Operation Moonshine: New Rapid Test Misses More Than Half of Infections
In a fresh blow to the Government’s mass testing exit strategy, serious problems have emerged with the new rapid 20-minute test being deployed in the Operation Moonshot pilot in Liverpool this week. The Mail has more.
Rapid tests that give results in less than an hour are being used in the pilot, alongside the normal PCR swab tests that are already used in centres across the country for people with tell-tale symptoms of the illness.
Hospitals in the city were originally supposed to have a 20-minute test at their disposal – to be used to routinely test all of their staff in a separate trial – but it emerged today the machines are less than 50% accurate. Despite worries they are not good enough, officials will still use the kits on NHS workers.
In a blow to Boris Johnson’s ambition of carrying out 10 million tests a day by 2021, researchers found the Optigene Direct RT-Lamp tests missed more than half of positive cases in a trial in Manchester, meaning they risk dangerously underestimating the number of people who are actually infected.
The Government was, as usual, undeterred by unfavourable data on the accuracy of its tests.
Liverpool city officials say the Direct RT-Lamp tests tests were never intended to be used on members of the public and that the mass testing scheme is still going ahead as normal.
While the Department of Health accepted the Manchester study’s findings, it claimed other trials of the Lamp test had shown it to be between 80 and 96% accurate. The Government department said the machine shouldn’t be written off yet…
Everyone in the city is being asked to get tested, but particularly health and care workers, other emergency services and key workers and school or university staff and students.
Lateral flow tests, which work like pregnancy tests and give results in under an hour, will be used along with existing PCR swab tests. Both work in ultimately the same way, amplifying genetic material then looking for signs of the virus.
Lateral flow uses a different type of enzyme which allows the test to be done at one temperature, which makes it faster but less accurate.
PCR uses another type of enzyme and the process has to be repeated at different temperatures, which means it takes longer but is more accurate.
A group of academics has protested the scheme in a letter to the city’s MPs, citing grave concerns about the accuracy of the tests and the likelihood of a poorly conceived mass screening programme to be “an expensive mess that does more harm than good”.
A group of academics, including Allyson Pollock, Professor of Public Health at Newcastle University, said plans to test asymptomatic people in Liverpool went against SAGE advice to prioritise testing for those who were displaying symptoms.
In a letter sent to the city’s MPs on Thursday evening, they said: “Searching for symptomless yet infectious people is like searching for needles that appear transiently in haystacks. The potential for harmful diversion of resources and public money is vast. Also of concern are the potential vested interests of commercial companies supplying new and as yet inadequately evaluated tests.”
And Angela Raffle, a consultant in Public Health based in Bristol, warned the half a billion pound project could be a costly failure.
She said: “Experience with screening tells us that if you embark on a screening programme without having carefully evaluated it first, without a proper quality assured pathway, without certainty of test performance in field settings, without full information for participants, and without the means to ensure that the intervention needed for those with positive results does indeed take place, the result is an expensive mess that does more harm than good. Having looked carefully into what is being proposed, my assessment is that the current proposals for screening the City of Liverpool using SARS-CoV-2 rapid tests are not fit for purpose.”
The academics were also concerned about the tests offering false negatives and false positives.
Professor Pollock told the PA news agency: “The test is not a measure of infection or infectiousness, it simply tells you if there is viral RNA present. It gives a binary yes or no result, but the reality is much more complex than that. It tests for viral fragments, these could be left-over debris from a previous infection or live virus. Even then, it doesn’t tell you if you are infectious.”
She added: “My concerns are that the current proposals for city-wide screening will fail to realise any worthwhile benefit, and will cause substantial harm through diversion of resources. They will also distract from solving the widely reported problems with the test and trace programme. It is my view that the National Screening Committee should be asked to rapidly review the proposals as a matter of urgency, in order that the plans can be subject to scrutiny by people with appropriate knowledge and experience.”
The letter to the MPs was signed by Prof Pollock and Dr Raffle as well as Anthony Brooks, Professor of Genomics and Bioinformatics at Leicester University; Louisa Harding-Edgar, GP and Academic Fellow in General Practice at Glasgow University and Stuart Hogarth, sociology lecturer at Cambridge University.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The headteacher of the Broadgreen International School, a technology college in Liverpool, sent a very sinister letter to parents yesterday, informing them how “privileged” they should feel that the army will be in the school on Monday testing all the children, marking them with a barcode and detaining those who test positive. The head adds that parental permission won’t be sought because “under these very challenging and unprecedented circumstances that is not possible”. Surely, this isn’t legal?
In spite of the unbelievably sloppy mistakes and the fact that it reads like a parody – has Liverpool turned into East Berlin? – the letter appears to be authentic. You can download it from the school’s website here.
New Coronavirus Strain Jumps From Mink to Humans, Threatening Vaccine Viability
Denmark is to slaughter its entire population of 17 million farmed mink after more than 200 people were confirmed to have been infected with a mutant strain of coronavirus that is believed to have originated when SARS-CoV-2 jumped from humans to mink earlier in the year. The Times has more.
The outbreak has led Denmark to seal off seven areas in the north of the country today affecting about 280,000 people, almost 5% of the Danish population, and involves the closure of public transport into and out of North Jutland, where many of the country’s more than 1,100 fur farms are located. Schools, bars, restaurants, museums, libraries, swimming pools and gyms were ordered to shut for at least four weeks.
Denmark, one of the world’s largest producers of mink pelts, announced on Wednesday that it would cull its entire mink population of up to 17 million animals after the virus jumped from mink to humans.
Ms Frederiksen said that the government had a duty to act out of responsibility for both the Danish population and the rest of the world after it confirmed that 214 people had been identified as having the mutated form of the virus. It is thought that the mink had caught the original form of COVID-19, and then transmitted the mutated form back to humans.
The extreme containment measures are not related to the severity of the illness but to fears of its impact on a vaccine.
