two types: those that just think it’s the right thing, and those that genuinely think you will die with out a mask. Fear of death, albeit unfounded, is a powerful motivation.
Fear of death + fear of breaking the law + fear of social stigma. That’s a lot stacked up on the conform side.
I agree. From what I’ve seen on the buses in Bournemouth, there are plenty who seem to be going along to get along. Masks stuffed in pockets, pulled down to expose the nose as soon as possible, riding on the top deck with mask off (only on to get past the driver).
I live in London and won’t use public transport as I don’t want to be in a carriage/bus with people wearing germ ridden face masks. Have only worn a mask once and that was at the hairdresser but wore under my nose. Have done all of my shopping mask free as have many others.
I have been to Central London several times and work in one of the museums in the area and he’s not wrong about describing London as a ghost town.
It doesn’t help that the vast majority of people have not gotten back to working on site – that creates a domino effect which spills over into the retail and hospitality sectors.
It’s not only people who are afraid but more importantly people who don’t want to and are fed up with being treated like lepers or typhoid Marys. Plus with the country now officially in recession and more and more joining the ranks of the unemployed so eating out, shopping and visiting museums are increasingly being seen as luxuries that people can ill afford.
It’s not coronaphobia, people don’t want to wear masks. If they removed all the nonsense things would get back to normal.
”The voiceless need a voice” – where’s our Alan Jones common sense on our UK TV screens?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7107403/ Influenza-like Illness Incidence Is Not Reduced by Influenza Vaccination in a Cohort of Older Adults, Despite Effectively Reducing Laboratory-Confirmed Influenza Virus Infections
“Vaccination reduces the number of influenza virus infections but not the overall number of ILI episodes: other pathogens fill the gap. We suggest the existence of a pool of individuals with high susceptibility to respiratory infections”.
This was published 2017.Prophetic?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7107403/
prophetic indeed.
How much more true is that of a virus that exists mainly in the collective imagination.
Ha! I was speculating this was the case to my husband only an hour ago, after seeing how Japan’s bad flu year was followed by lower COVID deaths. And how the increase in “cases” now is not resulting in more hospitalisations.
I looked at the stats from ONS earlier in the summer. On average over the years they give data for (back about 20 year IIRC) 8pct of the over 65s die from ILI and pneumonia each year. In the past 5 years it has been lower than average, giving a “backlog” of about 50,000 susceptible people who would have died if the rate had remained at 8pct. So it was hardly surprising we got hit hard in the U.K.
How do I upload a jpeg graphic onto the comments, please?
I think you can use the link icon to the right of your comment or press the picture icon under the comment box.
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I tried to set up a login account so that I could post a graphic, but now I can’s get on at all! Help please.
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“… according to Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson, the standard PCR test is an unreliable diagnostic tool because of false positives.” Just to be clear on this – the CEBM group is always (and rightly) cautious in the way they present evidence – unlike the numerous publicity tarts promoting Covid. The thing about the PCR test is that It is not a suitable diagnostic tool, and the term ‘fals positives’ is a polite way of saying ‘random noise’. You can find better details on this elsewhere, but essentially the process picks out scraps of RNA supposedly asociated with a specific virus (not an actual virus; not symptoms of infection; not symptoms of illness) The RNA is then used to create DNA which is amplified by a recursive process of reproduction – and Hey Presto! – the end result is identified as an infection. It was meant for research, not diagnosis. So – the whole process is a pack of cards that can easily collapse at the falsification of the first assumption in the chain – i.e the relevance of a scrap of RNA.- let alone at later stages. The whole ‘case’ thing isn’t built on sand, it’s built on shite –… Read more »
So true. PCR test is unreliable and lots of false positives
Well, I am currently on a TGV to the south of France. Fuck the government. I won’t incriminate myself but I’m sure you can guess how much I will respect the quarantine.
I don’t blame you. The whole thing is farcical. They’re now deliberately destroying our holidays, the cynic in me believes its all linked to the climate warming zealots.
Maybe…though some of the climate warning zealots are actually arguing we need to import tens of thousands more migrants from Europe & the middle east, so they can contribute literally tens of billions to the economy. I’m sure the mass movement of so many people won’t emit any carbon…
Go to it.
That’s the spirit!