Hospitals “Like the Mary Celeste”
Given that there’s a cancer care backlog predicted to cost up to 30,000 lives and NHS waiting lists have exceeded 15 million, the news of empty hospitals will come as no surprise to anyone who has been following the catastrophic conversion of the NHS into a National Coronavirus Service. The Telegraph has the story.
NHS surgeons are only working at around 50 per cent capacity, the president of their Royal College has revealed, despite record waiting times for crucial operations.
Official figures show that more than 50,000 people have waited a year for treatment – up from 1,117 a year ago.
It comes amid concern about a surge in positive Covid cases, with daily records showing 1,522 cases, up from 1,048 the day before. However, weekly figures show the first decline for six weeks, despite rises in the numbers being tested.
The vast majority of NHS surgery and other routine treatment was stopped for months during lockdown.
But medics said efforts to restore services are moving too slowly, with some likening their hospitals to “the Mary Celeste” because so many patients were being kept away.
Prof Neil Mortensen, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said the NHS was struggling to restore services, with a lack of routine testing for NHS staff hindering efforts to create “Covid-free” zones.
Prof Mortensen, who took up his post last month, said many patients had been left in pain and distress, following the decision to suspend routine surgery for months.
Another reminder that the lockdown has caused more harm than it’s prevented, if any.
All Children Who Died with COVID-19 Were Already Seriously Ill
Just six children under 18 have died in the UK with COVID-19 and all of them had a serious comorbidity that explains why they were affected so badly, says Ross Clark in the Spectator. This is according to a study published this week in the British Medical Journal:
The study looks at data from 260 hospitals in England, Scotland and Wales, to which 69,516 patients were admitted with Covid symptoms between January 17th and July 3rd. Of these, 651 were aged under 19 and 225 were aged under 12 months. Serious underlying medical conditions were present in 42% of the children.
Most were successfully treated on hospital wards but 116 went on to be admitted to critical care and 58 ended up on mechanical ventilation. In 52 cases, the patients were judged to be suffering from Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome associated with COVID-19 (MIS-C), a condition similar to Kawasaki disease and Toxic Shock Syndrome, that was first identified in London hospitals in March. Six children went on to die. Three were aged under 28 days, had been born very premature and had complex congenital anomalies and bacterial sepsis. The other three who died were in the 15-18 age bracket, two of whom had profound neurodisabilities which compromised their respiratory systems. The other had a suppressed immune system as a result of cancer treatment and was also suffering from bacterial sepsis. No children without a serious comorbidity of an additional illness died, and neither did any child between the ages of 28 days and 15 years. However, the age group 10 – 14 years was over-represented among those admitted to critical care.
With the risks to children so infinitesimally low, schools known not to be a major driver of infection, and flu deadlier for children than COVID-19, why are children now being expected to wear masks in schools? To be fair to the Government, they have said that only children over 12 in local lockdown zones in indoor communal areas must wear a mask (and not in classrooms) – pretty minimal, though still unwarranted. However, not all schools have understood the Government’s advice. A reader has forwarded a letter he has received from the headteacher of Congleton High School – a Mr. J Barlow – informing him that the school, which is not in a lockdown area, will be requiring pupils to wear masks in communal areas “in line with” the Government guidance:
I am sure you will be aware that the Government recently announced that they had updated the guidance on face coverings in educational settings. This is now in line with the most recent advice from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and recommends the use of face coverings in secondary schools for students and staff when moving around communal areas in school and on all school transport.
Has Mr Barlow simply misunderstood the advice or is he misrepresenting it to parents to justify the school’s excessively cautious approach? If you have any other examples of schools behaving in a similarly draconian way, email us here.
Police Barely Enforcing Mask and Quarantine Rules
Just 38 fines have been issued by the police for ignoring mask rules on public transport, the Telegraph reports.
Police have issued fewer than 40 fines to people not wearing a face covering on public transport, new figures reveal.
The data from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) shows that just 38 notices were issued by officers from June 15 when face coverings became mandatory on buses and trains.
The Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has previously claimed that as many as one in 10 passengers break the rules.
Quarantine enforcement is even better worse, with just three fines issued by the police in the last month. The Telegraph again:
Police have fined just three people for breaching travel quarantine rules in the last month, new data from police forces in England and Wales has revealed.
The statistics, published by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) today, show that a total of three fixed penalty notices were issued to individuals who failed to self-isolate after arriving in England from overseas.
The three fines, amounting to £100 each, were issued by Lincolnshire, Merseyside and Sussex police forces.
Under new government rules, passengers arriving back to the UK after travelling to non-‘travel corridor’ countries must quarantine for 14 days – or risk a £100 fine or further penalties. Travellers submit their quarantine location to authorities via a ‘Passenger Locator’ form, which must be filled in on arrival.
The figures apply to penalties issued between 15 June and 17 August. In the four weeks prior to this, just one fine was issued by police for flouting quarantine rules.
The NPCC statistics reflect fines issued by territorial police forces, and do not include any penalities issued by the UK Border Force
Meanwhile, in France face nappies have become mandatory for pedestrians – although the French Government did concede at the last minute it was dangerous not to exempt joggers and cyclists.
Jed Mercurio is Bedwetter-of-the-Week
When Line of Duty writer Jed Mecurio decided to make a fuss about passengers on his BA flight not wearing masks, staff told him “they don’t challenge non-compliance as anyone can claim exemption”. The Mail has the story.
Line of Duty writer Jed Mercurio sparked debate on Twitter after suggesting flight attendants not forcing people to wear face coverings on a British Airways plane were “to blame” if production of series six of the hit show gets shut down.
Taking to social media yesterday afternoon, the Mercurio, 54, expressed his outrage that cabin crew would not challenge two maskless people in the row behind him when he was flying to Belfast.
He said a British Airways staff member told him the organisation does not require proof of medical exemption for not wearing a mask and as a result do ‘they don’t challenge non-compliance as anyone can claim exemption.’
He said: ‘So I’m on a @British_Airways flight to Belfast to self-isolate before resuming filming of #LineOfDuty and the two passengers in the row behind aren’t wearing masks and the flight attendant won’t challenge them. If we have to shut down again, you know who to blame.’
In fact, BA were only following government guidance on respect for those who are exempt, which says:
Those who have an age, health or disability reason for not wearing a face covering should not be routinely asked to give any written evidence of this, this includes exemption cards. No person needs to seek advice or request a letter from a medical professional about their reason for not wearing a face covering.
Well done, Jed. You are Lockdown Sceptics‘ Bedwetter-of-the-Week.
Round-Up
- “Twenty-second Covid tests being trialled by Heathrow in bid to ‘unlock travel’” – Something a bit more sensible than 14 days’ house arrest
- “How a false hydroxychloroquine narrative was created” – The tragedy of the politicisation of medical treatment
- “The campus grievance industry” – Doug Stokes in the Critic on the threat to academic freedom posed by the wokeflakes
- “BBC Retains Just Two Point Positive Rating” – Guido reports on a YouGov poll showing a large majority in favour of reforming the BBC licence fee and that only 16% agreed with the Proms song decision. Are Auntie’s days numbered?
- “Empires of ‘Progress’?” – David Betz and M.L.R. Smith argue on the CIEO site that today’s elite ‘decolonisers’ actually want to re-colonise society according to their own values
- “Only two areas recorded more than 20 coronavirus deaths in July” – The death count continues to fall, even as the UK records its highest number of new cases since June 12th. However, just 767 coronavirus patients remained in hospital as of August 25th – the lowest figure since March 27th
- “Heads I Win Tails You Lose: The Canadian Pandemic Model” – Searing indictment of Canada’s coronavirus modelling
- “Our ‘computer says no’ approach to quarantine has become an unfunny joke” – Oliver Smith in the Telegraph on the absurdity of the way the Government decides which countries get the quarantine treatment. It’s not Boris throwing darts at a map of the world, but it might as well be
- “Dutch weigh the cost of ‘light touch’ lockdown” – Bedwetting piece in the Telegraph by a journalist who has somehow missed the message about raw case data being junk. Comments are good
- “Prof Michael Levitt: here’s what I got wrong” – The legendary Stanford biologist who made the best early predictions of anyone is back talking to UnHerd‘s Freddie Sayers in a new must-see interview
- “Coronavirus latest: Care home deaths ‘being kept secret to protect providers’” – Care homes which failed their residents badly are being protected
- “Government Mandated Lockdowns Do Not Reduce COVID-19 Deaths” – New paper by John Gibson showing once more that lockdowns do not save lives
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Six today: “The Wreckers” by Rush, “Gross Negligence” by The Dallas Motorcade, “Sold Us Down the River” by Lee Rocker, “You Betrayed Us” by DJ Tururu, “Broken Dreams” by Prime Minister and “Vengeance” by New Model Army.