The Danish Government has said there is no sign yet that the mutant strain causes worse symptoms than the main COVID-19 virus type. The main concern is that the mink mutation diverges more than other mutations seen so far, posing the risk that vaccinations under development around the world may not work on it.
The culling of an entire captive population of millions of animals to try to rescue the vaccine effort is perhaps the clearest sign yet that the war against Covid is a battle against nature and the inescapable reality that human beings are biological creatures. It is a basic biological fact that viruses mutate and jump from animals to humans and back frequently. Most of the time we don’t notice because nothing harmful comes of it, or the pathogen becomes just one more cause of cold or flu (one of the reasons we keep getting colds, Chris Whitty, not because we don’t develop lasting resistance to each strain).
If SARS-CoV-2 has already jumped to mink and back (and of course we don’t yet know that this is what has happened), what’s to stop it doing it again and again and again, with different species or the same species? Are we going to slaughter every animal population when this common natural event occurs? Are we going to stay away from all those filthy animals so no one ever catches any more colds from them?
Ordinarily this kind of thing would be a non-event, not even noticed, unless the new strain happened to be unusually virulent. It’s only become a major situation, accompanied by lockdowns and culls, because of the threat to the Covid vaccine project – despite the fact that the vaccines are not being developed to prevent transmission or lower risk of death. What a terrible waste of money and life.
Yet another reminder that you can’t defeat a virus, you can only build up immunity to it in the safest way available.
Covid Fines Imposed For Non-Essential Travel Should Not Be Paid
A Lockdown Sceptics reader has emailed to say in a recent conversation with a senior police officer and a barrister he was authoritatively informed that fines currently being levied for Covid travel infractions have no basis in law and no action can be taken if they are not paid – and in their view they should not be paid. The following account has been confirmed by the barrister concerned.
Was present last week at an interesting discussion between a senior police officer and a barrister regarding the police fines currently being issued to drivers deemed by the police to be travelling unnecessarily.
The conversation arose when my wife related the story of her cousin who had been issued with a £1,000 fine having been stopped by police while returning home following collection of a new puppy. The officer deemed the trip to be “non-essential” and “without reasonable purpose” and as a consequence issued the ticket which she subsequently paid.
This sparked a debate between my two clients who both agreed within short order that in their view the fine should not have been paid as the legal basis set out in the Coronavirus Act for such fines is questionable and open to challenge.
The view of the two law professionals was that the Act fails to define the most important terms in respect of what is ‘reasonable’ and does not contain a definition of what a “reasonable” person would deem to be a “reasonable” excuse for leaving their home. They suggested that in the absence of a more highly specified definition (which may well be impossible) that this is a subjective judgement, open to individual interpretation and as a consequence difficult to enforce, introducing as it does reasonable doubt about guilt.
Indeed it would appear the CPS are aware of the difficulty given that of the 44 cases that they have been asked to prosecute following non-payment of such fines, 31 have been withdrawn by them and a further 13 have been sent back as “incorrectly charged”.
Clearly the CPS may be unwilling to apply an expensive judicial test to a case they understand they are likely to lose whilst making themselves liable for defence costs consequent upon the return of a not guilty verdict.
One further point is that if the “view” that there is no legal basis for enforcing payment of these fines is vindicated it does lead to the prospect of a future civil class action by individuals, such as my wife’s cousin, to reclaim their payment together with any costs associated with taking such action. And it should be noted that anyone in this position has up to six years to lodge any such claim.
In 12 months might we then expect TV advertisements by the usual suspects with the strapline: “Have you been fined while maskless, driving to your Zumba class in Ponytpridd? If so please call… etc.”
Boris is Exploiting the Politics of Fear
Excellent sceptical comment from Simon Jenkins in the Guardian, bringing some much-needed liberal pushback to this authoritarian Conservative Government.
With COVID-19, Boris Johnson, very reasonably, initially opposed a return to the blanket lockdown policy. But when his scientists had him in a corner last week he had to turn to fear to justify his U-turn. He threatened that “several thousand people a day would die” – 4,000 was widely quoted – if he did not proceed to a lockdown across England. This worst-case scenario figure was subsequently shown to be based on a projection inflated by a factor of more than four. The Oxford Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine Carl Heneghan, speaking on the BBC on Monday, as good as called it a lie, since modelling “beyond two weeks carries a huge margin of error”. On Tuesday the Government Chief Scientist, Sir Patrick Vallance, retreated and regretted the figure, slashing it by four. He denied he was trying to scare people and drew a distinction between a “reasonable worst case scenario”, a model and forecast – a distinction lost on the public when threatened with thousands of dead bodies.
At such times evidence matters. Johnson never revealed figures from the Health Service Journal, confirmed by the BBC, that British hospital bed occupancy is still at or below its seasonal normal.
We are never reminded that three-quarters of deaths in the first wave of the virus were confined to 5% of the population judged to be at the highest risk, since that might argue for a “shielding” rather than a “blanket” lockdown. Certainly there was not the vaguest mention of the stupefying cost of resumed lockdown. Johnson had merely lost patience with localism and had to scare London so as not to seem unfair to Manchester.
These are desperate issues for people on all sides of the argument, but the public is left floundering between unresolved conflicts over figures and politicians pounding away at anyone’s natural fear of death. There is no sense of a balance of miseries. As with the earlier neglect of care homes, we have one sector of the welfare state, the NHS, exploiting fear – nightly on BBC television news – to guard its own corner. That is what the security industry does in the case of terrorism.
I would say worth reading in full, but the first part of the piece condemns French PM Macron for condemning Islamist terrorists (apparently because that’s what they want). Ah well, can’t get it all right.
Hospital Admissions with COVID-19 in England Flat For 10 Days
Getting the message yet, Boris?
Stop Press: Great piece in the Mail piling pressure on the Government with “More proof England’s second wave of COVID-19 was slowing BEFORE lockdown“.
