Second Lockdown Underway. Fines Increased to £10,000
Will the madness never end? From September 22nd, areas across the North of England and the Midlands will see additional restrictions imposed. People won’t be allowed to socialise with anyone outside their households, cafes, pubs and restaurants will be restricted to table service only and, in some areas, restaurants, pubs and cinemas will be forced to close at 10pm. The Telegraph has more.
Local lockdowns are being put into place across England in a bid to stop a second wave of coronavirus, on top of the ‘rule of six’ that applies nationwide.
The Government imposed new restrictions on the areas of Merseyside, Warrington, Halton and Lancashire on Friday, September 18.
Similar restrictions were also announced for Wolverhampton and Oadby & Wigston in the Midlands, along with the areas of Bradford, Kirklees and Calderdale in West Yorkshire.
From Tuesday, September 22 onwards, residents in these areas will no longer be allowed to socialise with other people outside of their own households or their support bubble in private homes and gardens.
Hospitality for food and drink will be restricted to table service only and restaurants, pubs, and cinemas are required to close between 10pm and 5am.
Birmingham, Greater Manchester, Bolton and parts of the North East are also among the areas under local lockdown.
The Government claims these additional restrictions are necessary because of the rising number of cases in these areas – Sunderland now has an incidence rate of 103 per 100,000, while South Tyneside, Gateshead and Newcastle have a rate of 70. But, of course, 91% of these “cases” are likely to be false positives and of the remaining 9%, more than half won’t be infectious. (See yesterday’s post on Matt Hancock’s poor failure to understand the false positive rate for chapter and verse). The Telegraph has a comprehensive breakdown of what restrictions apply in your area.
Meanwhile, the Sunday Times reports that people who fail to self-isolate will face fines of £10,000.
The Government is set to introduce fines of up to £10,000 for people who breach self-isolation rules as Britain steps up preparations for a second wave of COVID-19.
People on low incomes will be paid £500 to self-isolate at home in a “carrot and stick” approach to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
The fines for breaching self-isolation rules will start at £1,000 – in line with the penalty for breaking quarantine after international travel – but could increase to £10,000 for repeat offences.
Daily infections rose to a four-month high of 4,422 yesterday, and Boris Johnson is expected to make a television address to the nation on Tuesday to announce a further tightening of restrictions on ordinary life.
According to the Sunday Times, Boris is due to announce further nationwide restrictions in a televised address on Tuesday, with the only undecided thing being the extent to which they’ll apply to businesses. Hospitality industry leaders have warned the Government that the sector is on the verge of crisis, with almost a million jobs at risk.
Pub chains are calling on the chancellor to maintain his furlough scheme, which is due to run out at the end of October; extend the cut in VAT well into next year; and slash beer duty.
Some 900,000 workers in the hospitality sector are still on furlough, with many expected to lose their jobs next month.
Tim Martin, the boss of JD Wetherspoon, which employs 43,000 people in its pubs and hotels, said many smaller venues had perished after the first lockdown. He said further restrictions would be “even more devastating”.
And, of course, Rasputin is in the wings, urging the Prime Minister on to even greater heights of destruction. Disgraced ex-SAGE member Neil Ferguson popped up on the radio yesterday to warn Boris that if he doesn’t order a severe second lockdown immediately people will die.
“If we leave it another two to four weeks we will be back at levels we were seeing more like mid-March. That’s clearly going to cause deaths because people will be hospitalised,” he told the BBC’s Today programme.
As George Santayana said, those who cannot learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them.
Lies, Damned Lies and Health Statistics
I’m publishing an original piece today by Dr Mike Yeadon, one of the co-authors of the paper I published on September 9th about why a second wave was unlikely. As he says in this article, when he wrote that earlier paper he hadn’t quite grasped the full implications of the PCR test’s false positive rate (FPR), nor how unwilling Matt Hancock is to get to grips with the problem. When Mike appeared on Julia Hartley-Brewer’s show on September 11th he urged her to ask the Heath Secretary what the FPR of the PCR is – and he reiterated this when he appeared again on September 16th. But it was only when he heard Matt Hancock’s reply to that question – asked by Julia on September 17th – that he was moved to write this piece. He is angry, to put it mildly – and anger isn’t an emotion he’s used to feeling as a dispassionate research scientist.
Here’s an extract.
Allow me to explain the impact of a false positive rate of 0.8% on Pillar 2. We return to our 10,000 people who’ve volunteered to get tested, and the expected ten with virus (0.1% prevalence or 1:1000) have been identified by the PCR test. But now we’ve to calculate how many false positives are to accompanying them. The shocking answer is 80. 80 is 0.8% of 10,000. That’s how many false positives you’d get every time you were to use a Pillar 2 test on a group of that size.
The effect of this is, in this example, where 10,000 people have been tested in Pillar 2, could be summarised in a headline like this: “90 new cases were identified today” (10 real positive cases and 80 false positives). But we know this is wildly incorrect. Unknown to the poor technician, there were in this example, only 10 real cases. 80 did not even have a piece of viral RNA in their sample. They are really false positives.
I’m going to explain how bad this is another way, back to diagnostics. If you’d submitted to a test and it was positive, you’d expect the doctor to tell you that you had a disease, whatever it was testing for. Usually, though, they’ll answer a slightly different question: “If the patient is positive in this test, what is the probability they have the disease?” Typically, for a good diagnostic test, the doctor will be able to say something like 95% and you and they can live with that. You might take a different, confirmatory test, if the result was very serious, like cancer. But in our Pillar 2 example, what is the probability a person testing positive in Pillar 2 actually has COVID-19? The awful answer is 11% (10 divided by 80 + 10). The test exaggerates the number of covid-19 cases by almost ten-fold (90 divided by 10). Scared yet? That daily picture they show you, with the ‘cases’ climbing up on the right-hand side? Its horribly exaggerated. Its not a mistake, as I shall show.
Earlier in the summer, the ONS showed the virus prevalence was a little lower, 1 in 2000 or 0.05%. That doesn’t sound much of a difference, but it is. Now the Pillar 2 test will find half as many real cases from our notional 10,000 volunteers, so 5 real cases. But the flaw in the test means it will still find 80 false positives (0.8% of 10,000). So its even worse. The headline would be “85 new cases identified today”. But now the probability a person testing positive has the virus is an absurdly low 6% (5 divided by 80 + 5). Earlier in the summer, this same test exaggerated the number of COVID-19 cases by 17-fold (85 divided by 5). Its so easy to generate an apparently large epidemic this way. Just ignore the problem of false positives. Pretend its zero. But it is never zero.
This test is fatally flawed and MUST immediately be withdrawn and never used again in this setting unless shown to be fixed. The examples I gave are very close to what is actually happening every day as you read this.
This piece is a blockbuster. Very much worth reading in full.
Hancock Claims Hospital Admissions for Covid Doubling Every Eight Days. Really?
As an addendum to Mike’s piece, I want to draw attention to something else Matt Hancock said when he was interviewed by Julia Hartley-Brewer on Thursday. He told her we were facing a moment of national crisis because of the exponential rise in hospital admissions for COVID-19.
“Unfortunately, the number of people in hospital has doubled every eight days in the last few weeks,” he said.
Really, Secretary of State?
If you go to the Government’s COVID-19 dashboard and look at the data for daily Covid admissions to English hospitals (see below), it increased from 143 to 199 in the eight-day period to September 17th, the day Hancock was speaking. That’s not “doubling”. What about daily admissions for the whole of the UK? It increased from 196 on Sept 10th to 241 on Sept 17th. Again, not “doubling”.
What about the last few weeks? Let’s go back 32 days from September 17th (4 x 8), which takes us to August 17th. There were 46 Covid admissions to English hospitals that day, according to the dashboard. If that figure doubled every eight days in the period leading up to September 17th, it would have reached 96 at the end of the first eight days, 184 at the end of the second, 368 at the end of the third and 736 at the end of the fourth. In fact, the number on the 17th was 199.
Ditto for the whole of the UK. On August 17th, that number was 96. If that doubled every eight days, the total on September 17th would have been 1,536. In fact, it was 241.
Either Matt Hancock is looking at different data to that on the Government’s COVID-19 dashboard, or…
Stop Press: This tweet from The Real Normal Podcast neatly explains the point I made yesterday in my blog post the other misleading thing Matt Hancock said on Julie Hartley-Brewer’s programme.
Belgian Doctors Against Lockdown
A group of Belgian doctors have written an open letter to their Government arguing there is no medical justification for any further Covid restrictions – the medical evidence just doesn’t support them. This is the latest anti-lockdown broadside by a group of doctors, with similar groups in America, Germany and Australia. Dr Malcolm Kendrick and I are working on a UK version. More news on that soon.
We, Belgian doctors and health professionals, wish to express our serious concern about the evolution of the situation in the recent months surrounding the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We call on politicians to be independently and critically informed in the decision-making process and in the compulsory implementation of corona-measures. We ask for an open debate, where all experts are represented without any form of censorship. After the initial panic surrounding COVID-19, the objective facts now show a completely different picture – there is no medical justification for any emergency policy anymore.
The current crisis management has become totally disproportionate and causes more damage than it does any good.
We call for an end to all measures and ask for an immediate restoration of our normal democratic governance and legal structures and of all our civil liberties.
The list of signatories is impressive. Worth reading in full.
Police Baton Charge Anti-Lockdown Protestors
Riot Police launched a completely unnecessary baton charge against a group of anti-lockdown protestors in Trafalgar Square yesterday. Breitbart has more.
Scuffles broke out Saturday as police moved in to disperse hundreds of demonstrators who gathered in London’s central Trafalgar Square. Some protesters formed blockades to stop officers from making arrests, and traffic was brought to a halt in the busy area.
The ‘Resist and Act for Freedom’ rally saw dozens of people holding banners and placards such as one reading “This is now Tyranny” and chanting “Freedom!” Police said there were “pockets of hostility and outbreaks of violence towards officers”.
“Outbreaks of violence”? Interesting contrast there with the way the BBC described the infamous BLM riot on June 7th: “27 police officers injured during largely peaceful anti-racism protests in London.”
So let me get this straight. When large groups of protestors gather in Central London to proclaim their allegiance with a Neo-Marxist group that wants to defund the police, end the nuclear family and dismantle capitalism, the police fall to one knee to show their respect. But when a small group of protestors gather in Central London to protest about the suspension of our civil liberties, the police baton charge them.
We’re going to have to start calling the Prime Minister Boris Jons-Un.
Are Schools Allowed to Punish Children for Making Covid Jokes?
Readers will recall a story in the Independent on August 31st saying that a school had threatened to send its pupils home for “inappropriate Covid humour”.
The Ark Alexandra Academy in Hastings, east Sussex, set out a list of coronavirus “red lines” that will result in fixed-term exclusions for pupils breaching them.
The academy says “humorous, inappropriate comments or statements” related to Covid-19 and “purposeful physical contact with any other person” are off-limits and will risk the child being sent home.
But is that allowed? Or could a parent whose child finds themselves on the naughty step for, say, sharing the above meme, complain to Ofsted?
At the Free Speech Union, we asked one of the members of our Legal Advisory Council who’s an expert on education law to look into it for us. You can read his full note here, but this was his conclusion:
It is reasonable to argue that joking has wellbeing benefits, as a normal part of social interaction – joking is a healthy coping mechanism. If preventing everyday humour is likely to create rather than prevent stress, then the policy is self-defeating. And placing a child in isolation for making a benign joke seems particularly harsh, given that many children will have spent the last six months in a form of isolation and may have a need for social contact.
Worth reading in full.
Sir Graham Brady Leads Rebellion Against Renewal of Coronavirus Act
Sceptical Conservative MP and Chairman of the 1922 Committee Sir Graham Brady is leading a rebellion against the Government. The Sunday Telegraph has more.
Senior Tories are planning to stop Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposing limits on people’s freedoms without scrutiny by forcing Parliament to have the final say on new lockdown measures, the Telegraph can reveal.
MPs vote next week on “the renewal of temporary provisions” of lockdown measures under the Coronavirus Act 2020 to reauthorise the Government’s use of the powers.
Sir Graham Brady, the Chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservative MPs, is planning to use this opportunity to amend this legislation to require ministers to put all new measures to a vote of MPs first.
The move will effectively impose a “Parliamentary lock” on any future restrictions, amid widespread fury among senior MPs and peers that restrictions have been imposed on Britons without a vote.