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”. We’ve also just introduced a section where people can arrange to meet up for non-romantic purposes. 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.
Small Businesses That Have Re-Opened
A few 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 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! If they’ve made that clear to customers with a sign in the window or similar, so much the better. Don’t worry if your entries don’t show up immediately – we need to approve them once you’ve entered the data.
“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 Oct 2nd to Oct 12th). 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 with lanyard for just £3.99 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 almost 40,000).
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
And here’s a round-up of the scientific evidence on the effectiveness of mask (threadbare at best).
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. (Will Jones did it today.) If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here. If you want us to link to something, don’t forget to include the HTML code, i.e. a link.
And Finally…
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I know Brits are very defensive of the NHS but… 7.5 weeks average waiting time in cardiology!? C’mon…
Also, first. When do i get my club member card?
Not all of them, just the sheep suffering from cognitive dissonance who recite a variation of “Wah, wonder of the world, wah it’s really cheap, most americans can’t afford health care and are left to die in the street, NHS being sold to Trump by eeevil tories etc etc”, then there is the blanket refusal to look at Oz or Austria for example as better systems for health outcomes.
Nor those whose relatives have died or become more seriously ill as a result of the NHS failing to deliver the services for which we have all our working lives.
These people have suffered not because Covid but because Reckless Lockdown.
That’s an issue about the political influence on the running of the NHS – i.e. the dire effect of this Tory government confecting this Covid narrative.
Unfortunately for your wish to blame the Tory govt, we aren’t thebonly country undergoing lockdown lunacy, police state behaviour and general maskholeness.
There is an answer of sorts and it is to remove politicians from the running of the health care system as thay have done in other countries.
The comparison with the massively expensive and inefficient failure of the US system just happens to be true. Lame market-driven hobby-horses from don’t strengthen the core argument here.
Why are you comparing the NHS with the US when there are 20 variations on Bismarkian social insurance to compare it with or indeed Australia or Japan.
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/an-australian-style-co-payments-system-for-healthcare
In the NHS you pay by time not money. You can’t jump to the top of the queue just because you have a wad of cash and a mild sense of unease about your angina.
People are in a priority queue based upon clinical need, not ability to pay. And we don’t have enough cardiologists – largely because quite a few work in the private medical system as well.
If the UK wanted to reduce waiting times overall, we’d have to close private hospitals that are currently using scarce cardiologists to treat people with money rather than people with need.
In any supply limited system, medicine and education being the main ones, private will necessarily poach from the public one.
Supply expansion of cardiologists takes decades – assuming you can find any more people with the ability and desire to be one.
And if you close off the route to private practice for cardiologists, then you reduce the supply of cardiologists because fewer people will want to be a cardiologist if they have no route to earning extra money on top of their NHS salary. C.f. also oncologists, surgeons and any other specialisms.
And what would they do instead that is going to pay them any more?
You can only reduce the supply if there is an alternative for them (which is what happens at the nursing level). And please don’t use the “go abroad” line. If they were going to do that they’d have done it already. Family and social ties hold people in a place – even cardiologists.
Public health is a monopoly, and monopoly rules apply.
This idea that private provision does anything other than poach capacity is another “private good, public bad” fantasy. They don’t really get involved in training.
I don’t know – train to do something different in the first place? If they’re already trained, then move to a different country with a different system where they can earn more money practicing their specialism? Or retire a little earlier than they otherwise would, rather than work just as hard for a reduced income? There isn’t a finite stock of proto-cardiologists sitting around destined to become only that. As you’ve noted, it takes a long time to take someone with relevant A levels, put them through medical school and relevant training until they’re at the level of knowledge and experience to become a consultant cardiologist. Many people put themselves through that process at least partly because of the rewards available at the end in terms of income. Any system that demands that people act purely out of altruism is destined for failure.
“As you’ve noted, it takes a long time to take someone with relevant A levels, put them through medical school and relevant training until they’re at the level of knowledge and experience to become a consultant cardiologist. Many people put themselves through that process at least partly because of the rewards available at the end in terms of income.” But in the UK hasn’t the state and society more generally paid for a lot of that education? This sounds a bit like a company that uses all of the public highways not wanting to pay road tax. Is there no more idealism connected to being a physician? Does the NHS pay so poorly that no cardiologist would be caught dead serving the NHS patient cohort? Especially since (in the USA, at least), I believe the poor have MORE heart problems than wealtlhier demographic groups. Anyone who earns a professional degree can choose whether to go into the public or the private sector also as, e.g., a teacher, an atty) . But to assume that getting trained involves NO debts to society and that you are actively SUFFERING and DISADVANTAGED if you choose to work honorably in the public sector—IMO that… Read more »
Good points. Thank you.
Come and work in private sector clinical research, where pay for decent physicians is double or more what the NHS pays, and you don’t have to get your hands dirty.
But I suppose someone who would ban private practice because someone else needs my labour but won’t pay for it would also ban that option. And before we know it we would be living in an old eastern bloc-style state where the border guards have their guns pointing inwards.
The NHS does not ‘ban’ private practice. There is plenty of room for that.
Most of them have already gone abroad, that’s how they got here.
I think we (the UK) should tell doctors that with IT we can effecytvely do without the 7 year training program to produce doctors. I serious;y think doctors don’t realise they are a short step away from superfluous.
What a load of crap!
While not agreeing with all you say the NHS does rely on rationing by waiting list hoping that you might cure yourself, go private or die before they have to do anything.
I have done both the first and second (chiropractor for pain relief) but not yet the third.
What is really needed are small health centres where lifestyle, nutrition exercise and proper old fashioned health spa therapies are used. Help in holistic and vitamin supplementation etc. to have a preventative approach before any more radical treatments are needed.
They called them Cottage Hospitals when I were lad, had my tonsils out at mine but they were mostly closed down only to be replaced with PFI Community Health Centres for NHS Trusts to play pass the parcel with.
That is just what I say to people who talk about more funding for the NHS – what we really need is a complete healthcare re-think!
Good idea, great ideal even… but at the risk of sounding negative I’m not convinced it will happen, certainly not on a widespread scale. Good health makes a lot of sense. It does not make a lot of money!
Let’s be honest, once you’ve stopped working and thus no longer contribute to the economy, the government would like you to die. It’s cheaper.
The lesson his that we should focus on prevention because we cannot depend on care from the NHS
I agree. I have been trying since the beginning of December to get a diagnosis and treatment, other than just painkillers, from the NHS.
Gave up and contacted a registered chiropractor and was diagnosed and treatment begun 2 days later.
I agree 100% with the principle of a national health service.
The “private good public bad” idea has some merit too though just because although private companies are often run by bungling and corrupt muppets they can only aspire to the level of excellence in those fields that even quite good governments are capable of.
Almost all private hospitals are currently closed anyway. They government had comedeered them all for the vast wave of non existent Covid deaths.
These are still comedeered and are basically not allowed to treat anyone else.
A friend who works for a drug supply company told me this a few weeks ago, then this weeks telegraph planet normal podcast confirmed it when a doctor confirmed it to Alison Pearson.
I have been using private hospitals since May as NHS is useless. Cardio, GI, etc. Not closed.