“We Need Urgently to Consider Our Weighted Strategic Objectives”
A reader sent us the reply a friend of his received from their MP, Jonathan Djanogly, member for Huntingdon and one of the Tory heroes from Wednesday’s vote. He was a Remainer, which shows it’s not just hard-core Brexiteers who see through the Government moonshine on lockdowns.
My decision to vote against full lockdown has not been taken lightly. Indeed, I have supported the Government, albeit with increasing reluctance, on each of the previous Covid related votes.
These included measures to restrict economic activity, social distancing and the curtailing of personal liberty in ways that until recently would have been totally unimaginable to our freedom loving people.
Included in this was the “rule of six” and the “10 pm rule”, neither of which stand up to close review but where I voted to support the Government plans to defeat the virus. In the same way I voted in support of the regional tier system and numerous other measures of varying effectiveness.
Here in Huntingdonshire, as of last Friday, we had very low and stable figures of 58 cases per 100,000 people which is approximately between 10 and 20 times lower than the figure required for Tier 3 status. About half a dozen beds are Covid occupied in Hinchingbrooke Hospital. In effect, without lockdown we would have remained at Tier 1 status. This is of great credit to the caution and sensible behaviour shown by residents locally, and also reflects the excellent local public service and council provision that I am seeing.
If I was to support further restrictions on our liberty, I would need not only more evidence of their chances of success than I have received to date, but also an understanding as to why Cambridgeshire should be treated in exactly the same way as high risk areas in the North-East and North-West.
One can find experts that have opposing views on almost every aspect of the health issues involved in the crisis. I am mindful also that medical advice that the Government has accessed to date has effectively failed. There is little evidence to show that a lockdown ultimately reduces death, whether it will merely kick the can down the road and cause other health problems, whether interrupting transmission slows herd immunity, whether the lockdown causes more loss of life than it prevents; and so the unanswered questions go on.
In the meantime, I’m growing increasingly concerned at the severe mental health implications of lockdown. This impacts on all generations, with people cooped up at home, elderly unable to see family and leisure and cultural activities blocked. Sadly, one fifth of 18 to 24-year-olds furloughed have now lost their jobs. A further lockdown will inevitably accelerate this process, with a severe mental health knock-on.
One well respected local family business of some 40 years standing has just contacted me to say that they will not be able to stand a further lockdown. The majority of local businesses I speak to have made redundancies. This area has one of the highest proportions of small business ownership in the country; typically without the capital reserves of large corporations. These businesses have done everything they can to stay afloat through finding new markets, through taking up government loans and furlough schemes and general twisting and turning to do anything and everything to keep their businesses alive.
Restaurants and pubs have been selling their food as takeaway and factory businesses have been manufacturing items out of their ordinary production lines just to keep their machines running and staff in work. I have been incredibly impressed with the resilience and resourcefulness of our local businesses and they frankly deserve more than for me to tell them I have voted for a further lockdown given our local Covid rate and the national lack of evidence.
Our local health workers, carers and volunteers have also done a magnificent job and many lessons have now been learnt that should improve health and care provision with the second wave of the virus. Yes, of course we need to save the NHS but this cannot be at the cost of wiping out the economy; without which there will be no money to pay for an NHS.
The problem is that we (including MPs) are not getting a weighted assessment of the health costs in the context of all the other costs. When the Allied forces planned D-Day, an assessment of the human and material costs were drawn up before deciding to invade. It would be wrong to say that Churchill and the generals failed to show humanity in their assessment of likely casualties and human cost of invasion, but they weighed this up against the strategic objective of defeating Nazism and creating a democratic European continent.
As we now roll from one lockdown to another, with no vaccine, with a struggling testing system and no effective track and trace system, we need urgently to consider our weighted strategic objectives accepting that whatever happens, lockdown or not, we are ultimately going to have to learn to live with this virus.
Stop Press: Former Brexit secretary David Davis appeared on talkRADIO with Julia Hartley-Brewer and declared the “bogus” coronavirus modelling used to justify a second lockdown a “scandal”.
Downfall Parody
A reader has emailed us with a good suggestion.
Rational scepticism has so far failed. It’s time to deploy ridicule. There is now a sufficient flow of codswallop coming from the Government to support a ‘Downfall’ parody at least once a week – possibly daily. First one should be Boris/Adolf berating Witless and Unbalanced because the data they relied on to bamboozle the British public into supporting Lockdown 2.0 was riddled with errors: “I know they’re idiots, but they’re not that dumb! Even Carrie saw through that bollocks.”
Come on, Downfall parody creators. It’s time to get to work. The only lockdown-related one we can find is this one and it’s eight months old. The reader has suggested the following starter-for-10:
Adolf/Boris: What is it with you boffins? You promised me 4,000 deaths a day, and what did we get yesterday? A pathetic 355. What the f**k?!? And don’t tell me it was a scenario, not a prediction. We all know – everybody in this f**king room knows – that it was meant to scare everybody witless, and give me cover.
Lackey: Cover for another lockdown, mine Fuhrer?
Adolf/Boris: [taking off glasses] No, you inverted pyramid of piffle. Cover for making a bedwetting clown of myself back in March by listening to you lot, with your charts and graphs. You promised me – promised me – that this time it wasn’t some half-arsed spreadsheet with numbers pulled out of Professor Ferguson’s rectum. You swore to me that this time you knew what you were talking about. You promised me a wonder weapon – a copper-bottomed prediction of an Ebola-like plague if we didn’t immediately lock everyone up. A forecast that would not within days be shown to be laughably wrong. A forecast that would drive Heneghan, Gupta and the rest of those infernal sceptics clan back into the sea. And what did I get? More of the same balls that you’ve given me since you bounced me into this whole pantomime back in March. Why did I listen to you? Good God, you promised me 85,000 deaths in Sweden if they carried on the way they were, and the last I heard it was scarcely any more than 6,000. You realise what a fool I look now?”