Sir Graham said: “In March, Parliament gave the Government sweeping emergency powers at a time when Parliament was about to go into recess and there was realistic concern that NHS care capacity might be overwhelmed by COVID-19.
“We now know that the NHS coped well with the challenge of the virus and Parliament has been sitting largely since April. There is now no justification for ministers ruling by emergency powers without reference to normal democratic processes.
“It is essential that going forward all of these massively important decisions for family life, and affecting people’s jobs and businesses should be exercised with proper supervision and control.”
This move follows widespread anger among backbench MPs on all sides of the House – as well as the Speaker – that Matt Hancock introduced the “Rule of Six” via a last-minute Statutory Instrument, leaving no time for a debate about the new restrictions in Parliament.
If the Prime Minister suffers a series of defeats in the House of Commons over the Government’s handling of the Coronavirus crisis, it’s the beginning of the end for him, surely?
A Philosopher’s Reflections on the Second Wave
A Professor of Philosophy at a Russell Group university has sent us some interesting thoughts about the second wave – from a philosophical point of view. They were prompted by listening to Neil Ferguson on the Today programme yesterday morning.
Throughout the UK, it is now fashionable to proclaim – with an air of authority and alarm – that “the second wave is here!” or, alternatively, “the second wave is coming!” But how should those of us who are not yet convinced by such claims respond to them? Proponents of the orthodox COVID-19 narrative sometimes display a curious reluctance to contemplate alternative possibilities or engage in critical debate. Three intellectual shortcomings, which I will describe in what follows, play key roles in facilitating this imperviousness to critique. When trying to understand, evaluate, and critically engage with talk of the “second wave”, it is helpful to keep these shortcomings in mind.
Make your claims unfalsifiable
Consider, for example, the claim that lockdowns and other measures “push down the curve” of infections. If the infection rate falls after some measure is introduced, causation is prematurely inferred from correlation: two things happened at around the same time and so one of them caused the other. However, if infections instead continue to rise, it is maintained that they would have risen even further had this measure not been introduced. And, if comparisons with other countries prove problematic, it is asserted that the relevant populations behave in different ways and what has worked elsewhere would not have worked here. The same pattern of reasoning is used to justify the introduction and continuing use of non-medical facemasks by the general public. Comparisons with other countries are endorsed only when it suits. Furthermore, little indication is provided of what could even count as evidence against their ongoing use. When it comes to second peaks, a popular approach is to be non-specific about the nature and timing of what is predicted to happen. If you don’t make clear what will happen or when, you can keep announcing that “the second peak is coming” for as long as you like, without risk of falsification.
Identify your preferred intervention with moral virtue
The challenging tasks of evaluating evidence and reaching conclusions via rational debate can both be avoided by instead identifying the endorsement of a particular measure with the possession of moral virtue. This is most visible in the case of facemasks: the masked face becomes the embodiment of caring for others. To wear the mask is to care, while to question the practice is to be selfish and uncaring. By immersing oneself in a performance where “mask = morally good” and “no mask = morally bad”, one can circumvent the issue of what one ought to believe on the basis of available evidence. The “epistemic ought” is replaced with a table-thumping “moral ought” that silences dissent. A similar move is also used in second-peak talk. The second peak is coming because some people, especially young people, behaved in morally irresponsible ways (by going out and having some fun over the summer). They failed to follow the Covidian doctrine of abstinence and now we are all being punished for their sins. When social restrictions are presented as an integral part of a situation brought about by others’ immoral conduct, attention is diverted from the question of whether or not those restrictions are actually appropriate.
Say things that are vague or meaningless
There is a difference between a claim that is meaningful, but impervious to counter-evidence, and a claim that is unfalsifiable because it is either far too vague or outright meaningless. For instance, it means something to say that “lockdowns push down the curve of infections”. However, suppose one asserts simply that “lockdowns work”. If success-conditions (specifying what it is for something to work or not work in this context) have not been made clear, then we cannot determine whether the claim is true or false, as we don’t even know which states of affairs would make it true or false.
Second-wave talk is especially prone to vagueness, to the point where it is frequently unclear what – if anything – is being said. Hence, although a sceptic might be inclined to start by questioning the truth of certain claims, that would be premature. First of all, we need to figure out what, if anything, is meant by those claims. By way of analogy, suppose I say that a Wibbly-wobbly is coming to get me. When you ask what it will do, I say that I don’t have a clue. When you ask what a Wibbly-wobbly is, what it looks like, and how it behaves, I say that I have no idea. By then, it would be reasonable to suspect that my utterance is not just questionable, but meaningless. To avoid mistaking a similarly empty claim about second waves for a debatable position, we can start by asking questions like these:
Is a second wave defined in terms of recorded cases, hospitalizations, fatalities, or some combination of the three? Where tests are concerned, is the presence or absence of a second wave determined by the number or positive test results, the percentage of positive results, or by a more sophisticated, multi-faceted analysis? What distinguishes a full-blown second wave from a smaller increase in cases that does not quite meet the criteria for wave-hood? How rapid must an increase be and how long must it last for in order to count as a second wave? If a wave happens in one part of the country and then a wave happens in another part of the country, is the latter a second wave? If the crest of an initial wave is lowered by social restrictions, which are then lifted, is what happens afterwards a second wave or a continuation of the first wave?
Vague and sometimes conflicting references to “the second wave” are to be found wherever we look. How many times have we been told that the second wave is here and then, shortly afterwards, that the second wave is coming (or vice versa)? Unless the term is being used in two different ways, we cannot have both. And consider the Prime Minister’s recent announcement that “the UK is now seeing a second wave”, that we knew this was coming, and that we are about six weeks behind Spain and France. If the comparison with Spain and France is to be endorsed, then this cannot be the “autumn wave” that others are talking about, where the latter is conceived of in terms of a seasonal pattern that is well-established in other respiratory viruses. The daily counts of positive PCR test results in France and Spain started rising during July, not with the onset of autumn. The difference is a potentially important one, which has a bearing on determining the appropriate response. If the alleged “second wave” is better thought of as a continuation of the first wave, then serious consideration should be given to the possibility that we are in fact very close to the place at which Sweden has already arrived. What is needed is careful attention to the evidence and the encouragement of critical discussion that welcomes disagreement as a path to truth, not vague, sloppy talk that invokes a sense of impending doom.
Anyone who says that the second wave is either here or about to hit, but cannot offer adequate responses to questions concerning what a second wave actually consists in, is being insufficiently clear. And anyone who dismisses such questions altogether or displays indifference to them probably isn’t saying anything meaningful. To assert “it’s the second wave!”, while providing no criteria for distinguishing between “a second wave” and “not a second wave” is to assert nothing. I am reminded of a quote from Macbeth: “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Nevertheless, like certain emotional performances, it can still serve to evoke, sustain, and heighten fear in others.
Critic Subscription Offer
Michael Mosbacher, the Publisher and Co-Editor of the Critic, a magazine that’s been very critical of the Government’s handling of the crisis since the beginning, has come up with a special subscription offer for readers of Lockdown Sceptics.
The Critic is delighted to offer Lockdown Sceptics‘ readers a year’s subscription to Britain’s new magazine of ideas for open-minded readers – for £20, less than half price. Just click here to take advantage of this offer.
The Critic was at the forefront of questioning the rationale for the lockdown and will continue to do so – with contributions robustly challenging the Government’s approach by Toby Young, Alistair Haimes, Patrick Fagan, Laura Dodsworth and Christopher Snowdon. The Critic is willing to ask the questions that others find too difficult – or too dangerous – to ask. We take politics, culture and the arts seriously – but do not neglect antiques, food, fashion, gardening, and shooting.
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Subscribe to the Critic today and save over £20 on your first year’s subscription. We are confident you will enjoy it.
Round-Up
- “Where is the evidence for going back into lockdown?” – Dan Hannan asks a good question in his Telegraph column
- “Lockdown failed. We must follow the Swedish model and learn to live with Covid” – Mark Woolhouse adds his voice to the growing chorus of sceptics (at least, growing among Telegraph columnists)
- “The economic recovery is now pear-shaped, not V-shaped” – With a nationwide second lockdown looming, the economic recovery is disappearing like a mirage
- “Another blow to intellectual freedom” – Excellent piece in Spiked by Benjamin Schwarz about the University of Chicago’s English Faculty’s insistence that all undergraduates will have to take courses in “Black Studies”
- “How should I talk to neighbours who break the rules?” – A handy guide from the BBC about how to tell off rule-breakers
- “Temporal profile and determinants of viral shedding and of viral clearance confirmation on nasopharyngeal swabs from SARS-CoV-2-positive subjects: a population-based prospective cohort study in Reggio Emilia, Italy” – New BMJ Study finds viral clearance achieved at a median of 36 days from symptom onset. Other studies find people shed for up to 12 weeks. Yet most are infectious for <10 days, highlighting the fact that mass testing significantly overstates true positives.
- “The silent cost of the coronavirus: NHS cancer delays, cancelled operations and a bleak winter ahead” – Good piece by Christina Lamb in the Sunday Times documenting the catastrophic consequences of the NHS becoming a Covid-only service. Let’s do it all over again then, shall we?
- “THIRD of UK Covid victims in July and August ‘died from OTHER causes’ – including cancer or being hit by a car – Oxford University scientists reveal” – No, it’s not Carl Heneghan, but Jason Oke, a colleague of his at Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine
- “Second wave of Covid cases in Europe is not causing deaths to spike compared with the peak in spring” – More scepticism from the increasingly sceptical Daily Mail
- “This lifeless Parliament is betraying the animating principles of Brexit” – Janet Daley socks it to the Government in her latest Telegraph column
- “In defence of the Covid snitch” – Counter-intuitive – and funny – piece by my old mate Cosmo Landesman in the Spectator
- “Exeter University debating society is forced into humiliating U-turn after ‘disinviting’ Catholic author opposed to gay marriage – only to then re-invite her and call it ‘a mistake’” – The Mail on Sunday reports on the Free Speech Union’s triumph on Friday, reversing an attempt to no-platform a Catholic journalist
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Just one today: “Another False Positive” by IamFleX.
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. We’ve also 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.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. But today, instead of giving you another example, I thought I’d flag up one of the risks of pumping out this virtue-signalling balls, particularly if your institution is the recipient of taxpayers’ money.
The US Education Department has opened an investigation into Princeton University after the President published an “open letter” in which he said racism was “embedded” in the institution. The New York Times has more.
The Trump administration said this week that it was investigating whether Princeton has violated federal civil rights law, suggesting that a public expression of contrition for a history of “systemic racism” at the university was an acknowledgment of illegal behavior.
“You admitted Princeton’s educational program is and for decades has been racist,” federal officials wrote in a letter to the school on Wednesday.
The investigation is the latest escalation in the administration’s campaign against the Ivy League for its policies on matters of race. Last month, the Justice Department accused Yale of violating federal civil rights law through its admissions policies, and it has supported legal efforts to end affirmative action at Harvard.
In their letter to Princeton this week, officials cited a public statement made this month by the school’s president, Christopher L. Eisgruber, in which he charged university leaders with developing plans “to combat systemic racism at Princeton and beyond.”
Invoking the protests and national reckoning that followed the killings of Black people by police officers this year, Mr. Eisgruber announced a series of policy initiatives to diversify Princeton’s faculty and make the campus more welcoming to underrepresented groups.
He said racism persists at Princeton and in society “sometimes by conscious intention, but more often through unexamined assumptions and stereotypes, ignorance or insensitivity, and the systemic legacy of past decisions and policies.”
In its letter informing Princeton of the investigation, which was earlier reported on Thursday by the Washington Examiner, the Education Department said that “based on its admitted racism,” Princeton may have received more than $75 million in taxpayer funding under false pretenses since Mr. Eisgruber became president in 2013.
This is a spectacular piece of trolling from the Troll King himself. I wonder if our Department for Education could be persuaded to carry out similar investigations of British universities who’ve issued pro forma BLM solidarity statements, lacerating themselves for being “systemically racist”?
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a one-stop shop 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 (takes a while to arrive). 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 £1.99 from Etsy here. And, finally, if you feel obliged to wear a mask but want to signal your disapproval of having to do so, you can get a “sexy world” mask with the Swedish flag on it 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.
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).