Our local “private” hospital was shut up tight. Wife couldn’t get a scan done until 2 weeks ago. Been waiting for a new appointment since march
Indeed.
Happened to swing by our local private hospital about six weeks ago, usually car park is jammed tight but only a handful of cars and a couple of lights on. It looked pretty much closed. It’s a Spires hospital so not sure about other private hospitals.
Our local Spires has been block-booked by the NHS. A friend going for NHS prostate treatment said he was the only patient.
In addition my friend told me the government had at the start told all the drug supply companies “we want as much of drugs xyz as you can get”
So all the supply companies stockpiled the drugs. Then a month or so in, no one needing the drugs so they still have warehouses full of them.
The issue is all this happened so fast there were no contracts in place, just letters of intent. Now the drug companies want paying but the government are refusing to pay up using the excuse that. “Second wave” is imminent and they will need the supplies then! My friend said it’s already with the lawyers…..
The same thing happed with the private hospitals. They turned away all their other patients to make room for the government expected pandemic. No contacts….. hospitals still closed and basically empty, expecting the government to pay for the empty beds.
What do their paying customers/subscribers/members have to say about that?
Just so at my local Nuffield though they are now taking a few non Covid NHS patients to ease the backlog.
I think the fundamental issue at the moment is not that we have to account for time lag in providing qualified doctors for specific areas – that should be normal future planning..
The problem is that the NHS has been virtually closed for 6 months to anything other than Covid and related illnesses. Hence the empty hospitals and lengthened waiting lists for treatments.
If you have a wad of cash you don’t use the NHS, unless you are showboating like Boris Johnson.
yes – i am booking my impending stress related heart attack for middle of October . I think i can hold it off until then
You may jest,but UK Column were reporting a few months ago about an appointment being needed for A&E.
Envy of the world
How does one contact the editor to send some material?
See the last link at the bottom of the daily “shameless begging” section above
Stupidity is trending and it’s a very contagious disease.
It’s congenital. And chronic, but flares up from time to time, though never so badly as now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkszQA4RBVE
At around hour 2 25 minutes Seb Gorka interviews Mike Graham. They talk about the Last Night of the Proms and other subjects.
Interesting question at the beginning of that, “If Trump self identified as a woman, would that make him the first female president of the US?” I can’t see him doing it!
But it would create a very interesting development in wokeism!
IDK… maybe! Reminds me of the story about the British Rapper, Zuby who walked into the gym, identified as female, and then proceeded to immediately break the women’s deadlifting record ?! 🙂
“Those who can make you believe in absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
Voltaire.
Great video examining this in relation to lockdown.
YouTube Dave Cullen
channel = computing forever
(sorry, can’t do links from an Android).
To say that 2020 has caused me to self-reproach for choosing to live in a Blue State would be an understatement. But at least it’s not Melbourne – so far.
Picked up my prescription from CVS this week and the pharmacist asked me if I would like a flu shot. Easy No and she was fine with it. Could have prefaced it with Hell to the F, after what I experienced in 2019 when acquiescing to a flu shot for the first time ever, during my annual physical.
I had severe flu in my late 20’s that kept me in bed for 7 days. But never since then.
This flu vaccine last year… best way I can sum up its effect is that if I drew a line of latitude across the top of my nose and another line just below my shoulders, in between those lines it felt like I was swimming in garbage. Not a facsimile of illness – actual pollution.
So I don’t know if the Covid vaccine will be enforced at the end of a gun barrel, but it feels reassuring to have had at least one practice run of saying no to the needle.
‘No’ is becoming a very important word.
This is where the silver lining of mass stupidity may appear for us.
There will probably be enough gullible Idiots out there who will dive head first into the vaccine programme that governments won’t feel the need to mandate it.
They created the hysteria, let them take the bullet for the rest of us and provide us with the artificial herd immunity. Hopefully the side effects won’t be too bad for them.
Great point. The Covidista will want to achieve Neil Ferguson’s herd immunity threshold with the vaccine. It’s looking as though ~85% of people are gullible idiots who will rush straight over the top and take the first vaccine they are offered. In fact, they will take great pleasure from it, signalling their virtue in no uncertain terms. So there should be no need to mandate the vaccine.
Of course, the Covidista will know this, and it will irritate them that the independent minded minority are getting away with it. So I think they will still push to make it mandatory. It will be posited as ‘insurance’ or a ‘safety margin’.
Yes, useful Guinea Pigss the lot of them if they think a novel vaccine can be properly tested in a couple of months
My optician, married to someone who works for Astra Zeneca, assures me that it will be quite safe because they’re using ‘dead DNA’ and that they develop a new flu vaccine every year so the fact that it’s only taking a few months is fine.
Having had a similar experience to Arkleston with the 2018 flu vaccine (quite likely one of the worst decisions I ever made since I believe it led to lots of respiratory problems which I still have) I do not feel very reassured. MW
p.s. I love Barney’s ‘going over the top’ analogy.
Never had a flu jab, despite in recent years GP, my employer & pharmacies all pushing it at me.
I already suffer from bronchial problems and if I get an infection I find it very difficult to shift, on occasion having to resort to antibiotics, if it gets extremely bad.
So what MW about flu jab leading to respiratory problems, fill me with fear.
You are very sensible and I don’t want to fearmonger (we have experts for that 🙂 ). Anyway, I am asthmatic so I caved in to medical pressure to have the flu jab in autumn 2018. Interestingly, there were shortages that year and I felt ‘lucky’ to finally get one at our local pharmacy. James Corbett has a view on big pharma creating shortages to encourage vaccine take-up which was an aspect I hadn’t considered but of course it now seems obvious. I can’t prove that the flu jab led to a 2019 with almost chronic and ever-worsening respiratory problems – it might have happened anyway – but some instinct made me reluctant to have another jab in late 2019 by which time I had developed quite severe bronchitis. My GP and the practice nurse did their damndest but I stuck to my guns. Given it was last December I don’t think I had CV19 but I’ll never know. AG caught it 3 weeks later. Since then I have seen numerous references to studies indicating that the 2019 flu jab made people more prone to CV19. I think the correlation was first noticed in the US (military) and in Italy… Read more »
I have never had the flu jab, despite blandishments. I don’t get sick and rarely even have a cold. But three years ago I got very sick in February. My sister, too, and some others. Really bad (headache, bad sore throat, lung congestion, couldn’t eat, headache, diarrhoea—the works, had to sleep all day), knocked me out for about two weeks (lost five pounds) and then took about three weeks to recover strength.
My reason for mentioning this is that I assume that that was a bad flu, and that I got some **** antibodies*** from it just for dealing with it and recovering.
No illness of any kind since then.
Not taking any jabs at all.
This is why I welcome the odd illness with open arms. I don’t take a thing and just let my body deal with it. My last bout of the flu was almost 20 years ago
My my she should stick to eyes – she is absolutely clueless
They don’t intend to let anyone escape. That’s why they are developing the vaccine passports.
I think Save To Death is correct, life is going to be made difficult for those not accepting the vaccines.
Do not necessarily think it will be mandatory, but formally simple pleasures will be made difficult or impossible.
Public transport, not if you are not vaccinated, breakfast at a cafe, not if you are not vaccinated, etc. etc.
i keep hearing this but that would require a massive electronic control grid where everyone is checked at every entrance. It ain’t gonna happen. They don’t know what they are doing, they are useless. Life will get back to normal slavery, you know why? Because it’s not stopped.
It’s already up and running in China Biker, every aspect of your life run by facial recognition; they don’t track your phone or your card they track you.
Enemy Of The State, Eddie Murphy, didn’t go nearly far enough in showing how they can cancel you at will.
They can read your face through a mask btw.