Lackey: But, mine Fuhrer, we were trying to save the NHS…
Boris/Adolf: Screw the NHS! Turns out, it’s the NHS that’s been giving everyone the virus…
Round-Up
- “Herd Immunity as a Coronavirus Pandemic Strategy” – Watch last night’s big debate between Stanford’s Professor Jay Bhattacharya and Harvard’s Professor Marc Lipsitch, sponsored by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
- “ONS study finds infections slowed before lockdown” – Ross Clark in the Spectator on yet more evidence that the epidemic is not growing exponentially. When will Boris admit it?
- “Whatever the science of this lockdown, the execution has been a disgrace” – Excellent editorial from the Spectator
- “A hostage-eye view of the lockdown” – Rachel Chandler, whose husband Paul wrote in Lockdown Sceptics this week about their abduction by Somali pirates, writes in Conservative Woman that “Boris is the new Buggas”
- “Ripped Gym in Harlow. Interview with owner who defied November lockdown rules” – Heartening to see some conscientious non-compliance
- “Arrests as anti-lockdown and ‘Million Mask March’ demonstrators gather in London” – And some more, from Sky News
- “How police snuffed out yesterday’s anti-lockdown demonstration” – Eye witness account from Paul Reed in Conservative Woman
- “Priti Patel’s Covid autocracy” – Spiked editorial on the Government’s latest authoritarian move: a ban on protests, which the home secretary has told police she expects them to enforce
- “Lockdown frays after just one day, with protests planned across England over the weekend” – Signs of hope in the Telegraph
- “‘Toxic lockdown’ sees huge rise in babies harmed or killed” – Yet another tragic consequence of the endless lockdowns from BBC News
- “A senseless shutdown, with Daniel Hannan” – Watch the lockdown sceptic politician interviewed for the Spiked podcast
- “Pin the tail on the lockdown donkey” – Laura Dodsworth asks for the evidence in the Critic
- “Lockdown and the death of a lovely dad” – Andrew Devine in Conservative Woman relays a tragic lockdown story, with a telling ending about a false attempt by a doctor to record a Covid death. One of many, we might presume
- “Why it is right to question the orthodox COVID-19 narrative” – Lockdown Sceptics contributor Matthew Ratcliffe and Ian James Kidd in the Critic respond to their critics with an up-to-date run through of the case against lockdowns
- “Crucial Viral Update: UK Revelations a Plenty!” – Latest video from Ivor Cummins with a special focus on the present UK debacle
- “PANDA – Pandemics Data & Analytics” – Organisation based in South Africa with a stellar sceptic scientific advisory board (think GBD) that is well worth checking out
- “The Government admits its ‘facts’ are wrong, yet continues on its dangerous path” – Michael Curzon in Bournbrook wonders when the Government will start to realise how wrong they are
- “Graham Hutchinson, Ex Senior Chief Biomedical Scientist Public Health UK” – New video from Brees Media with a former senior biomedical scientist giving his support to Dr Mike Yeadon
- “HALF of children may be immune to COVID-19 despite never being infected because their antibodies for the common cold neutralise the virus – but just 5% of adults have them” – Report on a new study in the Mail. There are also T-cells of course
- “Face Masks: A Danger to Our Planet, Our Children & Ourselves” – Solid critique of the problems with masks by Cory Morningstar in OffGuardian
- “Our national spiritual leaders have fallen short” – Richard Turnbull in the Critic wonders where the fire of resistance to tyranny has gone amongst Christian leaders
- “The Government’s Covid scaremongering” – Good piece in UnHerd from BBC journalist Timandra Harkness
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Just one today: “Don’t fence me in” by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters.
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 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.
Sharing stories: Some of you have asked how to link to particular stories on Lockdown Sceptics. The answer used to be to first click on “Latest News”, then click on the links that came up beside the headline of each story. But we’ve changed that so the link now comes up beside the headline whether you’ve clicked on “Latest News” or you’re just on the Lockdown Sceptics home page. Please do share the stories with your friends and on social media.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today we bring you a marvellous rant against “the march of wokeism” by Trevor Phillips in the Times.
I was taking part in an online seminar with several hundred public servants recently when one of them started his question to me with an earnest apology: “I am a man of white privilege . . .”. I found it hard not to laugh out loud. Things have come to a pretty pass when people prostrate themselves in public for having a prostate gland, not to mention dumping on their parents for being the wrong colour.
I’d been introduced as someone who had spent more than 40 years trying to ensure people weren’t judged by their race or gender. My idealistic questioner seemed to have missed that bit. I assured him — maybe a little too brusquely — that I wouldn’t hold his colour or his sex against him. His question turned out to be a reasonable one about how to recruit more women but it sounded as though this thoughtful young man was too consumed with angst about his own ethnicity and gender, probably reinforced by some spectacularly bad diversity training, to apply much logic to the problem.
Personally I find the appeal of this brand of ethno-masochism hard to fathom, but then I’m not white. Yet increasingly, such “woke” thinking is flooding our workplaces, schools and universities. It is two centuries since this country abolished the Test Acts under which people were required to make a pledge of religious observance to qualify for public office or the civil service. But once again employees are being required to sign up to statements of belief or face denunciation, demotion and dismissal. Arcane arguments about white privilege and Pythonesque disputes about whether men can be women are no longer confined to warring left-wing sects or social media; they are eating away at the heart of leading institutions, corporations and government itself.
Worth reading in full.
“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 masks in shops here.
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
And here’s an excellent piece about the ineffectiveness of masks by a Roger W. Koops, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry.
Mask Censorship: The Swiss Doctor has translated the article in a Danish newspaper about the suppressed Danish mask study. Largest RCT on the effectiveness of masks ever carried out. Rejected by three top scientific journals so far.