The Care Home Scandal – A Call For Evidence
Lockdown Sceptics has asked an award-winning investigative journalist, David Rose, to investigate the high death toll in Britain’s care homes. Did 20,000+ elderly people really die of COVID-19 between March and July or were many of them just collateral lockdown damage? With lots of care homes short-staffed because employees were self-isolating at home, and with relatives and partners unable to visit to check up on their loved ones because of restrictions, how many elderly residents died of neglect, not Covid? How many succumbed to other conditions, untreated because they weren’t able to access hospitals or their local GP? After doctors were told by care home managers that the cause of death of a deceased resident was “novel coronavirus”, how many bothered to check before signing the death certificate? The risk of doctors misdiagnosing the cause of death is particularly high, given that various safeguards to minimise the risk of that happening were suspended in March.
David Rose would like Lockdown Sceptics readers to share any information they have that could help in this investigation. Here is his request:
We are receiving reports that some residents of care homes who died from causes other than Covid may have had their deaths ascribed to it – even though they never had the disease at all, and never tested positive. Readers will already be familiar with the pioneering work by Carl Heneghan and his colleagues at the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, which forced the Government to change its death toll counting method. Previously, it will be recalled, people who died of, say, a road accident, were being counted as Covid deaths if they had tested positive at any time, perhaps months earlier. But here we are talking of something different – Covid “deaths” among people who never had the virus at all.
In one case, where a family is deciding whether to grant permission for Lockdown Sceptics to publicise it, an elderly lady in reasonable health was locked in her room for many hours each day in a care home on the south coast, refused all visitors, deprived of contact with other residents, and eventually went on hunger strike, refusing even to drink water. She died in the most wretched circumstances which were only indirectly a product of the virus – and yet, her death certificate reportedly claims she had Covid.
I’m looking for further examples of 1) elderly people who died as a result of the lockdown and associated measures, but whose deaths were wrongly attributed to “novel coronavirus”, and 2) those elderly people who clearly died from other causes but whose deaths were still formally ascribed to Covid because they once tested positive for it, even after the counting method change.
If you have relevant information, please email Lockdown Sceptics or David directly on david@davidroseuk.com.
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Is it over yet?
Nearly. Matt and Boris are just putting the economy in the deep freeze and Professor Ferguson is finishing off his sums. Just be patient. You’ll be able to go out and play in six months…assuming nothing else goes wrong.
Got out, now in foreign country
Keep safe (no not from plague but from the dictator)
I’ve been on foreign soil since day 1, unfortunately the south eastern world tends to follow the west blindly
And the west follows the south east (via WHO, in China’s pocket), which is why we are going round and round in circles……
Yes, the west dances along to the tune of the WHO and others, and then most of south east asia follows the west.
We’ve had 59 deaths since the beginning here and yet people still believe the plague is just outside our doors.
Most people riding their mopeds will wear facemasks but no crash helmets!
Brilliant.
‘People were always chasing after some leader or another, and stumbling from one superstition to the next, cheering His Majesty one day and giving the most disgusting incendiary speeches in Parliament the next, and none of it ever amounted to anything in the end! If this could be miniaturized by a factor of a million and reduced, as it were, to the dimensions of a single head, the result would be precisely the image of the unaccountable, forgetful, ignorant conduct and the demented hopping around that has always been the image of a lunatic.’
Robert Musil
The first person I saw wearing a visor was riding a push bike, similarly without a crash hat.
The visor was at 45 degrees.
Yesterday in the shopping centre my partner and I witnessed two locals meet, one in a mask, the other in a mask and PVC visor. The two young gentlemen proceeded to remove all PHE for a brief chat and a quick selfie “whilst the virus was safely at bay of course” before swiftly returning to their shields and continuing shopping. Unbelievable.
I suppose that’s how they self identify, as morons, that is.
Yep, one little boy screeched down the road the other day on his little pop-pop bike – no helmet but fully napped up! So glad he was taking SAFETY seriously!
We may be in the same country. Masks worn everywhere but removed for politeness to talk to people. And in one hilarious instance, a taxi driver removed his mask to cough lavishly into his hand, then carefully recovered his face. At least the gogo girls only cover their faces. It’s better than Sunderland,
The WHO is in Bill Gates’s pocket.
anywhere good? can you recommend somewhere sane to escape to?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pole
Lockdown Sceptics Sweepstakes
I’ll go for Bristol being next.
Too far south. I’ll go Hull.
To Hull and back.
Hull and high water.
To Hull on a Handjob.
Hull is other people.
etc.
Hull hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place, for where we are is hull, And where hull is there must we ever be.
Oh hulp.
Looking at the particular areas of Greater Manchester and West Midlands they’ve picked on I’d say St. Paul’s in Bristol.
Could be, not many Tory voters in Hull.
Perhaps not in Hull itself, but the neighbouring constituency is that of David Davis.
Has Leeds already gone? They were threatening posh Harrogate last week. What is the world coming to?!
Heck no that’s where i am!!
Seriously though is there anything to suggest this as i don’t follow figures locally etc
No Sue it’s just a game, but they might want to make a ‘surgical strike’ further south while they think they are winning.
Hello Sue. Me too. He’s had 4 emails from me so far. Not so many Tories in Hull no – 3 Labour strongholds (in the old days John Prescott held the east of the city in his grip and more recently Alan Johnson who is a decent bloke held West Hull) but in last elections things shifted – still labour but tighter fought. Hull is unitary authority and boundaries are very tight and is surrounded by leafy green more affluent East Riding seats.
There was a mask protest last Saturday – I couldn’t go but would join any others if anyone here knows of others.
Transport is being arranged for the big London one next weekend: https://www.standupx.info/
Swindon
I’m going for Scotland (a full national lockdown). Sturgeon is just itching to do it.
LB of Redbridge
I’ll go for the entire UK.
I’ll go for a small village in the county of Derbyshire called Eyam.
Why, has someone sent up a bundle of infected clothing from London?
Eyam, close to where I grew up.
Self lockdown plague heroes whose descendants are, apparently, immune to AIDS.
Nooooooo
England-wide mockdown
A bite at a time.
Is it a Labour council – or have they locked all those down already?
Keir Starmer has volunteered them all.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-social-distancing-effective-in-the-fight-against-covid-
Worth reading
Gratitude to those few who visit this site with an entirely contrary view, in support of government policy. Debate is a useful device for divining where the truth lies in any particular matter. And it is the lack of debate over necessary measures that has landed us in this complete shambles. My view, after reading the views (dated 06 February) of an acknowledged coronavirus expert based in China during the outbreak, and after reading a 2017 peer reviewed paper showing that the common cold was more deadly to the elderly and infirm than influenza, was that this coronavirus that emerged in 2019 at some stage, was simply another common cold coronavirus. It is still a mystery to me that any modeller could arrive at any realistic scenario based on data from China, where the case definition changed seven times, or on data from Italy where the covid 19 mortality figures were revised down to 12% of the original figure. The only possible explanation for that kind of model had to be either a confection massaged to suit government policies already decided on or an attempt at professional advancement of some kind. In fact, it turned out to be both, as… Read more »
I’m a lockdown sceptic, I think the response has been stupid – but how do you explain the excess mortality? Lockdowns? New Zealand has a hard one (ooo, er) with no associated death (yet).
Are you sure it’s not just the case that this virus is new, quite nasty to the elderly infirm, and our response has been hysterical?
Nobody can be sure that the Sars-cov-2 even exists, as it has never been isolated. On that basis everything else is a likely scam. As for excess deaths, you answered it yourself, lockdowns and the blatant refusal by the NHS to do the job it is paid for. Hospital managers doctors and nurses have been largely taking money under false pretences since March. However the real blame lies with Johnson and Hancock who should both be in prison cells awaiting trial for mass murder. It is long past time Cressida Dick did her job properly, just for once, and had both of these uber criminals clapped in irons.
Do you think any virus has ever been ‘isolated’? If so, which one(s)?
Thank you for my making my point so eloquently.
New Zealand didn’t just have a lockdown, they had border closures before the virus got in. the lockdown didnot help, but by stopping the virus entering they reduced the spread. Personally I’m against border closures, I approve of free movement and free trade, I also note that New Zealand is still living in fear of the first wave coming, because it would spread widely, another downside of border closures. Border closures then are bad overall, but semi-effective fo slowing covid. lockdowns are bad overall but don’t do anything to stop covid.
NZ are simply maintaining a susceptible population indefinitely. Why would anyone wish to do that?
It’s the ultimate no exit strategy..
I presume that in the long term they are relying on a vaccine coming from somewhere.
Vaccines against coronaviruses have never been successful and the likelihood is that they will be inevitably unsafe. However, they will be liability free and so Bill Gates and Big Pharma stand to make a big killing.
They don’t want an exit strategy. It’s all about control. Covid-19 is a total scam.
In terms of costs and benefits, it’s simply pathological self-harm.
It seems Jacinda Adern has no problem with being that stupid.
It’s Nah Zoolend. Who cares?
My point was that a lockdown (and border closures) in NZ hasn’t caused excess death.
On that basis, if the virus ‘doesn’t exist’ how do we explain the excess death seen across much of the world?
I mean let’s be real – it does exist. Lots of viruses exist and we’d expect a new one now & again. And it caused some death.
But our response has been hysterical.
When people start saying it doesn’t exist, apart from making no sense it enables people to consider all sceptics as complete lunatics.
Although coronavirus was supposedly with us throughout March, deaths remained very low until the draconian lockdown measures were introduced.
Thousands of vulnerable people, ill with all kinds of manner of ailments were thrown out of hospitals last March and sent on to nursing homes and there left to rot and die.
These nursing homes had no proper PPE and their residents were cruelly denied virtually all medical treatment throughout the lockdown period. Many thousands of other people in the community at large were also denied normal treatment for emergency and acute conditions.
This wholesale refusal of the health services to do the job, that they are paid for, has not yet happened in NZ. What more do you need to know?
Border closures are wrecking the economy and if the virus actually exists then NZ is a ticking time bomb.
“Excess mortality” means little – it’s another modelling by-product, amenable to a multitude of definitions.
All you can usefully measure is the level of mortality against the long-term levels and trends. This gives a true sense of proportion.
By this criterion, this last season was one of high, but not exceptional, mortality – only the eighth highest in a quarter of a century.
The important point is that far worse infections have come and gone whilst continuing with normal life.
Thus : this is a political crisis – not one caused by disease.
That’s another point altogether- and one with which I strongly agree.
The point I made is that simply pretending the virus doesn’t exist is silly. How can we develop understandings of viruses if we sometimes arbitrarily choose to simply ignore them?!
And you say excess death is meaningless and proceed to explain exactly why it’s a very useful measure – in this case you used it to put this virus in some context.
Who’s pretending it doesn’t exist? Stating that there’s no actual proof is not the same as a denial.
There’s no proof the HIV virus exists but the fact that the symptoms can be treated suggests it probably does.
It suggests that the condition is treatable, nothing more than that.
We do not need to pretend anything. There is no proper evidence that the Sars-cov-2 coronavirus exists and that is fact. If it does exist then Covid-19 is no more lethal than seasonal flu. Accordingly there is absolutely no justification for the government’s liberty crushing and economy wrecking measures. The government knows all this and so we have to ask just what is it really up to.
https://theconversation.com/i-study-viruses-how-our-team-isolated-the-new-coronavirus-to-fight-the-global-pandemic-133675
Let’s pretend you understand that viruses are obligate intracellular parasites, which cannot be ‘isolated’ from the cells in which they exist, and move on to arguing about whether they have unique RNA/DNA which can be identified, shall we?
Excess mortality? Introducing covid 19 into care homes by discharging infected patients from hospital would have been lethal: ‘The rapid discharge of patients from hospital to care homes during the height of the COVID-19 crisis, without taking into account the needs of the whole care system, has had tragic consequences, ADASS has said. In its Coronavirus Survey, ADASS found that a significant proportion of people leaving hospital last month did not receive an assessment of their needs as part of ‘discharge to access’. Only 65% of directors of adult social services reported that every individual in their local authority area is receiving an assessment of their needs, while just 11% of directors believe that every patient was discharged to the right place for them to best meet their needs.’ https://www.homecareinsight.co.uk/rapid-discharge-to-care-homes-during-covid-19-crisis-had-tragic-consequences-says-adass/ ‘Since March there have been over 26,000 excess deaths in care homes, of which about 15,000 were recorded with COVID-19. The patterns and trends of the remaining excess deaths point to a substantial proportion of these being unreported deaths with COVID-19.’ ‘The health and mortality impact of COVID-19 can only partially be quantified from looking at COVID-19 deaths.’ https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/understanding-changes-to-all-mortality-during-the-pandemic Lockdowns? No effect whatsoever. ‘Rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and wide-spread… Read more »
As a postscript, the discharge of untested patients from hospitals into care homes would have transmitted any number of viruses into care homes, all of them lethal in that context, particularly common cold viruses, more lethal to the elderly and infirm than influenza:
‘Unexpectedly Higher Morbidity and Mortality of Hospitalized Elderly Patients Associated with Rhinovirus Compared with Influenza Virus Respiratory Tract Infection’
‘Rhinovirus infection in the adults was associated with significantly higher mortality and longer hospitalization when compared with influenza virus infection. Institutionalized older adults were particularly at risk.’