Not going so well, apparently: https://www.activistpost.com/2020/08/wearing-masks-stumps-facial-recognition-algorithms.html
Meanwhile:
https://www.activistpost.com/2020/08/robocop-is-here-new-police-helmet-scans-for-covid-19-and-uses-facial-recognition.html
MW
Inclined to agree. Also look at other countries that have had to maintain large electronic databases with personal records – Israel, hacked. 7-odd million records. India, hacked. 1 billion records, inc. intimate personal info. Criminals will have no need for a vaccine passport; they will just take someone else’s!
If the side effects include infertility it will reduce the number of future zombies, can’t be bad.
Urgh, I used to feel so lucky that I was a Melburnian. Now my city is being used by sceptics as one of the worst places. It’s miserable here, the rest of the country also has treated us like pariahs and forcing us to go for this elimination nonsense.
at least you are not venezuelan like me 🙂
Tell us the worst, Lorenzo. We need to know.
Hi Caramel, I am sorry and furious for what you are going through. I send you good wishes and positive thoughts. As long as resistance exists in the minds of the oppressed, there is always hope.
I know! I always hoped to visit Melbourne because it was number 1 on some of those “quality of life” lists. What a shame—such a basically healthy city being reduced to a prison.
My friend is from Melbourne. I am from UK. I visited once about 30 years ago and it was a lovely place. Sadly he has bought right into the panic – the twat. He even said Alan Jones should be shot and pissed on. I had to unfollow him on FB due to the amount of CV drivel he was posting. I have no desire to go there ever again.
Points arising from Toby’s topics today Hospital waiting lists. There are no waiting lists locally for Orthopaedics or Ophthalmology, just lots of people waiting since both departments are still given over to the Covid in anticipation of the Second Wave. So nothing is happening there at all. Dead Children We have known that just 6 children died for months and thankfully no more have died since. They chose not to celebrate this at some earlier time because it would not have promoted Project Fear. For people who think they are clever at manipulating the public’s opinion they left it a bit late to “Reveal” this now in an attempt to persuade the population, that thay have scared, that it is safe to send their children to school. Quarantine Quarantine Compliance is checked by an outfit called Isolation Ensure/ance (their word sp ?), an offshoot of Track’n’Trace. They phone the recently returned to asses their Compliance and, so I am told, they can tell by the tone of your voice if you are fibbing and put that in their little report. Ryanair man dragged of plane. Yesterday (Friday 28/8 BBC R2) one of Jeremy Vines guests ( didn’t catch his name,… Read more »
Dead children … I remember a report on one of the newborns in the Daily Fail, which stated categorically that there was nothing else wrong with it.
Did you hear another caller to JV yesterday get away with citing NZ as an example of what we should have done…we then had the usual complete change of subject that he does every 30 minutes so no further discussion of the subject.
No I missed that part but, to be fair, the show is designed to have three topics to discuss each day.
Early in lockdown there was a media furore about Londoners ‘invading’ Brockwell (?) Park, X,000s were described as lockdown louts.
JV crunched the numbers and came up with 1 visitor per acre per daylight hour. His finest hour having since got back in line.
Brockwell Park – home of the Krishnamurti School – J. Krishnamurti (now deceased) being a popular guru/spiritual teacher at one time. Can’t imagine his followers as ‘lockdown louts’! Ha ha.They tended to be very wealthy as a rule (1 visitor per acre sounds about right) .if anyone’s interested they have a very nice retreat centre not far from Southampton.
When is the Spectator going to campaign for an end to ALL Covid restrictions and the repeal of the monstrous Coronaviris Act 2020?
Fraser knows it should happen.
Toby knows it.
Ross Clarke
Dr John Lee
Macron not ruling out another full lockdown. Parisians interviewed in saying they agree with the new law saying masks must be worn outside.
This EVIL BRAINWASHING isn’t ending.
Sure surprised by the enthusiasm shown by Parisians but then again I’m sure their MSM feed is just as lethal as in any other Western democracy (so-called)
I’m sure there must be some of our kind in that wonderful city.
There will be. I lived there and know that they are seriously cynical about their politicians. They lived through far darker days than us in the war and whilst there are very few still alive from those days many children and grandchildren know the stories.
My retired mum and dad went for a short city break to Paris, a ‘Youth’ pinched her handbag below the Eiffel Tower, part of the Paris Ecperience I told her upon their return.
But was he masked and did he socially distance?. That is all that is important these days.
I expect he was masked and running away would count as social distancing
I was in Marseille last weekend. Huge signs everywhere saying masks compulsory. Almost no one wearing them. No police control. Before that in Malaga. Same rules. Police cars roaming the streets. Everyone putting masks on when they see the police. Is it because France had a much shorter experience of fascism ?
One thing it does say is that everybody over there except the ultra-zombies knows that masks are useless except as an instrument of state ontrol.
I watched on Italian TV News. Of course, they only showed pro mask people
I think they would assume they were not allowed to show any opposing. Cox pop is always fake.
Vox pop sorry, autocorrect
no i think cox pox sums it up nicely
Anti-mask demonstration planned for Place de la Nation this afternoon
I just filled in a survey about masks on Local Live online (mirror news group) giving suitable skeptic responses and a redundant email just to see the results.
They did not give the results and the ‘comment here’ button led to an error message. Perhaps we are giving them the wrong answers.
It sounds as if all the governments are getting the same order: You haven’t trashed your countries enough yet so more full lockdowns required. The 2nd wave propaganda is relentless, as you say evil brainwashing – and it works! MW
Yep I had to briefly endure my fellow golfers all talking about the impending 2nd wave while walking up the 18th fairway last weekend. Luckily my tee shot had gone right while the rest of them were well left of me. We had managed a Corona free round up until that point and unfortunately my strokes spiked upward on that final hole 🙂
“NHS Hospitals Deserted ‘Like the Mary Celeste’”
Did we ever get good data and the full story on how vital the Great NHS Shutdown actually was back when it was introduced, back in the days of “flatten the curve”, at the peak of the epidemic in March and April? I recall seeing stories of barely used Nightingales, but what was the ICU usage at the peak and how close to capacity? I seem to recall reports that regional capacity was never exceeded, though presumably that was in part due to rapid expansion.
They turned various departments over to ICU at my local hospital, at Easter they had 80 Covid patients, 14 on ventilation most survived. Never reached full capacity. Local Nightingale was never used for Covid but is repurposed for catching up on the backlog.
London Nightingale only use a small part of its capacity probably because despite being built commendably quickly, Covid in London was in decline when it was commissioned
The data is available – sort of – but it will take some time to work out the answer. The NHS has published daily data on admissions, beds occupied and mechanical ventilator beds occupied. I haven’t found it yet, but am fairly sure that data is also available on capacity per hospital/trust. The fact that I haven’t found it may mean either that it isn’t there, or that I just haven’t found it. What this won’t take into account is capacity before the significant amount of resorganisation that went on in the first part of March, that dramatically increased ICU capacity (not including the Nightingales). As I recall, there was one London hospital reporting that it was in danger of being “overtopped” and I don’t think I saw a single other report of anything similar (and I’m quite sure the BBC would have been all over the story if there had been more). The London Nightingale had 19 people in it at peak (again – from recollection). However, I’m not sure if it’s possible to answer the question of whether ‘standard’ ICU capacity would have been exceeded if it hadn’t been significantly increased. Or at least, there probably is a… Read more »
“As I recall, there was one London hospital reporting that it was in danger of being “overtopped”“
I recall the anecdotal mention of a London hospital being “overwhelmed”, that David Starkey suggested played a part in panicking the government at the crucial moment.
Well, memory may play tricks, but I had thought that was after 23rd March. Might very well be wrong though.
That was Northwick Park. It has been overwhelmed before. It has a catchment area of Harrow and Wembley and beyond.
Error.
Northwick Park hospital,but it played no part in the decision to lockdown,that had already been made
It was reported on March 20th. Three weeks lockdown to “flatten the curve” while the NHS caught up might have been justifiable.
However, this prolonged foot-dragging and cruel cat-and mouse games are clearly about something else entirely and it doesn’t smell good.
Thank you, thank you, NHS
For all this mess.
You don’t impress
Me one bit.