The Great Barrington Declaration
The Great Barrington Declaration, a petition started by Professor Martin Kulldorff, Professor Sunetra Gupta and Professor Jay Bhattacharya calling for a strategy of “Focused Protection” (protect the elderly and the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with life), was launched last month and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it. If you Googled it a week after launch, the top hits were three smear pieces from the Guardian, including: “Herd immunity letter signed by fake experts including ‘Dr Johnny Bananas’.” (Freddie Sayers at UnHerd warned us about this hit job the day before it appeared.) On the bright side, Google UK has stopped shadow banning it, so the actual Declaration now tops the search results – and Toby’s Spectator piece about the attempt to suppress it is among the top hits – although discussion of it has been censored by Reddit. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job.)
You can find it here. Please sign it. Now well over 600,000 signatures.
Update: The authors of the GDB have expanded the FAQs to deal with some of the arguments and smears that have been made against their proposal. Worth reading in full.
Update 2: Many of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration are involved with new UK anti-lockdown campaign Recovery. Find out more and join here.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many JRs being brought against the Government and its ministers, we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
First, there’s the Simon Dolan case. You can see all the latest updates and contribute to that cause here.
Then there’s the Robin Tilbrook case. You can read about that and contribute here.
Then there’s John’s Campaign which is focused specifically on care homes. Find out more about that here.
There’s the GoodLawProject’s Judicial Review of the Government’s award of lucrative PPE contracts to various private companies. You can find out more about that here and contribute to the crowdfunder here.
The Night Time Industries Association has instructed lawyers to JR any further restrictions on restaurants, pubs and bars.
Christian Concern is JR-ing the Government over its insistence on closing churches during the lockdowns. Read about it here.
And last but not least there’s the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. You can read about that and make a donation here.
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. Samaritans is available round the clock, every single day of the year, providing a safe place for anyone struggling to cope, whoever they are, however they feel, whatever life has done to them.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. Doing these daily updates is hard work (although we have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending us stories and links). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here. (Don’t assume we’ll pick them up in the comments.)
And Finally…
In his Speccie column this week, Toby mourns the loss of simple pleasures during Lockdown 2.0 and worries about the impact on his 12-year-old son.
The one thing I will really miss, though, is going to the football, which I had naively thought might be possible again this year. I even bought two season tickets to my beloved QPR – one for me, one for my 12-year-old son, Charlie – and nonchalantly ignored the deadline for applying for a refund. At one point, the club announced that a few hundred fans would be allowed into the ground and Charlie and I eagerly put our names in the hat, only for the offer to be withdrawn when the ‘rule of six’ was introduced.
He concludes:
Charlie told me last week, after QPR beat Cardiff 3-2, that going to games with me had been the happiest moments of his life so far. We cannot continue to deny ourselves these experiences. If we do, something in us will die.
Worth reading in full.
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Is it me?
In a manner of speaking.
Dear Will – this is something you have to watch and share
London Has Fallen | Financial Collapse – Shocking Video of Central London
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd2-VY6roL0
From Neil McCoy-Ward
Financial Crisis | What To Expect Next
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLwwUG9M7Sc
From Neil McCoy-Ward
Dr Mike Yeadon has publicly accused Vallance of lying and invited him to sue. Dr Yeadon says that Vallance knows that there could not be a second wave. To date Mr Vallance has not responded
In support of the second wave Vallance has produce the ‘graph of doom’ and the dodgy dossier of 4,000 deaths a day
A second wave will result in Mr Vallance profiting financially from his holding in a vaccine company. The ‘second wave’ lockdown will result in financial loss to a great number of people
If Dr Yeadon is correct then there is in my opinion prima facie evidence that Mr Vallance has committed a criminal offence under the 2006 Fraud Act
It is open to an individual to write to The Director of Public Prosecutions and The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and demand an investigation
If I write it will never make the press
If an MP writes it will make the press
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud_Act_2006
Get a form letter together along with the contact details and we can all send one in plus to our local police.
Absolutely right. We need these letter writing campaigns to hold people to account.
AG, have you got your own website to enable this?
If not do we have someone here who can do so?
What about a class action?
The reason “viruses don´t have second waves” is that we don´t normally try to suppress them. To the extent that you do somehow succeed in suppressing the virus then you could get a second wave, as the virus infects the people who missed it the first time.
Which was said here months ago and at other places, small blogs I follow, at the start of lockdown.
Then any second wave will be an intentional, having been engineered for political advantage. The Boris Johnson government is nothing more than a bunch of crooks and murderers and should be dealt with accordingly. Are you listening Cressida Dick, or are you also in on a cut of Gates’s obscene vaccine profits?
Yeadon did mention the possibility of a small second wave on that basis.
I see two possible reasons for a second wave. First, mask wearing has the potential to cause health problems in a number of ways. Secondly, influenza vaccines could well activate retro-viruses (according to Judy Mikovits) as they may well have done in Wuhan and Lombardy.
I remember Vallance himself warning this could happen in a briefing before the first lockdown. It was reported in the Guardian here https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/coronavirus-science-chief-defends-uk-measures-criticism-herd-immunity.
This almost proves that the Government have caused the ‘second wave’, not the public.
This government must not be allowed to remain in office and Labour should be held accountable for supporting Johnson
Bronze again?
When the government in England introduced lockdown measures on 23 March 2020, it claimed that it was motivated by a concern to save lives and that its policies were determined by the science. This has remained the government’s explicit rationale for all the constantly changing rules. Yet even the most cursory examination shows the assertion to be false. Measures have been introduced without any attempt to assess the negative effects. Measures have been presented as being based on scientific evidence, which turns out to be non-existent. When one examines the behaviour of the government, its claim to be concerned to save lives by following the science immediately collapses.https://viewsandstories.blogspot.com/2020/11/coronavirus-responses-examination-of.html
Before you know it the mink thing will be used to justify the culling of all farm animals and pets. Vets will be obliged to report all their customers so none are missed. This happened to a certain extent in Wuhan back at the beginning.