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5343795/
Are you talking about Prof John Nicholls in HK? This was one of the first things I read about covid.
https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/puzmZFQGRTiiquwLa6tT-g/conference-call-coronavirus-expert
Precisely
Absolutely. I was an editor at the BBC during the Bird Flu outbreak and was horrified by our (and the general media’s) wilful misreading of data in support of publishing scare stories to attract an audience. I raised my concerns at the time and was roundly ignored. However, it sparked an interest in the science of virus scares that meant I was researching the information coming out of China before the first cases in Europe. Just had an email from a friend apologising for dismissing my concern back in March telling me “everything you said would happen has happened,” which it has. But that is not to blow my own trumpet – its to highlight that even an amateur with a passing interest in epidemiology and a journalist’s capacity for research could see that, at the very least, there was not enough evidence of risk to warrant a destructive lockdown. If I could see it, and if many others way more qualified than me could see it, why in hell couldn’t the government? Why – when what they were proposing to do was so terrible that it would need to be 100% sure of what was going to happen –… Read more »
Your comments reflect my own experience – and the contrast with current ‘churnalism’ that prevails in the media.
You have reminded me of two neighbours at the time of the Bird Flu scare, both of whom kept hens.
One neighbour spent a fortune building roofed enclosures and other safety measures advised by Defra; the other neighbour simply carried on as usual letting his flock out to wander the fields.
I bet you can guess which one doesn’t learn from mistakes and which one is the lockdown sceptic!
What actual choice did they have? Accepting of course that they always act in a self-interested way.
Scenario 1 was that the virus didn’t turn out to be too bad (ie what’s actually happened).
No lockdown would’ve resulted in the UK’s death rate being amongst the highest in the world – cus that’s what actually happened! Boris would have lost his job, his reputation and the tories the general election. That’s a big risk.
Scenario 2 is that it does turn out that 250k people die, at which point you really are in the shit – however unlikely.
Answer honestly – would you be the guy in the meeting saying you think we need to protect the economy?!
That’s why Tegnell deserves a medal. The courage to apply reason and stand by the data when there wasn’t much about.
No, the government have been shit but I blame the media and society at large. Unable to have difficult conversations because they’re all a bunch of snowflakes.
Our politicians have sought high office, and presumably consider themselves fit to take difficult decisions in times of crisis.
I might have had some sympathy for the Government if it had ended the ‘lockdown’ measures sooner, but the pandemic has been over since June and they are now prolonging the agony solely in order to justify their original decision. Therefore, I look forward to their being held to account for their actions.
I like to think – knowing how the same models had failed previously and considering the counter information available at the time – I would have gone the Tegnell route. Who knows?
For one brief moment I thought Boris was going to do that, but as soon as he became aware that even if one healthy person died he would be blamed he lost his bottle and caved.
I think he will lose his job and the Tories will be blamed anyway, when the truth comes out. But yes he was in a no win situation in March. Still no excuse for being an idiot now mind.
I think if he’d stuck to his guns originally I might even have ended up voting Tory for the first time in my life. Now thankfully I won’t have to.
EDIT: Yes and I blame the media too. More than anyone. Which was why I was so concerned when I worked in it, as I knew the damage it was capable of in pursuit of the more exciting story.
Many lay people, like yourself, as well as experts had the measure of what was going on from more or less day one. This dodgy “pandemic” had been telegraphed for a decade or more in various documents and perhaps most blatantly so, only last October by Bill Gates and Co in Event 210, which was literally a taking the piss event.
Johnson and Hancock have brought about the deaths of very many thousands of our own people and their actions have been criminal. They are looking to bring about another cull of the vulnerable this autumn and both need to be brought to justice very quickly, but of course there will be fat chance of that.
Yes, we really, really need legal challenges or the situation will just deteriorate even further. I think if people start to see challenges to lockdown they’ll open their minds and realise that the MSM has been totally inept at factual reporting during this crisis.
Piers Corbyn calls brother Jeremy a liar at controversial Cornwall anti-mask rally
https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/piers-corbyn-calls-brother-jeremy-4529625
Peru has been on strict military lockdown since March but has the highest death ratre in the world, far higher death rate than no lockdown Brazil.
With the truth we will win
Good old Piers, he does get around a lot.
The article quotes him in full though I didn’t actually hear him say ‘liar’
Comments about 50/50, Sceptics with lots of facts and figures to counter the zealots childish hate.
Al Johnson is starting to remind me of Al Gore in South Park with nobody taking him super cereal.
https://www.the-scientist.com/features/how-social-isolation-affects-the-brain-67701
Boris and co should read this and reflect.
Having recommended this, I wonder whether the misguided, disastrous experiment foisted on the public without adequate scrutiny is actually intended to promote extensive neural and psychological remodelling, such that an embedded ,widespread and passive compliance will ensue.
Protest and dissent would then die out, not as a result of the financial and social penalties now employed, but because of systematic brainwashing , the result of reconfiguration of neural pathways.
Well they haven’t reconfigured ours.
No,and they won’t either! worrying though.
It’s an excellent article should be required reading for those who still believe that the government is doing the right thing.
Social isolation and social distancing are damaging the fabric and bonds of society. We’ve long seen this with young people with their attachment to their mobile phones and the current crisis is causing untoward psychological and mental harm to children.
The a few years later when all this is over cue weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth over antisocial children and its assorted problems.
We will have to remind them that they were complicit in this widespread child abuse.
And the reminder should be all day, every day.
We’re seeing that clearly already!
I remember once seeing some programme about Australia, where they had a prison with no interaction between prisoners, they were all kept in isolation, and Sunday went to a church service, but they all had separate cubicles. They all went mad.
This was during Victorian times. I have been looking for some info on this since March, cannot find anything.
Lincoln Castle is now a museum but was a Victorian prison with exactly that system. The chapel is still there and a picture is available online.
I was reminded it when I read of the dystopian, silent, masked solitary confinement that my old university is imposing on the members of its colleges.
About the hollowing out of our city centres because lockdown. A while back I listened to a talk about the decline of cities in the Roman Empire and there are some parallels. In the middle decades of 3rd Century the population of the Western Empire was reduced by over 20% by a series of epidemics. During the same period the Emperors centralized their power (Coronovirus Legislation Enabling Act) increasing the civil service from a few hundred to tens of thousands to take direct control of cities and large towns (local curfews), This left the urban elites with no role in the leadership of their communities and so no point in tickling their egos by erecting temples, monuments or other public buildings. Their response was to drift back to their rural estates from where the cities wealth had ultimately derived (working from home). This led their many city dependents with no source of income as thousands of servants, fish paste purveyors, locksmiths, gladiators, prostitutes and the like became unemployed (700,000 redundancies). Exacerbated by the unruly incursions of barbarian invaders (let’s not go there). For the cities the decline was permanent, when they came to be walled in the early 4th Century… Read more »
I have been thinking about this too. I feel like the developed nations of the world are hurtling towards the kind of economic turmoil that is going to prompt a huge shift in civilisation. I’m not sure what or when yet, but I suspect violence in some form or other is going to feature heavily. It’s what history would suggest. Scared for my children.
I have to agree that things seem to be slipping into the abyss. It’s almost certainly intentional and is likely part of the plan for the Great Reset. The new clean green world that’s coming, will necessarily be a lot leaner, so most of us will have no place there. That would be a very big problem, but no doubt they already working on the solution.
There were upsides. Throughout the Western Empire the most opulent villas were built in the 4th Century.
Cities were replaced by hundreds of small self sustaining market towns but what was lost was the massive trade in small value goods that provided the former tax base and the ability to defend against outside aggression.
Soz, bit pissed.
Well said and very interesting parallels. I’ve long been convinced that this is our sack of Rome moment and the barbarians have breached the city walls.
The hollowing out of urban areas during the decline of the Western Roman empire led to the development of the latifunda – large semi-rural or rural estates. Many people fled to these areas for security and jobs then become dependent on them for their living. Another consequence of the latifunda system meant that communities became inward looking and isolated not helped by lawlessness and barbarian invasion.
The idea of the Dark Ages came about as learning, culture, the sciences and even the rule of law fell by the wayside.
If we are not careful, we will heading towards another Dark Ages.
Agreed and latifundia were worked by slaves, the aristos had no need of paid workers who instead became the idle urban mob.
ps, we don’t say Dark Ages any longer because it’s judgemental, now its
Late Antiquity.
Exactly and this evolved to the feudal system that was the bedrock during the High and Late Middle Ages. In our present day, this will mean that employers can pile on more work to their employees working from home without any additional monetary compensation. Or more internships and volunteering to replace paid work in the case of sectors such as journalism, fashion and heritage.
I am aware that we don’t use Dark Ages any more but I used it in this case to demonstrate where we’re heading to in terms of historical parallels. But I get your point.
We do seem to use “Dark ages” although historians nowadays tend to insist it wasn’t so dark. They try to point out that some levels of craftmanship and long range trade still survived within it, but nothing on the scale of Rome.
Slightly OT but I have a pet theory that we may find our own time referred to by future historians as a ‘dark age’ due to the fact that so much information is realised on degradable media (viz.magnetic tape or hard drives). Our main contribution to the archaeological record will be plastic waste, including evidence of a brief period in which humans created huge amounts of strange plastic cloths, pleated twice and with a short loop at each end. Many have been found in oceans, and coupled with the fact that most are blue, it is possible they were offerings to water gods in an attempt to prevent sea level rises. But we can only speculate as to their true useful purpose…
Early Middle Ages is the term that has been used for some time to denote the period 500 -1000 AD, certainly in school history books( and yes, I still use BC/AD).
When I was teaching, I would use Early, High and Late Middle Ages which is pretty much in the text books anyway.
Agreed, so long as we can avoid BCE and CE.
This is the key really, isn’t it? When you take responsibility away from people for themselves and their communities, bad things happen.
The call for a restoration of our freedom and civil liberties should really be a call for our responsibility to be given back to us. In this case, the responsibility for our own health and wellbeing.
But it’s just part of a general trend where we cede more and more responsibility and functions of our life to the state, gradually hollowing ourselves out. Stay home, we’ll give you money, we’ll tell you how to care for yourself, we’ll tell you what you can and can’t do and we’ll tell you what to think.
It’s really a more technologically advanced form of communism. Terrifying.
I’m sure we all know of busy traffic junctions where when the lights fail everybody behaves sensibly and the traffic flows better than usual.
Such traffic light failures usually favour the majority, the biggest road with the largest traffice volume gets across the intersection or on to the roundabout easily, anyone coming in from a smalllr lower volume side road struggles to get in. But with the current situation, unlike traffic lights, the state is enforcing in favour of the majority (regreattably they are lockdownist fools) rather than in favour of continued effectiveness and getting things done. So even if, with responsibility, large numbers of people are selfish or fall in to groupthink, this is still better than have such selfishness and groupthink enforced upon all.
I’ve been saying this since the madness commenced:personal responsibility, maturity, rationality and curiosity have vanished into the social lost and found; will they reappear?
A well educated friend-a retired primary teacher-recently replied ,when I was fulminating about the Rule of Six and its stupidity-‘well I try to follow the rules’.
This is what i find so frustrating and disheartening; well educated ostensibly intelligent folk are obediently accepting this control creep , with the implication that those of us who resist are troublesome irresponsible knowalls.
Finally on communism and its successful power grab in post Czarist Russia, I recommend this book:
‘Caught In The Revolution’ by Helen Rappaport.
Fascinating, easy to read and full of the eye witness accounts of the many British, American,.French and other expats living and working in St Petersburg .
Equally fascinating is :
‘A Dance Between The Flames’ by Anton Gill
Life in the ill fated Weimar republic .
Both books give vivid accounts of societies in crisis,with economic hardship, impoverishment and unrest leading to the demise of democracy and the advent dangerous demagogues like Lenin and Hitler.