Killer, killer NHS
Now confess
You are a cess
Pit
Of s..t.
clap, clap, clap.
Robert F Kennedy Jr. in Berlin with Ärtze Für Aufklärung
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zuiQ07DYJ4
That was an excellent watch.
thank you.
Excellent.
When I first watched, it continued to an address by RFK spelling out what is happening. Tried again, but it was missing. Very annoyed I didn’t grab the link. Does anyone have it?
Robert F Kennedy Jr sums up this moment so powerfully and succinctly – a great watch. Thanks for the link.
Robert F Kennedy Jr is a hero
I’m rapidly becoming a convert. Must admit was initially sceptical (‘oh jeez not another Kennedy…’) but he is very articulate and makes some very good arguments. Also, he was talking not long ago about his father’s assassination, he has been campaigning for a new trial for Sirhan & pointed out the massive flaws in the physical & ballistics evidence, inc. the fact that the gun introduced at trial, well it probably wasn’t even Sirhan’s gun! Kamala Harris at the time (California) was the one who took the decision to refuse to reopen the case.
He’s got the leadership qualities that are void in our leadership
Having read the headline and following the wonderful Karol Sikora on Twitter who has banging on the drum of missed and delayed treatments for the likes of cancer, I was thinking that we should change the name of the NHS (National Health Service) to either the:
No Health Service
or the
No Hope Service
Which do you prefer?
National Hancock Slavery
National Handcock no-Service
Notional Health Service
or
National Hysteria System
National Hysteria System – great!!! 👍
😂
In Ireland, the equivalent is the Health Service Executive (HSE) so I propose Hysteria Seeding Executive.
Notional Health Service gets my vote – genius!
National Covid Service.
National Hysteria Service.
Typical Coronavirus science report from the BBC. Coronavirus: Children’s role in spread puzzles scientistshttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53946420 For a start, it’s a report on a ‘study’, but it doesn’t include a link to the study. Why not? One might almost conclude that the BBC reserves the right to spin a narrative from a scientific report but be reluctant to be challenged on it. Second it’s written in that patronising style where it answers its own ‘questions’. Goodness knows where this idea has come from, but it’s likely to be from the same place that suggests that full stops are too confrontational for today’s sensitive young people. Simple statements would be bruising to the ego of the reader so have to be softened by being the answer to an imaginary question, instead. And finally, it’s an example of where Covid ‘science’ boils down to little more than opinion and narrative. For all the ‘research’ and the admonishment of ‘deniers’ and ‘sceptics’ that the ‘educated’ classes might indulge in, the final statement boils down to nothing more than what a man down the pub might tell you: Dr DeBiasi believes that while the “vast majority of infected children have mild or unrecognised disease,” they may… Read more »
Phrases like “logic dictates” always ring an alarm bell when they’re surrounded by such vague claims. They’re essentially saying “we have no evidence and have done no studies, but in the absence of anything useful – here are my preconceptions”.
Very true. I am going to save that comment and use it wherever I can. “Your preconceptions are not evidence”
We all get infuriated by media bias, but we should never be puzzled by it. The media are just supplying the goods they’ve been paid to supply:
https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-funding.php
See para 6 especially.
By mistake posted in yesterdays edition.This is serious misinformation.Fake news
Warning.Fake news BBC this morning
Coronavirus: Children’s role in spread puzzles scientistsBBC says RNA fragments in high in PCR tests is the same as live transmissible virus.Dangerous misinformation.See the article quoted
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2770150
“Thus, we could not answer the question about infectivity and the infectious period in this cohort study”
“The detection of virus RNA in respiratory specimens in this study does not necessarily imply that viable virus is present. However, if proven infectious (because most of the children were asymptomatic, were presymptomatic, or had unrecognizable symptoms in this study), the transmission potential of SARS-CoV-2 in children and its effect on the community might be greater than expected.”
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.25.20162107v2.full.pdf
“No live virus was isolated from any respiratory samples taken after day 8 of symptoms in three studies, or beyond day 9 despite persistently high viral RNA loads.”
Please defund the BBC
standard BBC approach.. For example on climate change the BBC report the findings, do not link to the study, and always mention that “scientists say…..” to give it authority , When the study is looked at, it doesnt say what the BBC says, or it is based on dodgy data and of course they never mention if the study is funded by the pro climate change lobby.
Total Covid 19:84 related deaths reported in all Europe yesterday: 339 out of 741,400,000 people. (worldometers website)
That’s down from a couple of days ago.
The second ripple is clearly over.
Hancock is a happy man as he scatters zombie fodder far and wide, aided and abetted by the faithful Beeb. Oh, and he’s going to cancel Christmas, of course.
Meanwhile, BBC2’s Newsnight reported that a “reasonable worse case planning assumption” presented to the Government said there could be up to 81,000 excess deaths directly attributed to Covid-19 between July and next March.
The broadcaster said the figures were in a document signed off by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) for the Cabinet Office at the end of July.
The document stressed that the figures represent a scenario, not a prediction, Newsnight said.
Sorry, lost the link, but it was in the DT.
I’ve got a scenario for them. Covid might have mutated into something more benign, it is not expected that many future cases will actually become ill. The government will probably include winter flu sufferers in public information which the public might choose not to believe. Realising they have been taken for fools this might well result in a tsunami of mask burning, maybe.
Christmas is already cancelled by my NHS Trust, staff have been told they must not organise or attend any of the usual departmental Xmas do’s.
This from a nurse who was looking forward to an informal late summer gathering at a tiny old fashioned riverside pub set in acres of grounds, use of gazebos booked in case of inclement weather which they were ordered to cancel because the Covid.
Love it how they can see three months ahead. Bit like when government cancelled exams, which in the end they easily could’ve held.
Christmas should be cancelled for the NHS so that they can catch up on the healthcare for the serious illnesses they have criminally neglected these past months and not for this scam.
Not the nurses fault Suzyv, they worked through the start of Covid despite being told by the press that it was like a return of the bubonic plague while management went home and left them to it.
It’s bedwetting knobhead managers ‘working from home’ pretending to do something in the Fight Against Covid.
We made our curry house manager laugh last night by telling him we were really sorry that Eid got screwed up but, if it was any comfort, they were going to cancel Christmas as well. Grim humour but we will not be cowed! MW
I self-cancelled last Christmas and New Year. Everything was just so incredibly shit back then I decided to totally flip the whole thing off. I didn’t engage with it at all. Back then, with the bastard Tories and the MSM trashing Corbyn, the May Bot, the mendacious suspension of parliment, the mendacious fake ellection, the Australian fires, the brainwashed public, climate change bullshit reaching a fever pitch…all of that made me feel very UN-“Christmasey”.
I just felt alienated and miserable, with no hope for a better year ahead. I could see the clouds of totalitarian fascism gathering.
This is from the ‘leaked Sage report’ and was on BBC website today (sorry, but ‘know thine enemy’ is the watchword so I do visit that site).
The variables are comical:
The figures, which the scientists say have a wide range of uncertainty, suggest around 2.4% of infected people could be hospitalised (range: 0.0%-8.9%) with 20.5% of hospitalised patients going into ICU (range: 1.5% – 35.25) and 23.3% (range: 1.2% – 43.3%) of all hospitalised patients dying.
The model also predicts an overall infection fatality ratio of 0.7% (0.0% – 9.7%).
At least Carl Heneghan gets quoted:
Prof Carl Heneghan, from Oxford University, said some of the assumptions made in the model were “implausible” and that the report assumes that “we’ve learnt nothing from the first wave of this disease”.
A luvverly bit of logic here, re care home deaths:
Responding to Freedom of Information requests, the regulators said they were concerned standards of care would fall, and the number of available beds would drop, if customers abandoned operators with high mortality rates, The Guardianreported.
https://inews.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-latest-care-home-deaths-uk-kept-secret-cqc-care-inspectorate-612370
Good luck with keeping that quiet. About 3 months ago an interactive map was made available showing England & Wales Covid deaths broken down by wards.