It just so happens that veganism is a goal of the climate change lobby, and Professor Lockdown is famous for his mass foot and mouth disease slaughter. (I wonder, wasn’t there a world leader in recent history who was vegetarian and very much into culling people?). And we can’t have any more carbon emissions for something as frivolous as your pet dogs and cats.
Who still thinks they aren’t using the latest sniffles as cover for their agenda?
More likely that before you know it this will be used to justify wiping out the earth’s bat populations. Can just see them gassing caves. I wish some of the techie fanboys would buzz off to Mars and let us earthlings live our risky and enriching lives here in symbiosis with nature.
Support the Bat Conservation Trust if in the UK:
https://www.bats.org.uk/
BAT LIVES MATTER!
They’ll kill all the bats but no mosquitoes. Nothing surprises me any more.
I think the Mars colony is more likely to be for us lot while the herd immunity deniers will stay behind on Earth. This seems to be the way Elon Musk sees it shaping up.
People think of living on Mars as science fiction but we could easily have had a really decent Mars colony for what this pandemic hysteria has cost the world. This makes me despair of the human race.
100% evil
You have to be able to think like your enemy. I think this is one of the things to our advantage as skeptics – we aren’t as tribal as most people – we don’t refuse to speak to someone because they are a democrat or because they are a republican – we can see where the other person is coming from and agree or disagree with it on the facts rather than because they give their view some label or other.
If you understand where the green/greta/globalist lobby is coming from, get inside their thinking, you can see how far they are prepared to go.
I do understand the passion but see it as irrational, that they want the world they want, asap, regardless of how they do it. People have been encouraged, by those wanting to get rich, including the globalists, to have ‘things’. What do they want now, to reduce the billions in a few months?
Incidentally, as a thought experiment (and regular China visitor), I can’t imagine the Chinese population accepting the imposition of veganism for any reason. Banning meat, or just destroying the supply of meat, is one of the very few ways you could actually start a revolution in that increasingly oppressed and brainwashed* country. The last thing that panicked the regime was the increasing price of pork leading into the 70th anniversary of the CCP celebrations – domestic supply was being so devastated by swine fever that they relaxed import restrictions so citizens deprived of their staple didn’t get restless. Millions on the streets in Hong Kong? That can be just swatted away. No pork for the holidays – trouble brewing.
I wonder if we Europeans would accept it “for our own good”. If we are now actually more receptive to tyranny than one of the most oppressed peoples on the planet?
*:Yes, China has always been oppressed and brainwashed, but it is increasing and already substantially worse under Xi than his recent predecessors.
It’s not just our pet dogs that they want to get rid of.
“First they came for the dogs, but I did not speak up for I don’t have a dog.”
This explains why democracy (mob rule) needs to be tempered by (European meaning, i.e. free society and free trade) liberalism. Because everyone is in a minority. In fact in several minorities. Only a tiny minority of people go to football matches, so should we ban going to football? Oh look, we already did. After all, the majority don’t care.
Democracy is the people collectively deciding public policy. There isn’t too much of it; there is far too little. The banning of attendance at football matches wasn’t decided by a referendum; it was imposed by an unaccountable government.
This is exactly why some decisions should be left to the individual, and entirely off-limits to any collective.
There is no imaginable good reason to ban you having a dog, just as there is no good reason to stop you going to football, but both could happen by democratic means.
there are lots of dogs…..
Same applied to closing pubs at 10pm and banning nightclubs.
Would Johnson front for that? A man who thought of himself as the new Churchill, reduced to a parody of Chaim Rumkowski. “Give me your hamsters.”
Johnson couldn’t lace Churchills boots
Everyone should read Balloux’s thread on on the mink thing:
https://twitter.com/ballouxfrancois/status/1324085763026362370
Long story short it’s complete nonsense. Yes the virus mutates in minks but so what, it mutates in humans as well.
At the beginning of WW2, there was a massive cull of pets in Britain: three quarters of a million in the first week. I think the rationale behind that was that the government said we couldn’t feed them and the population. So there’s previous.
Rationale behind it was more sound.
Led to the setting up of the Ferne Animal Sanctuary in Devon.
Well worth a visit.
I was talking about this to partner this morning as I saw in China they are killing dogs again. Didn’t read whole thing as too upsetting.
I think there are 2 things that come to mind quickly which would be a step too far for majority of Brits. 1 – stealing their savings (which will happen, but further along the line when it’s too late) and 2 – killing dogs and cats. I might be wrong but can’t see that being accepted.
If anyone come near my cats with malicious intent I really would kill. I mean that.
There would be flaming barricades if anyone threatened to kill people’s pets.
People would literally sacrifice their grandma before their dog.
What would Granma do to protect her moggie ?
He was teetotal (Alcohol Concern will be delighted with lockdown) and a non smoker, I’m told in Spain it is now illegal to smoke in public since this means removing your face nappy.
Oh and he ruled on the basis of an Enabling Act voted through by almost all of the Reichstag except for the dead Communists.
An Enabling Act passed in 1933 and renewed in 1937 and 1941. Technically, the Weimar Republic lasted until 1945.
50% accurate – sounds like money well spent.
So is a coin….
I can save money too by using a 10p one instead of £1……
Yes exactly. 50% is the minimum accuracy for any test. A coin flip is 50% specific, 50% sensitive and 50% accurate. The buttercup test for whether you like butter is 100% sensitive, but 0% specific, and also 50% accurate.
What those guys actually found was that the test was 50% sensitive. They didn’t say what the specificity was and only the Guardian have seen their letter.
With prevalence so low specificity matters more than sensitivity anyway.