Thanks for book ideas – on my list growing longer by the day. I’ve just lost (another) long time friend fiercely intelligent retired research chemist who announced he can no longer see me due to my refusal to wear a mask. His discourteous text “I really can’t continue to organise my life around responsible caution and keep lunching with you if you continue this Trumpian denial” was the final straw.
This schism is worse that Brexit!
Awful! This will be so difficult to overcome, based,as it is, on a kind of moral superiority-mistaken, as we know, but we are the useful miscreants.
I was a remainer, and was so strongly a remainer that even friends of mine who happened to be in the Lib Dem* party used to hate it. Today I stopped hiding my lockdown opinions from my other friends too, emailed everyone I’ve ever known with a long statement on the folly of our government’s crimes. Don’t know how many will still be friends after they’ve read it, but those who are will be the friends worth keeping. I cannot imagine a society where the schism opened by the illegal lockdown has healed, I intend to associate only with anti-lockdownists for as long as I live.
*Lost those friends when the supported lockdown and I didn’t
How does he manage to eat his lunch with a mask on?
“Trumpian denial” – WTF???
Is he another one suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome?
Roman wealth was not just created by commerce and technological developments but by the importance of the trade in slavery which grew to unprecedented proportions as the Roman empire expanded. This made small businesses and independent farms uneconomic as they could not compete with the free labour of slaves. The middle classes collapsed, the small farmers were absorbed into the large farming estates as virtual slaves (many former citizens had to sell themselves and their children to survive) and there was massive moral and cultural decline. In fact you were better off under a barbarian ruler that as part of the Roman empire. The parallels between the hollowing out of Roman society and what is happening now as middle class jobs are outsourced to China and India, and our middle class cannot maintain its financial or social status – are most worrying. What ultimately happened – and this is the most interesting bit – is that the upper and middle classes, who would normally have expected to have successful careers in the military and civil service, became disenchanted with the roman ideal, and rather than joining the military and protecting the Empire, went off to live in caves as Christian… Read more »
The Roman empire collapsed from the inside first, because wealth was concentrated at the top.- and obscene amounts of wealth – check out Seneca’s income.
It was the destruction off the middle class and the loss of adequate social mobility that undermined it.
And as it weakened internally, external invasion could succeed.
Which has relevance for the western world as it is today: managed, not governed in the true sense, by ambitious box ticking PR-toting technocrats who lack both true conviction and moral courage. The woke commitment to open borders and abolition of virtually every boundary until recently held dear and believed to be essential for social stability,harmony and mutual trust-the civic consensus, has now been undermined from within. Universities, the media and NGOs lead the great awokening and have now taken up the Covid restricted ‘new normal’ with alacrity and plenty of righteous noise. This has led to invasion in the form of mass migration on a scale not seen before, matched by a dismissal of the value of western democratic norms and the spread of various vocal protest movements, whose noisy antics receive tacit approval from many governments: BLM; ER etc. This has led to blatant double standards-witness the cops’ behaviour at the recent anti lockdown protest in London- and the suppression and dismissal of dissent. The list of putative hate crimes grows ever longer, while punitive financial penalties are imposed for any who dare to challenge the ‘stop the spread and save lives’ mantra. We are ripe for a… Read more »
The barbarians have breached the city walls and it could only be a matter of time before society as we know it has collapsed.
Blimey! Didn’t .realise we were still on the Roman Empire, have to get back to you tomorrow as I’m down the pub at the moment. 🤔
Very spot on and this is the reason why the aristocracy ended up dominating the church and especially the papacy. From the early Middle Ages until at least 1978 (with a few exceptions), the popes were mostly aristocrats (and Italian).
The values and beliefs that drive civilisation are discredited once a society degenerates and betrays its ideals.
What interests me is how new ideals arise. Human beings need to believe in their culture. If not, it will fail.
I have thought of following the early Christians and abandoning a sinking ship. But it will not be the same ideal this time…what will it be?
Blessed are the fish paste purveyors…
I would like to ask if I could nick this for something I’m planning to post in my social media account. Will credit you and post a link to this blog.
Yes of course, no need of a credit or link.
And another 50% to go. All part of the Great Reset.
BBC quotes helpful advice to those whose neighbours are caught behaving like human beings:
“When it comes to putting your perspective across, Mrs Weinstein says it’s about explaining the impact their actions are having on you.
“For example, you could say ‘I’ve noticed that you are having more than six people round to your house. When you do that I feel very nervous and upset because I feel that it is putting people at risk’,” she says.”
What would your response be?
Biker, if you’re around, I would just love to hear your suggestions, if you can write them without melting your keyboard.
They should try that on the w/c woman I asked yesterday about who might snitch on their neighbours.
“I already have been, I’m one of seven kids and we’ve all got kids so when there’s a party there’s loads of us.
This woman next door looks down on me because I’m a single mum so when it was my youngest third birthday Friday everyone came round, we got a 80 foot garden so its easy.
She come knocking on my door saying
“Do you know how many people are in your garden, I think it’s more than six”
I told her “yeah more like 25, what’s your problem?” and she wanted to know if it was appropriate.
“Very appropriate thank you it’s my kids birthday and I’m not having you tell me which of her Cousins, Ants and Uncles can and can’t come over alright?”
Splendid Lady.
Indeed.
Good for her!!!
I would be inclined to say “I am sorry you feel nervous and upset. I would suggest you stop watching too much television – the BBC in particular – and do a little more research on a virus that has a 99.8% survival rate and impacts primarily on the 80+ age group. Your media stoked irrational fears have impacted your perception of risk. I suggest you go and have a lie down and try to relax”
id leave out the 80+ bit if they were of that age group maybe though.
You could also mention the likelihood of a brick through the window.
To misquote @fatemperor : he gets makes his milkshake frothy
What about the impact on all of us of the WALL TO FUCKING WALL propaganda??
Noticed that some of our neighbours were having a gathering last night when I took the dogs out for a stroll.
It made me smile, lots.
“I’ve noticed that you… ”
“I’ll stop you right there.”
Slams door
That would probably make them phone the cops to spite you.
Best to let them get it out of their system so they can just huff off home self-righteously.
Let them know that snitches do sometimes get a brick through the window.
Given to equanimity as I am, I think my response would be something like this
“I FEEL LIKE your fear is based on stupidity, innumeracy, and a total inability to conceptualise rationally and proportionately. I FEEL LIKE your very existence is a direct consequence of the dysgenic government policy of paying the feeble-minded to breed at other people’s expense.I FEEL LIKE you should pour a gallon of petrol over yourself and play with matches.”
See Samuel Wormald circa 1927.
In my coffee shop today we had 3 couples meet who obviously haven’t met in a long time. It was handshakes, hugs and even a kiss on the mouth between strangers!
Lovely to see!
One answer to the neighbourhood Stasi snitch is a brick through the window.
The only ‘circuit break’ in the pandemic we need now is from this cycle of bad data and bad science, say CARL HENEGHAN and TOM JEFFERSON
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8751389/Oxford-scientists-circuit-break-need-cycle-bad-data-bad-science.html
Peru has been on strict military lockdown since March but has the highest death rate in the world. With the truth we will win
Good call.
As a linguist I’m particularly struck by the mention of how semantics is being prostituted in order to crank up the terror and reinforce the lies.
Newspeak, Covidspeak.
Doubleplusungood.
In most situations panic is more dangerous than the actual threat. In old cinemas they made sure that if the projection room caught fire, as early projectors often did, the people in the auditorium didn’t know. A crowd rushing out was far more dangerous than localised flames.
Excellent article. We need to reclaim the language and turn it on its head against the lockdownistas and mask zealots.
PETER HITCHENS: Can’t we put these power-mad clowns of the Johnson Junta in a nice rest home?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8751075/PETER-HITCHENS-Johnson-Junta-nice-rest-home.html
Peru has been on strict military lockdown since March but has the highest death rate in the world. With the truth we will win
Excellent piece by Peter as usual, I like the Ovaltine touch (reduced sugar content, natch)
Just one quibble, further down he mentions discovering the origin of the 2 meter rule from an unattributed ‘close to the top’ source.
“We knew that 1 metre was sufficient but didn’t think the public would understand it so we doubled it”.
Apart from that statement being ridiculous it was floating around t’internet at least three months ago if not longer.
It’s worrying how far ahead of ‘the curve’ we all are on here. By the time everyone else has caught up, the government have moved onto their next sleight of hand and the dum dums fall for it every time.
It always mad me laugh how 2 metres equalled 6ft.
It showed already their inability to understand simple maths.
But did the DM readers know about it three months ago?
If they did they would have forgotten it by now.
“nice rest home” … How about Guantanamo?
From what I hear many of the homes that elderly people are confiend in have become not dissimilar to that during the panicdemic. No need to send Johnson and co. to the caribbean when they can be shoved in to hellholes in their own constituencies.
Too nice.
‘Anyone with healthcare experience knows the return to schools leads to a rise in the common cold’
Underpinning the chaos is a fundamental misunderstanding of the effects of seasonal viral pathogens
CARL HENEGHAN
TOM JEFFERSON
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/20/anyone-healthcare-experience-knows-return-schools-leads-rise/
No need for healthcare experience. You just need to be, or to have been, a parent, or teacher, or child.
The main question is how is there a rise of common cold in schools if all the mask wearing rules schools have introduced actually prevent virus transmission?
terrain theory, terrain theory, terrain theory.
Wancock’s ignorance is unbelievable if he thinks ‘doubling every week’ means exponential.
He probably thinks Pandemic means the Covid is going to be really really nasty to him when it gets him.
He is clearly also not well briefed or does not understand what he is being told by his advisers, tosser.
I just hope that something is going to be really nasty to him when it gets him. And that it happens soon.
There’s going to be a long queue to get at Hancock and of course there’s also Boris to deal with.
Do you think he is really that bad at maths, or is he just making it up and hoping WE are all that bad at maths we won’t spot his bullshit?
I’ve got a CSE Grade 1 in maths and I know more than him.
(I could do trigonometry and simultaneous equations when i was 12 but the maths teacher didn’t like me is my excuse).
Not only does he not understand he is not following the rules on how to manage something with a complex technical input; you need to have the humility and good grace to ask the stupid obvious question to make sure you are getting it right.
He has made the classic error of arrogance, bravado and ignorance and steamed on without understanding the facts underpinning what he is managing.
Yesterday on this site I asked a stupid obvious question about the FPR, my thanks to all those who replied, as a result I think I have now got my head around the matter. That is what Hapless Hancock should be doing all the time challenging and asking the obvious questions but he is to arrogant and full of himself to do that.
Just said that in today’s email to my mp – the arrogance of the man has been clear from the outset, with that self-satisfied grin he had when he said how sorry he was that Shapps had to come back from his holiday. What a tosser.
But he has the Behavioural Insights Team to help him turn any mundane situation into horror, panic and fear.
I think Wankock understands exactly what he’s doing.
Hancock should actually be doing time in a cell not too far from Boris. What a pair of thickos and evil with it.
He’s thick as well as evil.
He’s a complete shithouse and needs to go, pronto
Malfeasance in public office – is that an arrestable crime?
I’m hoping for some sort of comeuppance
High Treason
I have to wonder what drug they were high on when they decided lockdown was a viable strategy and that the downsides of it did not need to be considered.
In this inverted reality, downsides are seen as upsides. Simply break down all societal norms, waste as much money as you can as quickly as you can, and go for broke.
It was a little something from Bill Gates. It worked a treat.
And the death sentence still applies. How very fitting.
Go to jail, along with Boris.
Er, doubling every week does mean exponential, at least for the time period in question. The question is whether the numbers were in fact doubling every week or not. The answer, taken from the Covid-19 dashboard, is that they were not. On 13 August, the number of admissions to hospitals in England was 60; on 17 September it was 199. That’s a factor of 2.9 (less than 2 doublings) in five weeks. In fact the weekly multiplier from 13 to 20 August was x0.75 (a reduction), then x1.5, x1.0, x2.1, x1.4. So there was only one of those five weeks in which the numbers doubled, and one in which they went down. There does seem to be an upward trend since mid-August, probably at the rate of doubling every three weeks. By comparison, hospital admissions in the North-West region are roughly doubling about every two weeks, and in my region, the South-West, they are in decline.
Beat me to it Richard. Spot on.
And we are not being told whether the covid admissions are for covid disease or because someone has, for instance, fallen off their horse and been found to have covid when admitted to hospital.