Most wards in my city had none, 4 showed ‘spikes’ of up to 6 deaths and everyone in the community knows which 3 nursing homes these were.
The fourth was in a sheltered housing complex for the genteel elderly, probably caused by by the NHS sending Covid infected victims back home.
Or care workers going in and out.
These 20 second tests being trialled at Heathrow are just more normalising of this madness.
Fully agree. If you do another test for sars-cov-1, another for an adenovirus, another few for some rhinoviruses, another for flu… That’s more than 20 seconds. Then you have to do them all twice to make up for mediocre sensitivity of the test. Then you have to account for the fact that the test might be detecting “dead” RNA rather than acive infection.
Then you need to question why you are jeopardising someone’s holiday in order to allow “safe travel” between a country that has a certain level of exposure, to another country that has… about the same level of exposure.
Doing the same for journeys from Euston into Camden would make just as much sense.
Agree. Lets stop the madness. It is the same as having a cold or the flu, in fact more people die from flu than Covid-19. Our immune systems can manage it —- We DO NOT test the population for colds/flu
They might in the future if we continue to allow Public Health to run the country.
Laurence Fox has added his voice to no antisocial distancing and mandatory muzzling in schools:
https://twitter.com/LozzaFox/status/1299434925821767681
Well done Lauren Fox
The Global Elite & The Coronavirus Coup D’état With Patrick Wood
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKdsL57SUZo&feature=emb_logo
About 30 min they start addressing what we should do to put a stop to the coup.
DO NOT COMPLY
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=peter+finch+network+i%27m+as+mad+as+hell&t=opera&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Ddib2-HBsF08
The NHS is not a source of national pride, it’s a national embarrassment, and Toby’s damning update today just proves the point. My 87-year-old granddad was due to have a cataracts operation earlier this August. He was told to isolate for 14 days both before and after the operation – so effectively a whole month in isolation. Still, he dutifully isolated for the two weeks before the operation. Then just a couple of days before the procedure, he got a call from the hospital saying the operation had been cancelled. The reason? ‘Surgeon on holiday’. I also have a friend who even before the ‘pandemic’ (read: seasonal disease event) really got taken for a ride by the NHS surgeons for a back operation that was causing her so much pain that she could barely move or sit down for long periods. Her operation got pushed back three times to my knowledge and each time they struggled to get hold of the surgeon who was also ‘on holiday’. This is why the fetishisation of the NHS sickens me so deeply. It is not ‘the envy of the world’ in any way – it is average at best and totally unfit for… Read more »
It wouldn’t be any better with any other system as the data shows https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6326
The NHS does work, but could be better. Just like the private train companies.
The problem is that the area doesn’t respond well to competitive structures. You don’t really want your hospital going bust in the middle of your open heart surgery. And if they can’t go bust, or degrade as they are failing, then competition won’t improve anything.
If we want a better health service, we have to decide as a nation to put more people into it. And as we have seen due to Covid we don’t really need all those people stuffed into trains and producing yet more advertising, PR and marketing. What we need is more nurses and more care assistants.
So we should just take everyone out of the productive economy and make them all work at caring for the sick?
Who says they are productive? Demonstrably over the last six months they are not, or the country would have starved.
All we have is the people in the nation. We need to look at what they are doing and ask if that is actually more important than social care or nursing.
So you’re envisioning a society where the shelves are stocked (presumably with uniform grey labelling on all foodstuffs, since advertising and graphic design is not productive and so should be binned) and logistics happen and anyone not directly involved in making sure the nation is fed is designated a role as either clinician or patient?
Indeed. People say they want the NHS to be even better, but don’t want to pay extra taxes. People want better schools, better roads, etc, but don’t want to pay more taxes. They are happy to pay the tax they pay, but want money to spend on “non-essential” stuff, entertainment etc. They vote with their feet and their wallets. Anyone who says they are not making tradeoffs of this kind is just deluded, and people who want the moon on a stick without having to pay for it just need to grow up a bit and get real. If people actually wanted stripped down, simple lives, they would already be living them. Some are, most are not.
I was in rural Ukraine a few years before the USSR collapsed and that is precisely what the shops were like.
Incidentally, one of our party required hospitalisation on the return journey and had nothing but praise for her three days stay.
That was in Lvov/Lviv/Lemburg, being on the western extremity might have been a bonus.
Productive economy?
German/Swiss/Austrian/ Dutch hospital systems all have competition built in to the system and respond well to competitive structures.
The main difference is the lack of a Stalinist management structure and people can choose to spend more of their own money on health care, personal choices and all that.
Improvements inthe rest of society since industrial revolutuon have come from improvements in efficiency not from “putting more people on it”
There is a well staffed NHS at this very moment, but the government and its overpaid NHS senior managers have colluded, under the guise of Covid-19, to turn it into a third world entity.
Why isn’t the NHS now working normally? Just what is stopping it doing what it is supposed to do? It’s not because of Covid-19, whatever that was. Covid-19 was clearly on its last legs by early April and it has long left and is totally gone. Strangely though, the government seems to know where it is hiding and when it will be back. How cosy that relationship is, perhaps there is a hot line.
Government ministers, many paid officials and scientists should end up going to jail over this corrupt mega-fiasco. And then there is the eugenicist Bill Gates, our governments best friend and a supplier of big wads of cash, but more about the crazed vaccine tsar, another time.
Well said Poppy. And every debate about the NHS is always met with cries “oh you want it like America then” as if that’s the only option. They never stop to think that if the NHS is indeed “the envy of the world” then why is it that no Commonwealth country has copied it at the bare minimum? Why is it that the likes of France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland have better health services than the UK? I wasn’t born and raised in this country so the worship and adulation of what I have started calling the No Hope Service is baffling to me to say the least. I’ve not had much to do with the NHS save for women’s health services and they have been decent but its a pain to get an appointment. What has frustrated me is the inability to sign up for GP services and as a result I have boycotted it by refusing to register for a GP – the charade puts me off and is a damning indictment of a system that has been flawed from the start and is incapable of reform. Like you I would happily not pay tax towards the NHS as… Read more »
“then why is it that no Commonwealth country has copied it at the bare minimum? ”
They have. The Australian system is very similar to ours. Every GP surgery in the UK is a private business. Every hospital is part of a private trust. All of them offer both private and public services.
Where do you see the difference?
And it is a myth that other EU countries have better health than the UK. They deploy more of their internal resources on healthcare than we do. https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6326
I lived in Australia (Brisbane) for a few years and their system seems to work much more smoothly.
The majority, I believe, have some form of private health insurance as well as the state Medicare system which to me seems equitable – if you can afford it then why shouldn’t you pay for the service?
The upshot being, yes you pay maybe $30 dollars a pop to see the GP and if entitled can claim X amount back via Medicare. The point being, you can actually see a GP when you need one. Same with consultants, etc.
A not insignificant proportion of people in this country also have private health insurance, including through their employer – but virtually never use it unless they have something seriously wrong with them that requires specialist treatment. Anecdotal, but I and a friend of mine at various points have both actively tried to give insurance details to pay for various minor treatments for family members (A&E) and have been turned down because the hospital couldn’t be bothered with the paperwork.
I would think that a reasonably sized impact could be made on NHS funding if we just changed the expectation so that treatment and care was paid for first through insurance, if available and then out of the general funding pot if not. At the very least, I would be very surprised if that didn’t more than cover any additional admin costs.
Totally agree. It would probably encourage people to go to see the doc when they needed to, rather than feeling guilty – “Oh I don’t want to bother them”.
The point being you can actually see a GP! YES, precisely.
and is treated with respect – NHS GPs think they do you a favour
Australia actually has what is known as a co-pay system ( see linked explanation by a Dr here: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/an-australian-style-co-payments-system-for-healthcare)
Another difference between Oz & UK health systems is you can choose to see a different GP at the drop of a hat if you choose. GPs cannot act a blocking gatekeepers like they do here.
Totally agree.