I think this is the test they’re talking about:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.30.20142935v4.full-text
See Table 6. Whoever was doing these tests appeared to be getting 81% specificity at 45Ct, 86% at 33 Ct and 100% at 25 Ct, but it’s a very small sample.
I’m going by the results in their table. The text doesn’t make any sense: “When setting CT cut-offs of ≤33 and ≤25, the DSe increased to 75% and 100%, respectively“. How can sensitivity (DSe means “diagnostic sensitivity” I assume) increase when you lower the cycle threshold? Lowering Ct increases specificity and lowers sensitivity.
In stastistical terms it’s what we call random.
If they just wanted something that returns random meaningless results I believe there’s a team at Imperial we could call on.
I’d go further and say their data is heavily skewed….
Maybe they’re preparing the ground for there to be around 50% less cases than expected, not because the test isn’t sensitive enough but because 50% of cases by traditional PCR are false positives.
50% accuracy is totally random. It’s likely to be a different answer when you perform the test again. Toss a coin 100 times and you’ll get close to 50 of each heads or tails. It gets closer to 50 of each the more you do.
What you can get, as it’s totally random, is several of the same in a row as the probability within an individual event is equal for heads or tails. Over time this would distributre evenly.
Repeat tests for covid with as little accuracy as that would be known in industry as a random number generator..
Could have just tossed a coin! But the coin might have been contaminated!
Why are these Tory criminals and their science scum still calling the shots !! Well done students of Manchester it is your future after all.
I’d caution against this being a Tory problem when Labour are equally to blame.
The wretched Labour Party isn’t calling the shots, so save your scorn for the Tories who are actually driving the WEF agenda and of course philanthrocapitalist Bill Gates, who is up to his slimy neck in everything evil that is now happening. Money talks and Bill has a lot of money.
The Labour party are calling the shots in Wales, so you are talking nonsense.
Drakeford is a useless dope
Not so much the Party as the Supreme Soviet, headed by the Supreme Wrinkled Old Tortoise.
Ben Bradshaw (Lab Exeter) was last week slagging off the government for bringing in lockdown 2. when it would have been so much better to have a ‘2 week’ national circuit breaker earlier so ‘with a heavy heart’ voted for LD2 as too little, too late’.
Bill doesn’t have anywhere near as much money as governments of most countries, and the WEF does not either, so there is a logical flaw somewhere in that argument.
All politicians who have voted for or abstained (tacit acceptance) in lockdown votes are equally culpable. Ask Franz von Papen.
They backed the lockdown, equally culpable.
Labor wouldn’t be any better the LibLabConSNP are dead to me thank God for the SDP not Socialist not free marketeer either
I said 3 weeks ago “Hang in there guys”
How wrong was I?
Madness continues but I notice people are ignoring the lockdown
Yes – the last two days have perhaps been as busy, if not more so around here – people seem to be ignoring the lockdown – you wouldn’t know it was on except for the press/news. Only thing missing is those businesses that had to close.
My next door had a big and I mean big firework display
Grandkids
Great grandkids
Good on him
The school across the road from me had their usual brilliant one on
People no longer believe the government
Wordclass Bullsh1t!
Thank God there is a waking up and this rogue government may not last much longer
Destruction of SMBs with the help of LD2 is the aim … make everyone dependent on the state.
The main problem with the lockdown is that many of the things that make life worth living are now out of bounds. None of this is about a virus and it is now all about control and of course depopulation.
People know the risks now.
The government has to reopen on the 2nd December otherwise they have no credit left with the population
Wonder how many billions ‘they’ want rid of, maybe it would be better to get rid of ‘them’
There is an interesting piece in the latest Nexus mag. maintaining that the world population will shrink after 2065 ,and there is a decline in fertility worldwide now.
Out on the bike yesterday, went passed an industrial park. Last lockdown it was deserted for two weeks and then a few started to creep back. This time not one was closed.
I went for a long walk yesterday.
Passed two industrial parks-both very busy
Roads – busy
Parks – busy
Lockdown in name only
Goverment are wasting money
Same here, the working bloke trading estate was exactly the same as usual Thursday and Friday, except that the transport cafe is closed.
Long walk yesterday along Notting Hill- Portobello Road area finishing off a Kensington High Street.
Not as deserted as it was during first lockdown as fresh produce market was trading as normal while supermarkets, cafes & restaurants open.
Roads and underground was fairly busy especially by around 4 when kids finishing school.
Fuck That I sell same stuff as B&Q so have opened as normal not took a penny but hay ho.
Good for you and good luck!
I think more and more people are realising that they’ve been had. And despite furlough being extended, there is the growing awakening that their financial futures and in doubt.
I have just been sent this quote which apparently is from a Polish author:
“The vaccine should be tested on politicians first. If they survive, the vaccine is safe. If they don’t, then the country is safe.”
They won’t try it first. Even if Boris goes on TV having the jab it will be full of lolly water. He wouldn’t take the risk.
Politicians and their families first, civil and public service second. Ony then, the rest of society.
I cannot believe I have reached my great age (don’t ask!) and now, only now, I have been censored on Facebook. For no reason that I can decipher I cannot put any link on my status, I cannot post on any group and I cannot share any link to a friend’s status. 7 days of being silenced. This is blatant censorship. I have the power to ‘appeal’ but how can I appeal a decision they won’t even explain? My view is that ‘they’ want to stop us sharing the truth. I post links that are freely available on the internet so I am not doing anything remotely illegal. All I am doing is trying, desperately, to do is get the truth out there. After 7 days how can I ‘avoid doing it again’ when I don’t know what I did? This is happening to many Facebook users. 2020 and censorship is rife. It’s their version of the ‘truth’ or they gag you.
Facebook and Twitter banned a whole lot of people over the US election period.
When they hire people like Clegg, you know its bad. I remember him being shown on tv, a video of himself telling lies and he still wouldn’t believe it. These people have no shame or morals.