From the website England data include people admitted to hospital who tested positive for COVID-19 in the 14 days prior to admission, and those who tested positive in hospital after admission. Inpatients diagnosed with COVID-19 after admission are reported as being admitted on the day prior to their diagnosis. and Definition of confirmed COVID-19 patients: • For all relevant data items: a confirmed COVID-19 patient is any patient admitted to the trust who has recently (ie in the last 14 days) tested positive for COVID-19 following a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. • Patients who have been diagnosed via X-ray and assessment rather than a positive test should be counted as suspected (and not confirmed) COVID-19 patients. • Report a patient as a confirmed COVID-19 patient in the sitrep for as long as they are being treated as a COVID-19 patient – so either they are being treated for COVID-19 caused symptoms or the trust is still taking the precautions they would take with a COVID-19 positive patient. • A patient who has previously but not recently – (ie not in the last 14 days) had a positive COVID-19 test and is admitted for non-COVID-19 related treatment should not be… Read more »
You are not entitled to facts.
No doubling every week is linear growth
1,2,4,8,16 is doubling over a set period of time or space is exponential. You’ve wine a prize in a competition and can either have £1000000 or you can have 1 penny on the first day, 2 p on the second 4p on the third and so on for 28 days, which option would you choose and why?
Well seems as though going for the penny on the first day would give £342177.28 more. However, given the current state of affairs, specifically the mission creep and moving goalposts, I’ll take the £1000000 now please.
Oh wait, if you get all the pennies each day, and we don’t just count an increase in population, then you get £1684354.55 extra. Still take the £1000000 today.
Actually any increase rate above 1 that results in a geometric progression would produce a positive exponential curve, if it’s less than one it will be a negative exponential curve.A real exponential curve is based on the multiplying factor being ‘e’, converting that data into natural logs would result in a straight line. The proof of an exponential growth is plotting the log of the data against time, this will be a straight line. Any deviation from a best fit straight line means it’s not exponential.
Also, simply looking at admissions is a blinkered approach to hospital stats, hospitals are not ‘The Hotel California’ you can be discharged and leave. So he also needs to look at total numbers in hospital.
For England; Covid 19 cases in hospital 1st Sept 472 19th Sept 1048
Patients on ventilators 1st sept 59 19th sept 123
So just over doubling in 19 days, given the English population is around 56 million those numbers are hardly a cause for panic, more a slight autumn ripple than any sort of wave. the NHS should be OK to cope.
There’s also the question of how many of those are people who were admitted because of Coronavirus compared to those who were admitted for something else and subsequently tested positive (even assuming those weren’t false positives).
One thing we can be sure of is that Emperor Boris’s gang will still be fiddling the figures big time.
If you mean Wancock as in Hancock, he supposedly had it in March when Boris was ill.
I guess they were both replaced with Stepford robots then. But who controls them?
Bill Gates.
The man is clearly is thicker than pig shit, his advisors must be having so much fun.
Can someone help me? I lament the Covid response as much as the next sane person, but this false positive rate seems very important.
If the PCR FPR is 0.8%, surely the rate/10k would never drop below 80 in places where PCR testing is the primary measure of testing.
But hasn’t it been well below that rate in loads of places that use primarily PCR testing?
I think the false positive rate is debated in scientific circles and as this is biology you do not automatically get the exact false positive number in every batch of tests. I think the UK is doing 230,000 tests per day if the False positive rate is between .4 and .8 then the number of false positives would be somewhere between 920 and 1840, with the virus levels as low as they are that is clearly more than enough to grossly over inflate the figures.
Positive rates average 1.6/10000 across UK at the mo, so a positive rate well below the false positive range you suggest.
If (as the prev comment suggested) the ONS aren’t using data from PCR testing to inform policy, shouldn’t we take that into consideration?
The Government’s own data puts the false positive rate at somewhere between 0.8% and 4.0% based on 43 different tests.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/895843/S0519_Impact_of_false_positives_and_negatives.pdf
Hancock, in picking the lower bound, is being more than disingenuous.
“Hancock, in picking the lower bound, is being more than disingenuous.”
That cannot be repeated too often.
Basically, that’s correct. The ONS numbers are based on a test with a much lower FPR, it seems. Look in yesterdays comments for a thread in which I discuss that in detail.
Oh OK that’s good. Sorry to be a pain but do you have some kind of link to that info or anything?
If their figures aren’t based on PCR test doesn’t that mean there’s not that much of a problem with the PCR false positive?
The problem is the Government are basing policy on Pillar 2 cases (which uses PCR tests) not on the more reliable ONS figures.
I think there’s something in that. As I point out in another comment today, the PHE figures are essentially NHS hospital management information — how many patient with Covid do we have to deal with rather than how many patients are here because of Covid. That sort of “Protect the NHS” thinking seems persistent.
No, it is a PCR test. From preprint
If you could summarise again I’d be grateful! Or give a pointer to where you posted it yesterday (key word or something). Thanks.
There were so many posts on this yesterday, and lots of them needed to be studied in detail. I don’t know about everyone else, but I only have so much covid reading time each day, and there’s so much of it right now I can’t keep up.
John G’s point is an important one to understand though.
Thanks for that. There is a GoS paper GOS: Impact of false positives and negatives, 3 June 2020 which says It is important to remember that laboratory testing verifies the analytical sensitivity and analytical specificity of the RT-PCR tests. They represent idealised testing. In a clinical or community setting there may be inefficient sampling, lab contamination, sample degradation or other sources of error that will lead to increased numbers of false positives or false negatives. The diagnostic sensitivity and diagnostic specificity of a test can only be measured in operational conditions A distinction that will be of major importance is assessing the reliability or even feasibility of a mass testing programme in which individual members of the public carry out their own tests. (The GoS paper of course does not address the issue of people having an incentive to actually cheat on their tests.) They go on to say The RT-PCR assays used for the UK’s COVID-19 testing programme have been verified by PHE, and show over 95% sensitivity and specificity. This means that under laboratory conditions, these RT-PCR tests should never show more than 5% false positives or 5% false negatives. and, more worryingly, We have been unable to find any… Read more »
Next we come to the ONS COVID-19 Infection Survey (Pilot): methods and further information which states We know the specificity of our test must be very close to 100% as the low number of positive tests in our study means that specificity would be very high even if all positives were false. For example, in the period from 1 June to 12 July, 50 of the 112,776 total samples tested positive. Even if all these positives were false, specificity would still be 99.96%. This is expanded in a Medrxiv preprint (DOI 10.1101/2020.07.06.20147348). While false-positives may be a concern with a low prevalence – potentially leading to an overestimation of the percentage of truly infected persons that are asymptomatic – the low number of positive tests in our study overall is also reassuring since it indicates that the specificity of the test is very high. This is far better specificity than other studies, so we have to presume that these tests are being done differently. But I’m not sufficiently expert on the testing process to say why or how. If — and this is a big if — the “moonshot” test can achieve this degree of specificity, then the evidential level rises to around 50%:… Read more »
Thanks for this, some of which I’d seen previously and some of which I’d not.
When I present this to my lockdown fanatic mates, they say ‘how come the UK average positive case rate is running at 16/100,000 then?’
Less than 0.02%, when the PCR test is the most used test and we’d have to assume there are some genuine cases.
I’m not arguing with you, you’re obviously well informed, but I genuinely don’t know how to address this point – I expect I’m missing something.
You pose a good question, and one which I don’t know the answer to. The ONS report admits that they do not know the exact FPR of their tests either. As they say, it must be below the positive rate they’re getting. So for some reason their tests have a much lower FPR.
But for the purposes of planning a mass testing programme, it seems clear that SAGE are planning on the basis of 2% FPR at a scale a thousand times greater then the ONS laboratory currently handles.
Beat my next post by a few seconds.
This seems to me to be a very important thing to understand.
When they quote the cases per 100k for each region, do we know they derive this? I’m not even sure which pillar they are referring to.
Every piece of data on covid seems to be based on sand, and sinking in a mire of obfuscation.
ONS have their own separate testing programme. I think it’s officially Pillar 4.
Ok, I think that’s the letter offers of tests I’ve received in the last few days.
Not that I’m taking them up on their generous prize offer of a two-week confinement with a large fine if I desist.
So maybe the ONS are processing, or at least interpreting, the Pillar 4 tests differently from whoever s doing 1s and 2s. I wonder if they are adjusting for an FPR? Hence when they quote 10 infections per 100k, that actually means c. 100 +ves.
When they say infections, they mean the number of infections as inferred from the test results. See COVID-19 Infection Survey (Pilot): methods and further information for details.
Thanks for engaging with this and being so clear.
With PCR positive rates running so low I think the problem with false positives is overstated as things stand, but well worth keeping in mind for reasons you’ve illustrated so well.
Also as you point out, rates this low are an anomaly when it comes to this type of testing in the field, so god knows why we’re seeing them here.
An obvious follow on question: with so little Covid why on Earth is a second lockdown even under discussion??
Thanks again
Yes, thanks again RP. Mrs TJN (who has a maths background) is also probing the ONS site, but she’s sinking in the mire.
Jon G – yes I agree, it seems to me that as things stand the problem with FPRs may be being overstated. Perhaps Hancock was inadvertently correct in his reply on LBC???
It’s all such a mess, but based on this stuff we’re destroying ourselves as a society.
Yes, I still can’t get my head around this.
RP – please treat me as a particularly dumb student!
I do remember reading those posts yesterday, but didn’t relate them to the question here.
If we do 100,000 tests, and we have a 1% FPR (and ignore FNR), then surely we would expect, on average, 100 +ve results? (Even with no covid.)
But the observed results (and I’m all for empirical evidence) often show far fewer +ves than this
Sorry for being so dumb, but I feel like Matt Hancock on LBC.
You’re quite right, that is the prevalence is low, that is, almost everyone is negative, then positive results will come mainly from false positives. It also means that the false positive rate cannot be more than the proportion of positive test, since they form part of the positive test numbers, alongside the true positives.
So you are quite right to ask how a 2% FPR can yield a positive test result of less than 2%. And that is a good question — it cannot. The ONS put it this way: since they are detecting 0.1% positive rates in their sample, they estimate the FPR in their tests as less than 0.1%, and indeed they think it might be as low as 0.04%. This FPR is astonishingly low compared to other tests, and it’s a genuine discrepancy which I for one do not understand. Indeed, you may detect a slight undercurrent of puzzlement in the ONS preprint!
That ONS preprint describes other statistical analysis the ONS have done to illuminate this point, which I have not yet myself fully understood …
Thanks so much for taking the time with this.
If you don’t understand it, I certainly won’t.
I wonder if Prof. Heneghan will turn his attention to this.
As you posted yesterday, I’m inclined to put some credence on ONS material (despite it being government).
Astonishingly, after over six months now, every form of data on covid seems to be a complete mess.
This is pure speculation, but the ONS tests may be differently calibrated. From what little I know, the test has a certain number of “cycles” and the more cycles the more likely they are to detect very small amounts of viral material.
In a clinical setting, you want to avoid false negatives: that is, the risk comes from not treating patients for a disease they really have — and which you suspect already that they do have. So you would be inclined to set the testing parameters in favour of detection even of small amounts of evidence. While there may be effects of false positives, treating someone for a disease they don’t have might well be considered less serious than not treating them for one which they do. And of course in a clinical setting you can test again when you like.
So it may be that a relatively high 2% FPR is the price you pay for having a low FNR (said to be around 2% in the GOS paper), which is what you would want to have in a clinical setting.
But as I say, this is speculation.
Yes, maybe the threshold is set differently.
I do wonder if the quoted figures per 100k include extrapolation through modelling.
But the whole problem is still shrouded in fog.
Perhaps Piers Morgan should ask Matt Hancock about it on GMB next week.
That all may be fine in a clinical setting, but it is worse than useless when testing in the field, with the so called cases numbers hovering around the FPR.
Johnson and Hancock are clearly keen to keep the dodgy Covid pot boiling and at the moment the unfit for purpose PCR test is all they have got. We are apparently being screwed mightily and we need to get to the bottom of why they are pulling this massive stunt. It may seem a stretch, but I very much doubt that the reason has much to do with their all too obvious incompetence.
The 2% FPR can come from calibration in that samples are run and the worst-case is 2% or the median is. In reality the test may be better.
But the FPR will dictate whether you bother to use them in the first place. Because you won’t know until you test.