Get rid of the `NHS and replace it with a system similar to that in Switzerland – everybody has access to affordable world class care, the Government subsidises the people with low or no incomes.
Swiss healthcare costs of 12.2% of GDP are the world’s second highest after the United States where healthcare consumes 17.1% of GDP.
Switzerland has a population of some 8.5M, including some of the world’s wealthiest people who maintain one of their many homes there. Not comparable to UK.
Tbe NHS idea is awesome. Free care at the point of need. It has had 75 years of political storm ravage through its major organs. Now it is a weak and frail shadow of it’s former self. Put good people back in. Rip out the installed change agents (their word not mine) and pulp anyone belonging to a public health directorate would be my first morning in power.
It may be free at the point of need, but it isn’t ‘free’, and taxpayers might wonder what they are getting for their money at the moment.
I’m not sure if these figures are accurate, but I suspect that most people would be surprised at how much they pay for their ‘free’ service:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/583499/NHS-England-costs-YOU-5-000-a-year-and-the-burden-on-taxpayers-is-only-going-to-rise
I also have a friend whose operation for his cataract was cancelled in April – no future date given – and now can’t see out of his left eye.
The NHS has been mendatiously elevated to the level of a deity. Think back, this band of evil idiots in the cabinet have been wearing their stupid little NHS badges for years while hacking it to bits.
The Olympic opening ceremony made the NHS THE CENTRAL FEATURE of their enormous
death-cult ritualperformance. The almost total obsession with the management of the NHS and “SAVING” it from imaginary COVIDS to the exclusion of EVERYTHING else is just pure gas-lighting, smoke and mirrors to obscure the transformation of society and the UK’s medical system into a new global health system.The NHS has been carefully positioned in the minds of the public to be the pivot or perhaps the lever for this societal transformation.
As Annie said:
“clap clap clap clap”
I always thought that the whole NHS deification being based around the rainbow logo was odd as this is also the logo of the LGBT movement .
Feel free to make your own punchline. I am too woke to add one .
Or, more realistically, clap trap clap trap
Great post. The NHS is an outlier in the world of health systems. As you say, if it was so great then why has no other country copied it? The book below has a chapter with a very good comparison of a number of health systems across the world. No system is perfect, but in terms of outcomes (which is what should matter), I would much rather live in Switzerland, South Korea, Germany, Iceland, Japan, France, The Netherlands, The US or many other countries. My wife has lived in Belgium and I’ve lived in France so we’ve both experienced what a good universal health system is. The NHS is a joke. I come across so many people in my line of work who have experienced the most appalling experiences with the great NHS. One example. I know someone, who happens to be a very experienced nurse, who was prescribed a near lethal dose of a normally benign drug by her GP and ended up in hospital. If two good things can come out of this CoronaCrap (as my better half calls it) then it’ll be a proper debate on how we deliver healthcare in the UK plus realisation that the… Read more »
everyone knows that the NHS is a good idea, but that it is fundamentally flawed in the way that it has been set up and run. For years governments have known that. And so every few years it gets reorganised in an attempt to make it better but all that tends to do is put another layer of management in and make the whole thing more sclerotic.
What no government has done is have the will to investigate a full root and branch change. For many years Anne Widdecombe was trying to get a cross party investigation started to look at how to do this. But it never happens. All the governments (of all colours) will do is argue about how much money, and how much extra money, to throw at the problem in the hope that that will fix it. Which it wont. The NHS is a bottomless pit that will absorb all the money thrown at it and still ask for more.
Even some simple changes are ignored….. reduce the admin and management. remove the targets.
The problem with the NHS is that it is a utopian idea run on Stalinist lines.Rather than a golden age it was in crisis from the start.It has been downhill ever since and anyone who has used it recently will have experienced a lack of care.
Free at the point of use creates a unlimited demand which can never be satisfied.
The telling point is that our envy of the world has never been copied by any major nation; also it is a political football with endless reorganisations and disasters like PFI.
I think Covid will be the death knell because it just withdrew services for anything else,what use of it being free if it won’t treat you.
The problem is you wouldn’t trust this government to come up with anything better.
It is of course entirely coincidental that one system has nanagedmto come up with:
1) Liverpool Care Pathway.
2) Staffordshire feeding plan
3) Covid patients in care homes plan.
Once is happenstance etc, but when are we going to take seriously complete reform of a system that is so morally bankrupt as to even conceive of these methods of treating the elderly.
They put my dying father in the Liverpool path.
I will never forgive them for that, never, never, never.
The NHS wasn’t allowed to be set up as per the original vision. The doctors were staunchly against it, so even back in its beginning, the result was a compromise. It hasn’t improved since.
France sees biggest rise in CV cases since March. “Exponential rise”. BBC website report.
All that pain suffering for nothing!
Lockdowns don’t work.
Except ‘cases’ = ‘positive’ tests. (Someone might break this news to Toby Young!) MW
Judging by their own lights, by their own hysteria, so that a case in March = a
case in August. I’m also judging this by the Swedish standard which made clear this would happen.
Apologies, that should read:
Lockdowns don’t work to sort out a virus but they are just the job for wrecking whole countries’ ways-of-life, breaking down people’s will and destroying everything we hold dear and they are the gift that keeps on giving.
And, of course, ‘cases’ = ‘positive’ tests i.e. pure propaganda and a tool of control. Someone might break this news to Toby Young!) MW
and Will Jones! 🙂 MW
Miriam.. i agree ,, i have pointed this out here on numerous occasions. A “case” implies that someone actually has the disease and is ill. Whereas as you say, we are referring to “positive tests” which may be false positives, duplicate tests, asymptomatic hosts etc.
Makes a big difference if the public perceive 20 cases as 20 people being ill (and possibly going to die) rather than 20 people being tested positive and one of them having a runny nose !
I think I must point this stuff out to at least one person on a daily basis and it always comes as news to them. Anything we LSs can do to debunk this crap has to be useful. MW
And had it not been for
face nappiesmasks the rise would surely have been super exponentialIrony whoever thumbs downed it
I thumbs-upped it and then someone else cancelled it out! It’s Irony Deficency Syndrome. MW
WTAF! Prof Neil Ferguson being interviewed just now (8.15) on R4’s Today about Hancock’s announcement re ‘reasonable worst case’ local lockdowns. Why would any serious journalist ask that man anything? Surely his credibility is shot?!
They are not journalists and he is not a scientist. Business as usual in fear and propaganda-land. MW
It is a stage play with a script, a set and characters played by actors. No different to a soap. Indeed soap operas are frequently used to programme government agendas.
For the BBC destroying Trimp and the Tories is all that matters.
The BBC must be stripped of Licence money
Sure, if they can be, but Gates will make up the shortfall.
Thats fine, they can then do and say what they want. No licence fee to pay.
Gates is already paying them, so they are definitely not objective
Somebody should shut him up
Warm Up DEMO Berlin Querdenken 28.8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1gI_vX0-Pc
#Berlin #b2908 – Livestream 16 –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2Zah7IyDLY
Ruptly is up on youtube too now live. Big crowds. Police in riot gear already. Crowds gathering and peaceful in the real nonBBC meaning of the word.
https://youtu.be/8Hr-jdoq-dk
Ruptly live Berlin protests.
This is how they’ve reported in Ireland. Expectations of a whopping 20,000 people
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/berlin-court-overturns-ban-on-covid-19-march-expected-to-attract-over-20-000-1.4341226
The are also saying its a ragbag of conspiracy nuts.
Ireland were threatened with a second lockdown by the Health Minister this week.
Education Minister said anyone not wearing a mask on secondary schools will be removed indefinitely from their education
It’s war, Ivor Cummings has said.
Robert Kennedy Jr is due to be there in Berlin. Looking like it is going to be a large turnout.
Yeah, I have seen it said it’ll be massive. I hope so. Needs to send a message.
I’ve just heard on the radio that the police broke it up due to a lack of social distancing. 🙄
Reminds me of the stories about New York – police grabbing citizens off the street for the crime of not social distancing…they literally throw them all in one jail cell that’s already got 10 people in it, thereby causing them to immediately not social distance…
Health & Education ministers rule. You must obey.