“But the observed results (and I’m all for empirical evidence) often show far fewer +ves than this” Would typically imply a lower false positive rate for tests than the assumed (1%). Even with a false positive rate lower than this though you’ll still get many more false positives than real positives if you test for something rare enough.
Yes, but I’m wondering whether the observed, or quoted figures, or at least some of them, have already been adjusted for FPR? Or whether there’s inference from modelling here?
I just don’t know. And I don’t know any more whether Dr Yeadon’s analysis today is therefore slightly misleading. I’m certainly not saying that it is, simply that I don’t understand what’s going on.
And I’m quite sure that Hancock doesn’t know, still less Johnson, or Cummings.
I’m feel as if I’m back at uni or school and the lecturer/teacher is explaining something to me for the umpteenth time, but I still don’t understand, so just say that I do because I don’t want to appear hopelessly stupid …
Thank you for this – it’s excellent.
I agree
Thanks — it’s a pleasure. It’s something I wanted to settle in my own mind anyway and discussing it in this forum has certainly helped me to do so.
“In another neck of the woods, SAGE estimate that after six months of weekly testing, 41% of the population will have received a false positive result.”
So did they therefore conclude that Moonshine would be a good idea?
Promoting a policy that would lead to two fifths of the entire population being incarcerated at home for a fortnight for not being ill (probably under threat of £10K fine for breach). And to spend £100B into the bargain?
Is their own estimate in print, so that it can be referenced and quoted I wonder?
That particular paper was described as “leaked”, so I’m going by a press report. I have not seen the paper. I hope that it at least mentions the huge unreliability and its consequences.
If you have the same rate of FNR and FPR does this not cancel each other out?
Baynes theorem gives you the answer here https://youtu.be/jDecehzaVQU
Only if you have equal proportions of true positive and true negative in the population under test. Suppose, for example, that you mass test a population of 10million with 0.1% prevalence, ie 0.1% true positive, 99.9% true negative and your test has 2% FPR and 2% FNR The tests results would be as follows
True positive (10,000) with true positive result (98%): 9,800
True negative (9,990,000) with false positive result (2%): 199,800
True positive (10,000) with false negative result (2%): 200
True negative (9,990,000) with true negative result (98%): 9,790,200
So of the 9,800+199,800 = 209,600 positive results, 9,800 are true: 4.7%
And of the 200+9,790,200 = 9,790,400 negative results, 9,790,200 are true: 99.997%
So the FPR and the FNR for the tests are the same: but the evidential value of the results are wildly different.
I will repeat what I have said the last few days and doesn’t appear to have been taken into account even on this website.
The number of deaths shown in Spain for example is the number WITH COVID, not FROM COVID. But it’s not even with COVID, it’s WITH A POSITIVE TEST.
Latest figures show about 13% of tests are positive, and around 6% of daily deaths are tested positive. So the figures show that the percentage of people dieing with a positive test is lower than the percentage in the population that has a positive test. COVID is not good for your health, so the tests and death figures are completely meaningless.
I.E. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER FOR AN UPTICK IN SPAIN FROM THE OFFICIAL DEATH FIGURES.
If 13% of people were left handed and 6% of deaths were of left handed people, would that show that being left handed killed 6% of the population ???
Which latest figures show 13% of tests are positive? That’s a rate of 1300/10000. Isn’t the uk average 1.6/10000?
These are the Spanish figures – look at the Spanish ministry of health website. I thought it was fairly clear that my comment was about Spain ??
Maybe you’re thinking 13% of tests are positive because across the pandemic 13% of the Spanish population has tested positive?
No, I’m thinking it because it was 13% for the week to the 17/9
Cases/100,000 averages 259 across Spain at the moment – less than 0.3%
The latest figures are shown here, which is an update from the previous figures:
https://www.mscbs.gob.es/profesionales/saludPublica/ccayes/alertasActual/nCov/documentos/Actualizacion_210_COVID-19.pdf
no of cases diagnosed in the last 7 days to 18/9: 58,347
no of tests in 7 days to 18/9: 650,402
Therefore positive test percentage = 8.97%
Total deaths in last 7 days with COVID 432, or 61.7 per day
Total deaths in Spain overall: around 1150 per day
Therefore percentage of deaths with positive tests = 5.36%, far lower than the percentage of people who tested positive.
Your figure above is dividing a numerator of a sample by a denominator of the whole population, so is completely meaningless and of course is very low.
Good post not at all to disagree just to comment and put on record the guardian are reporting surge giant increase in infections – which is wrong. Essentially the scientific vommunication language to the public has been ruined by msm over cases. Their words are now meaningless and only serve to cause panic and danger.
True. But if every Grauniad reader self-isolated under its bed until the end of Time, the rest of the country wouldn’t be a penny the worse.
Or if they joined you all here, as have I (a former Guardian reader). I like to think that the country is infinitesimally better off with me here, rather than there. And I’m probably not the only Guardian reader here, just a more vocal one.
Laurence,
I take your point, but I’m afraid I ignored your post on this earlier because I simply didn’t believe that 13% of tests in Spain were +ve, compared to our 0.1%.
Are we comparing like with like?
At only a 0.1% positive rate, (albeit mainly false), testing shouldn’t have much impact in distorting UK death figures.
In the UK we have the ONS tests of a representative sample each week, which show .11% or roughly 1 in 900 have COVID, which are the ones you refer to.
We also have the entirely separate tests of the people who apply to be tested, and there are around 170,000 of these per day, and yesterday for example 4,422 people tested positive, around 2.6%.
This figure is the one that should be compared.
However, both this and the Spanish figures are virtually meaningless and the best estimate (in the UK) is 0.11% – I’m not aware of any comparable figure in Spain.
No Prime Minister as ever looked so worn out and clueless. He looks like a hostage to the SAGE people. Every Prime Minister has crises to deal with but he has blown this out of all proportion.
When Covid 19 took off in Italy, and Lombardy, I soon discovered that the deaths were no worse that season flu there a couple of years earlier.
Did Boris Johnson know this? Did he bother to find out?
If it were a factory, the workers would be trying to figure a way to oust these jokers as they are running it into the ground
No, he asked mumsnet what to do
Can anyone confirm this report and if so, can we arrange a collection for this man’s family please? 😞
https://twitter.com/SamuelJJack/status/1307451335558795269?s=20
Sorry can’t help you but I do like the Bill Gates placard in the comments.
Maybe highlight this to Toby over email, see if he can do any digging to establish if the cops have committed murder.
Error
The thing that saddens me most about this ridiculous situation is the long term harm that it is doing to peoples trust in government and compliance with the law.
These laws are so obviously stupid and the government is so obviously lying to us I will be unlikely to trust them again and I will only comply when I am forced to do so.
This may already have been foreseen by those in government.
My concern is that given the revelation of the nature of political power in the UK – that it is a tyranny – we cannot go back to any kind of democracy.
It may be military dictatorship from now on.
Nigel Farage Tweets
The government’s test and trace programme has been a total failure, they are useless.
Yet now we are threatened with massive fines and encouraged to spy on our neighbours.
#SayNoToLockdown.
10:22 pm · 19 Sep 2020·
1.3K Retweets
74 Quote Tweets
4.6K Likes
Could do with JC joining forces with him to box the left off too. Then we gobble the centre like Boris at a buffet
But it isn’t madness.
It is tyranny dressed up as incompetence.
For those who doubt that or see conspiracy everywhere that provokes an uncomfortable response, look in the sage minutes. These were made public after Simon Dolan’s FOI.
They have been featured on the UK Column. These feature the comments on the fact that the public are not sufficient scared and the need to ramp up the fear. That is evidence of govt tyranny.
How is anything else?
That sage note about the public being insufficiently scared dates from the very beginning of lockdown 1 and it’s still being played now as they introduce lockdown 2.
If people who think the pandemic is a hoax are crackpots, how do you explain SAGE saying the public were not scared enough and the fear had to be ramped up which is exactly what you would expect if there was no pandemic. In a real pandemic SAGE would not need to install fear.
Exactly.
In every recent previous pandemic people haven’t been all that scared, and government felt no need to make them so. Spanish flu looks terriblein hindsight, but at the time it was not the top news story. Many of the population didn’t know it was happening. In all the pandemic planning our country had done over the last few decades the question was how to keep fear low so that people could go about normal lives and keep our country running. I am confident that the covid-19 pandemic is real, but it is clearly mild, why there was a desire to increase fear is something I can’t be sure of, but it definitely looks suspicious.
There is a lot to be depressed about in today’s LS summary, but there is a glimmer of hope:
Sir Graham Brady Leads Rebellion Against Renewal of Coronavirus Act
I have already written once to Sir Graham and received a thoughtful response from his office. Today I will write again and give him my strong support. Could I possibly encourage others to do the same?
Done – first time ever written to an MP – even a brief e-mail urging support has to help – please write to him everyone. Interestingly the local MPs here are in press today arguing that further measures aren’t needed – trying to o distance themselves from own governments policy
And about bloody time.
Still not a squeak from my Socialist Member
The MPs distancing themselves or me writing to MP !! One them comes from a family with significant local retail business and must be seeing the impact on those
Second this. Have written to him twice. Positive response from his office even though I’m not a constituent
I’ve dropped him a line – mentioning how useless my MP seems to be in comparison.
Do you have an email address we can write to please?
All MPs listed on here:
https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/contact-an-mp-or-lord/contact-your-mp/
Brady never answered or acknowledged any mail from me on this subject.
altsale@parliament.uk
This is the one.
Done, just a short statement of support but maybe he’ll respond to me. Don’t mind if he ignores my email though, if he needs to put more time towards getting this government to relinquish illegal powers. My own crook of a local MP never replies to anything..
Clashes scene between police and protesters during anti-#lockdown protest at #Trafalgar Square in #London, #Britain
https://twitter.com/GlbBreakNews/status/1307396845010853895
Thank you for posting that 2p. Important to see the nature of the violence. The crap-hats (police) clearly were effecting some kind of physical assault on people who were not agressing towards them. The crowd were in rational control of themselves throughout from what I can see. One man in police uniform appears to let his mask slip, I believe he learned a lesson.
Misjudged antagonistic police actions trying to ignite a battle is what it looks like, the papers may spin.
Concerned by reports of a man who possibly died yesterday perhaps as a result of Met police charging into the crowd. Was it this man or another who was unconcious at Trafalger Square following a police charge into the protestors?
Thanks for those, seems to have been lot bigger than yesterdays vids showed.
Police in 2nd vid last link looked scared being confronted non violent protesters. Yelling “get back” when they were the ones who had gone forward.
Horses too and no soft uniforms unlike when interacting with previous mainly peaceful protesters.
Reminded of Orgreave and the Miner’s Strike.
Picking up a debate from last night when I asked a genuine question about the £10k fines.
1. Not sure I get the objection to the £10k fine if you don’t isolate.
Surely if you do test and you have been unwell then it’s common sense anyway.
If you there is nothing wrong with you then you won’t be tested anyway so what’s the problem.
What am I missing?
2. If you are genuinely sick and tested positive you are at home 14 days.
If people are going out despite being unwell that is actually curtailing freedoms for the rest of us.
3. Not disagreeing at all, but if only 20% of those who are supposed to be isolating are isolating then that is contributing to liberties being taken away from the rest of us.
4. Those who know me know that i am a regular contributor and in a desperate state right now, I just want this to end.
So to me i am shocked that people who should be following medical advice are NOT and that is actually extending this fiasco.
5. For once I think this is a workable plan.
Appreciate that most won’t agree!
I understand and share your despair, I just see every measure you have described as a part of the insanity not a route out of it.
For some measures, masks mostly, I wondered if a minor inconvenience cold be a way out of the panic, but the latter has been the case. I wondered if the rule of 6 would be where the government would stop, but having not even had time to see its effect they’re adding more measures. If our government were rational, if they’d take small measures only, we could perhaps obey them. But they aren’;t and they don’t every measure is just a stepping stone to the next. The only way out of this is herd immunity, and it needs to be reached as soon as possible (although it might be alread).
Reasonable post and we all share your sense of despair but there are a couple of things I’d consider, in a very broad sense:
Mainly what’s the overall plan! If it’s to limp through for an indefinite period in the hope that someone will develop a safe and effective vaccine, then yeah – trying to minimise viral spread seems obvious.
But with a rapidly expanding data pool we can see more clearly the nature of the virus; it poses a serious risk only really to elderly people with serious pre existing morbidities.
When that is weighed against all the costs (domestically and globally – including inevitable increases in infant mortality across poorer parts of the world) of the suppression approach, then it seems better to many people to follow the collective immunity approach that Sweden favoured.