I hope the police aren’t anticipating a staged fracas. Surely, the demonstrators would have more sense than to start one themselves.
Morning all! EPISODE 4 of Bedwetters is here!
Today we talk about the University Health NKVD!
The awakening of politicians and the media in Europe (But Bozza is still dosing)
Plus the usual round up the latest stats from the ONS.
ENJOY!
👉 https://bedwetters.buzzsprout.com/ 👈
Childcare Services Team you say ?
Covid Response Team you say ?
Looks like the Government are planning ahead
Absolutely nothing that is being done by our government and local authorities suggests to me they want to get out of this. Quite the opposite. One of my favourite lines of argument with people who oppose going back to normal is “how long should we go on like this?”. They never have an answer – I just get mumbling. They know there isn’t an answer they will like, so they avoid.
Anyone I ask always say “until there’s a vaccine”
Idiots!
Exactly. The missing message from the Government/NHS is for us mere mortals to improve our immune systems.
And continue to challenge them in order to prime them to react properly, by NOT sanitising our environment with fogging anti bacterial and viral chemicals – coming to many West End theatres before they reopen in spring, folks.
That reminds me of a garbage strike that happened in London around 40 years ago. Garbage everywhere. Hygiene, sanitation-wise much worse than Covid. Took days to clean it all up.
Since January.
And the next step is to point out that it could be years, or never, and is unlikely to be anything like 100% effective.
They’ve already been lobotomized. Subliminally, most likely.
Actually Gina Miller answered that in an interview – because the EU were responsible for giving us women’s rights…not sure if the interviewer had the heart to tell her she had just totally erased the suffragettes out of history….
Huhh? Shocking waste of taxpayers money
Hoping to see all you Lockdown Sceptics today at the London Demo – 12.30pm Trafalgar Square. Lots of eminent speakers doctors, virologists freedom lovers….
A great opportunity to get out there and express how you feel at this ongoing shitshow.
That’s two of us then!
Hmmm here’s hoping for a few more…
Sadly I cannot make it. Hope they stay just on Covid and Lockdown etc and do not bring in 5g etc.
Yes, I really hope they don’t talk about 5G. This will be the only message that gets out through the MSM filters.
5G is important only because it facilitates surveillance.
Didn’t France say this? before the rollout of their track & trace system (which, like most others, did neither track nor trace) I’m sure they said it would integrate seamlessly with their inbuilt systems, to facilitate surveillance of everybody at all times…for people’s safety. obviously.
I just dropped my son off at the station. He had left his mask – with a great big NO across it – at home. Luckily he has his ‘get out of jail’ card if challenged.
Well the MSM always put the real stories first..
I recall CNN had I think 3 reporters over a period of about 2 days, discussing a claim that President Trump got 2 scoops of ice cream on a piece of pie at a State dinner, and Ambassador only got 1 (though it may have been 1 1/2). With dogged determination they cracked the case – the White House catering staff ‘established the preferences’ of principals at the dinner before serving. Who knew! So yeah, no doubt the press will be right on those protests… 🙂
Had a look at twitter and it spammed me with this interesting thread “For the education of the general public, this is how a scientist reads a news story.” This is also how I read news stories. https://twitter.com/ProfDFrancis/status/1299372186680070146 The news story links to a preprint, containing in the abstract the dramatic claim stated as if it were a fact: “COVID-19 causes cardiac dysfunction in up to 50% of patients“. Then a little further down this is clarified: “Notably, multiple independent reports have found that COVID-19 patients frequently present with significant myocardial damage 6–8 , even without prior cardiovascular disease 9 (CVD)” If you check 6-8 (having found the correct references section– there are two) they are saying that people with CVD suffer worse C19. Only 9 is meant to support the claim that C19 causes CVD. What does 9 actually say? My bolding: “SARS-CoV-2 may invade cells by binding to ACE2, causing direct damage to cardiomyocytes. However, the autopsy results of COVID-19 cases failed to detect SARS CoV-2 virus components in myocardial tissue by electron microscope observation, immunohistochemical staining or PCR. SARS-CoV-2 infection may also cause myocardial injury through overactivetion [sic] of the immune system, with the release of a… Read more »
The whole thread is here if you cant be bothered to scroll through Twitter. Excellent read!: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1299365746489819136.html
If I remeber correctly, I think this articcle was fasttracked.If this is not deception,tell me what is? And still this paper has already done enormous damage.
It’s bias, in this case severe. But it’s a reminder that when reading any paper you have to look carefully at the references and the evidence, not just the authors’ opinions, including of course when they are in agreement with one’s own confirmation bias.
That’s what peer review is supposed to do. Although that could also be said to be a gatekeeping exercise in some circles
That’s just people’s mates patting each other on the back. Evidence is the only thing that matters.
Worryingly, SPRS has cited this very study in the section on ‘Long Covid’:
https://swprs.org/post-acute-covid-long-covid/ (look at the links at the bottom)
The rest of the site is still a good source of good-quality debunking material but this worries us. Also we wonder why they changed the name to ‘Swiss Policy Research’ rather then Propaganda research. Are they under pressure, do you think?
Anyway we have a friend on the brink of scepticism to whom we’ve recently sent the SPRS site as a good one to look at. We now have to send him a ‘health warning’ about SPRS because if he reads that section he’ll probably freak out! MW and AG
I read that article when you posted it originally. It seems reasonable to me and their presentation of it is factual and not alarmist. I don’t consider it harmful. Of course some people will freak out but what matters are the facts, on both sides.
I know what you mean but you and I are probably better at evaluating something that, at first sight, seems frightening since we’ve been reading this kind of article on CV19 for months now. Coming to it cold might just confirm your worst fears about Covid.
This, plus the fact that SPRS links to the Biospace article which you say yourself is biased which makes me question their judgement.
I would still not be comfortable passing the SPRS ‘Long Covid’ post on to someone who I’m trying to reassure. Worse, it means that I’m now wary of passing on a link to an otherwise excellent site. MW
A bit of balance gives it the ring of truth though perhaps.
I thought at the time, that changing their name was sensible. Less off-putting to non-conspiracy theorists 😉
Yes, I wondered if that was behind the change. MW
I enjoyed that. There is evidently intelligent life on Twars. Enough to make me sign up, first time. Thank you.
That Jed Mecurio seems very self important. You write scripts for grown adults pretending to be other grown adults, pal. Big deal. Get over yourself.
His show, Line of Duty – superb clever TV drama – is predicated on the notion that all police forces in this country are riddled with virtually invisible but vicious corruption. It’s a fully-fledged paranoid fantasy, super exciting as entertainment because literally any character on screen could turn out to have been acting as an agent of evil. The infection is everywhere…
I enjoy line of duty featuring spineless arseholes at the top just like Ms Dick, but Bodyguard was a total pile of crap that could have been written on the back of a fag packet in 2 minutes, Maaam.
As October approaches it is good to know that Section 4 The Vagrancy Act 1824 is still on the statute book “Persons committing certain offences to be deemed rogues and vagabonds.” Every person committing any of the offences herein-before mentioned, after having been convicted as an idle and disorderly person; every person pretending or professing to tell fortunes, or using any subtle craft, means, or device, by palmistry or otherwise, to deceive and impose on any of his Majesty’s subjects; Every person wandering abroad and lodging in any barn or outhouse, or in any deserted or unoccupied building, or in the open air, or under a tent, or in any cart or waggon, not having any visible means of subsistence and not giving a good account of himself or herself; Every person wilfully exposing to view, in any street, road, highway, or public place, any obscene print, picture, or other indecent exhibition ; every person wilfully openly, lewdly, and obscenely exposing his person in any street, road, or public highway, or in the view thereof, or in any place of public resort, with intent to insult any female Every person wandering abroad, and endeavouring by the exposure of wounds or deformities to obtain or gather alms;… Read more »