In which scenario actually spreading the virus if you’re ill wouldn’t be the worst thing – it would reduce the period that the genuinely vulnerable have to isolate.
If, democratically, and having been given good information, the UK population had opted for the suppression approach, then maybe I could live with £10k fines.
But in this context I find them unacceptable.
I would add to your post, vaccine that people are willing to take and give to their children. When Handy Cock talks about “the cavalry” I don’t think he understands that everyone regards it as enemy forces.
Yes indeed. Stephen Hahn, FDA commisioner has talked about not approving any vaccine unless it is ‘50% effective’… . In the UK, the intention appears to be to bypass regular approval altogether. There is no indication or suggestion that any of the vaccine candidates will provide complete protection from infection (sterilising immunity). A vaccine may help reduce symptoms by confining viral infection to the upper respiratory tract. Possibly. In some recipients. A vaccine may reduce viral replication. But that does not mean that you are not infectious to others. So in terms of efficacy, a vaccine is unlikely to offer any benefit over and above a normal functioning immune system, which efficiently prevents symptomatic illness in a large majority of cases. From what I have seen, all the vaccine developers are talking about a need for at least two shots. If it is like the flu, annual reformulations may be required as the virus mutates (or may just be implemented regardless). Then there is the safety profile. Which really should be called the toxicity profile. We have little information on this, but what we do know is not a source of reassurance. But in line with your point about the… Read more »
I do see where you’re coming from, hotrod. I am baffled that someone with symptoms who voluntarily presented themselves for testing would not then isolate (motivations beyond me). However I will just offer a couple of thoughts since a huge number of people are not in that category Let’s assume someone who feels entirely fit and well is self-employed is contact traced and told to isolate after being in a restaurant with someone who later tested positive (quite possibly on the other side of the restaurant). They now have to stay home (as does any other breadwinner in the family and kids miss school) for the entire period and do not qualify for a test. Personally I understand that they wouldn’t. Another scenario would be for a family in a ‘high concern’ area where doorstep tests are being carried out. You’re not ill and neither is anyone else in the house. In fact you don’t even know anyone who has actually been very unwell. But you’re all under house arrest. You live in cramped conditions with no outside space. Will this feel fair or proportionate? If I am told to stay home as a result of either of those scenarios… Read more »
If someone is ill with any infectious disease then the can be forced into quarantine under the public health act of 1982 ( i May be wrong about the title and year, but it was definitely the 1980’s).
1984
Of course.
And under lockdown, every person who is healthy can be forced into isolation. Big deal.
Councils have admitted they won’t use the 1984 legislation as they have to follow due process of law and pay compensation.
Thye will use the S.I.s as these do not have these legals safeguards nor requirement to pay compensation.
I posted it a few days ago when I got a FOI appeal back.
Same reason the USA doesn’t say quarantine, ‘shelter in place’ avoids paying compensation.
This is Lord Sumption’s argument that the 2020 act is unlawful as it uses the wrong legislation to justify it.
They said all contacts have to self-isolate too. They maybe completely healthy.
And it’s also the case that you could be, in fact very likely are, a false positive. Obviously not sure why you would get tested on that basis, but if they ever did ramp the tests up to cover the whole population you can guarantee they would be mandatory and the fines would remain. SAGE’s estimates are that 41% of the population would be locked down in error over any six-month period. It’s the false positives extending this fiasco, not the genuine cases.
They could even now shelve their asinine Covid Zero policy and go for Herd Immunity as they should have 6 months ago.
Elderly/Vulnerable shield with government funding. Everybody else back to work back to school, college, university, nightlife get out there and get infected. That way you might be able to visit Nan for Xmas.
Would mean getting rid of johnson, ferguson, whitty, hunt, wancock and the rest of the Covid Appeasement gang first.
It is not “take a test and get imprisoned at home”, its “if you get a phone call from the track and traitors and get told you might be infected then you are trapped”. Doing it only for those who get tested might provide a deterrent to testing, but as it stands this allows anyone to be effectively jailed at any time on the basis of a phone call, it could even be you get phoned because they mistyped the numer they were dialling. This crap must not be obeyed. P.S. point 4 of your post. For measures like hand washing, not getting too close to crowds, not coughing over people… I can quite agree with you. But measures like these extreme fines are intolerable. We need to be copying Sweden, they are taking individual responsibility and hygiene precatuions, but they are not panicing and they are confident they won’t get a second wave. The way out of this is to live as close to normally as possible, and let herd immunity be reached, any attempts to stamp out the virus before a vaccine is available are an unwinnable war. All it takes is one case to undo all the… Read more »
I admit that self-isolation for people who are actually ill is one of the few Covid-related policies I’ve always thought made sense. It’s what people often do of their own choice when sick anyway (if only because they’re too ill to want to go out) which is one of the things that naturally controls the rate at which infectious diseases spread.
But with the false positive rate being what it is, most “infectious” people aren’t (as many as 9 out of 10, if Dr Michael Yeadon’s analysis is correct). It seems to me that the fine might be an attempt at deterring healthy/non-symptomatic people from getting tested!
This, again, might be a good thing if it weren’t for the government’s track record in misrepresenting data to scare people and inflate the level of threat. It wouldn’t at all surprise me if, in a situation where far fewer non-sick people voluntarily applied for tests, this was not reported as “cases plummeting” but as “percentage of positive tests soaring” – never mind that the positive test % was never mentioned before, when it was decreasing…
Blown away that our PODCAST has been featured! ❤️❤️❤️
https://therealnormalpodcast.buzzsprout.com/
Loved your rant in the last episode, spot on. Keep up the great work.
I have been trying to find the testing numbers but they are hidden away. Would it be a sensible idea to list, on the daily update, “supposed” positives alongside total tests and then total false positives according to prevailing statistics. Having this information promptly to hand would, I am sure be useful to those of us trying to counter the lies from the government.
I would like to know where all these tests are taking place, our testing station remains inactive
Another study this time from Germany showing the dangers of mask wearing:
https://twitter.com/MMaccruiskeen/status/1307266527662669825
A German children’s charity got laboratory tests done on one of the masks typically sold in shops, after it had been worn by a child in school for 8 (!) hours: Result: 82 bacterial colonies & 4 mould (fungoid) colonies.
Bet the mask zealots still won’t take note
They do actually Bart, I start by asking them why they think people cough ? Go on to point out it’s to expel all the gunk from your lungs as far as possible, instead it sits there on your mask ready to breath right back in.
Where appropriate I might add it’s a bit like swallowing a big green flob, over and over again.
That’s a good question and a good point – we cough to expel the phlegm stuck in our lungs and help clear it.
And if a person is wearing a muzzle, the phlegm is just trapped and doesn’t clear the lungs.
Questions need to be asked about the disgraceful behaviour of the riot police who yesterday baton charged the peaceful anti lockdown protest. Who ordered this and why? Could the reason be that the Coronavirus Act is coming up for renewal in a few days time? And then there is the rather dubious reason given for the further delay to Simon Dolan’s judicial review. I sense that malign forces are at work, the government strategy having failed miserably.
It’s all hypocritical isn’t it? Police did SFA with BLM and XR protests but went on the attack for a peaceful anti-lockdown protest.
Same with Simon Dolan’s judicial review whilst there was no such delay for Gina Miller’s.
I smell a rat here. The Establishment are refusing to accept defeat and are still fighting the people.
I don’t think Dolan’s review will ever be heard.
If it is it will be given the thumbs down by the judiciary. There is no justice and democracy is a sham.
I expect they’ll find kiddie porn on his computer, been done before.
Political Policing.
40 years ago they arrested my proper anarchist mate Eddie for ‘carrying an offensive weapon’ at a demo in Finsbury Park. Weapon being the pole on which his protest banner flew.
Eddie won his day in Court, got his flag back, and his pole.
The difference is they are both state sanctioned protest groups.
Seems fatuous but it really is all outlined in Spooks Season 5, “Jakarta Is Coming”, Police agents provocateur will start throwing flash-bangs next.
Sometimes this feels like the state imposing increasingly crazy restrictions to stop, for instance, the aging process. People are getting old and ill – stop going outside with infectious germs. Not working? Lock the doors, make sure people are fed salads only. But people are still getting old? As soon as a baby is born, lock it up forever, force feed it the healthiest of foods only, burn everything down so it has no desire to break the forced ‘eternal quarantine’.
As I said yesterday, I don’t think government can get us out of this, they’re in too deep in a sunk costs fallacy – the u-turn to change direction is probably too big to contemplate. It reminds me of Blair and Iraq – it’s impossible to admit it might be wrong, it’s just too big an intellectual leap because of what it might imply for your decision making and character. It’s going to have to come from parliament or the public.
I think the Western world’s juvenile inability to contemplate or accept death as a natural finish to life is playing a massive part in this irrational response to Covid.
That’s not to say I think we should simply ignore the pandemic, just be more willing to have difficult conversations about how to respond – you know, like the ones they had in Sweden!
They aren’t difficult conversations, they are grown up conversations. We stopped having them in this country in 1997, it has been downhill ever since and we have raised a generation of children to supposed adulthood without them ever growing up.
Actually I had one of these types of grown up conversations back in 2010, I think it was. Stood talking to two of my English neighbours. The three of us were discussing death and what we wanted done with our remains (scattered in the local community orchard). Just three women, standing out on our little road, discussing death as an everyday thing. Funny thing is that’s something I’ve always liked about the English – it seemed like there was more acceptance of death here than there is in America. How wrong we can be.
Pandemic ? Mwah ha ha ha.
What if the concept of ‘in too deep’ were replaced with ‘they are working for a different outcome to what you suppose?’
I don’t see evidence of the government working for the good of the people.
They never have worked for the good of the people, the question is whether their selfish interest is in getting re-elected by appeasing the lockdown zealot moron majority, or in making Britain become Airstrip One.
I’m not so sure, now, that the lockdown zealots are in the majority as regards the general public. Online and social media, probably (look at #SayNoToLockdown tweets if you dare… let’s say at least 50% of them are NOT from an anti-lockdown viewpoint) but most of the people I, and my parents, have spoken to in the last few days, have had enough – even if they were quite happy to comply and clap for the NHS back in April. And this is in an affluent commuter area of the South East – mostly people with big gardens and relatively secure jobs. So the tide of opinion is definitely turning, however much the keyboard-warriors still like to sneer!
My experience too, I know quite a number of people who would best be described as ‘gentle souls’, not political or opinionated at all, who have come round to the opinion that the virus is something we just have to learn to live with and it’s no longer justified to prohibit necessary social interactions. Most hearteningly, several older folks have said that it’s completely unjust to hurt the young to ‘save their lives’ and they’d rather that younger generations were able to get on with their lives.
I agree and I think/hope it is coming from the public. Lockdown 2.0 is going to be a lot less popular and a lot less complied with. Trying to be optimistic, possible upsides are getting rid of the Cummings/Johnson government sooner rather than later and a backlash that revives some appreciation n people’s minds for the liberty they had taken for granted.
Huge fines are a big disincentive, tho – if you are fined £1000 for being in a group of more than six, well, as I say, it takes more will to break that. Unless everyone does it and it then becomes visibly ridiculous.
They would make a mint if they upheld the law in full on Monday morning outside The College as two thousand teenagers arrive from all directions to go to various buildings.
From 08.30 until class begins at 9.00 they form a single mingling mass more concerned with meeting friends old and new than yet more stupid old Covid rules.
I hope I’m around when Covid Monitors try to tackle that!
Wait till introduce financial incentives for snitching.
Which is why they have introduced lockdown 2.0 piecemeal starting with Leicester 2 (?) months ago.
I’m still convinced they picked on Leicester because they believe we are still closet racists who won’t care because it’s ‘full of P***s’.
Speeding things up now as the Coronovirus ‘law’ extension comes closer.
Whether the cowards have the nerve to curfew London remains to be seen.
.
I’ve already started calling myself a Covidiot to colleagues and others when discussing my normal life that includes a holiday, trips to the pub, city breaks, niece’s birthday party etc. Sucks to be a bedwetter
Mmm, maybe you don’t want to call yourself that – look at above definition again
Covidiot is an acronym dreamt up the slavish British Press to call those who do not conform to the establishment’s corrupt agenda I like People who think for themselves
That is excellent and sums them up beautifully!
I saw them described as “branch Covidions” which seemed apt (think of the US Waco sect).