Thanks for that. I actually didn’t know about Clegg. I am horrified that links freely available are censored for no reason, whatsoever. Facebook seems intent on slowing down the sharing of the truth.
My husband regularly gets a ban on Facebook for what he posts, for 30 days sometimes. He’s currently half way through his latest 30 day ban.
Snap, plus banded for life from twitter for saying Greta should have her arse smacked and be sent to bed with no tea.
Someone needs to create a new network where political thought is allowed twitter facebook etc need bringing down
There is – it’s called gab.com
That’s great but we’d presumably be preaching to the converted.
That is sinister, but Facebook algorithms mean anything you post isn’t even guaranteed to be seen by anyone anyway even if it were what they deem ‘allowed’.
Ms Towey is advocating committing criminal offences of assault against children
She should be reported to the police and social services and a criminal investigation commenced
Whatever the result of the investigation there are good grounds for placing her on the barring list which would prevent her ever working with children again
The army in schools, whatever next?
Ms Towey should also be reported to the grammar police for crimes against the English language.
Does this school have a sixth form? If so, even in November, there will be students who are 18 and, therefore, have the right to refuse this test on their own behalf. I wonder what would happen to them if they did – exclusion and further destruction of their education, presumably.
If students are over 18, their parents would not have the right to refuse on their behalf or even represent them, so they will be in the same position as the imprisoned university students – comply with illegal demands and restrictions or lose your education.
Lots of students are quite opinionated I can’t see them putting up with this stuff
It will be interesting to see how many parents keep their kids off school the day the army come..
Although it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the school didn’t change the day at the last minute, to catch parents out…
There is potentially a major child protection issue here – the letter doesn’t make it clear how the school will ensure child protection guidelines are to be followed with the presence (of what seems) a large number of army personnel. Some army personnel that I have come across (via CCF) you don’t want near kids (mainly what they say and how they say it rather than anything more nefarious).
That letter, Tobes, is a spoof if ever I saw one. It looks to me as if some enterprising fifth-former at the school is a fair bit more IT- savvy than are the staff who are paid to teach the subject.
Yep, pretty sure any squaddie would need an enhanced DBS check which takes a week or two to process even in normal times. Hopefully the bureaucracy can be used against them!
Looking at the OFSTED report, Broadgreen International School is rated as inadequate. Their actions, and the standard of the letter to parents, therefore come as no surprise.
It goes without saying that fines should not be paid until the entire procedure is exhausted. People are unnecesarily terrified of courts and easily bounced into paying “fines” even those sent out by parking companies, cleverly designed to make them look very “official”.
The worst case is that you do get ordered by the court to pay the fine and have some legal costs on top. The best case is that the courts get totally clogged up with thousands of these cases.
Analagous to the (overblown) risk of covid causing demand on the NHS to exceed capacity, so could widespread refusal to co-operate with the fines unless and until convicted result in completely overloading enforcement of covid restrictions.
If you do get to court, fillibuster. Leave responses to the very last minute. Send them by obscure means, perhaps to the wrong fax number at the right court, then object to a judgement (by a different inconvenient but technically legal means) because the court has ignored your latest correspondence and insist the procedure starts all over again.
Introduce large numbers of specious arguments Call witnesses who are irrelevant (but not obviously so because they will be refused). Your Great Aunt in South Africa is ideal because it will be months before she can come and testify, if she can at all, but she was conveniently on the phone with you at the time of the alleged offence, so you say. “Fire” your lawyer halfway through an oral hearing and take your time finding another one.
The CIA sabotage field manual dating from the second world war is full of ideas as to how the powerless who don’t want to man the barricades can fight back against this tyranny.
https://gist.github.com/kennwhite/467529962c184258d08f16daec83d5da
Good reading on here:
https://osr.statisticsauthority.gov.uk
On the front page the correspondence between Ed Humpherson and Patrick Vallance.
The only benefit from that correspondence is that we all now have access to how to contact Vallance. Lovely stuff.
I dropped A level maths and entered medical school with Physics, Chemistry and Biology . The world of mathematical modelers populated by SAGE is alien to me ; I prefer empirical evidence.
So some evidence based medicine from my ” front line ” . The number of patients being seen with respiratory infections this week is very small after a little rise four weeks ago . Similar numbers as would be seen in June or July.
The number of people phoning up the surgery halved on Thursday and Friday. It is like March ; groundhog day . I got away at 6 pm . I do see face to face patients all afternoon and continue to do so. I had unfilled spaces yesterday afternoon. It seems a lot of people think lockdown actually means don’t bother the health service. I assure you we are not busy.
After doing some research , ie asking my patients who have tested PCR covid pos in the last 2 weeks I have found out that all are either hospital or care home workers, their spouses or in patients.
I teach A Level maths so shame on you Peter haha. Seriously though you are quite right about mathematical modelling….it is always dubious and is behind most of the hysterical nonsense of recent years such as lockdown and ‘climate emergency’ etc. All modelling including econometric models rely on the validity of the often invisible assumptions. These assumptions are usually made to support the desired outcomes….it is really a form of corruption on a massive scale.
But Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s most senior scientific advisor, said: “The modelling, that’s the data we are looking at.” And as everyone knows data are facts, and one cannot argue with facts.
Once modelling is seen as ‘data’ we are in an age of unreason.
Listening to government ministers and their scientific advisors on this reminds me of nothing so much as Humpty Dumpty telling Alice that when he uses a word it means whatever he wants it to mean, nothing more or less.
I really hope you are not going to teach your A-level students that mathematical modelling is “always dubious”, but rather, to teach them to understand how it works and how it should and should not be used. For a student’s view, take a look at https://ima.org.uk/14541/mathematical-modelling/
Dont get clever with me Richard you know perfectly well what I meant. When modelling becomes the reason for some major public policy and becomes the god by which society is run there will always be problems. I am not saying it cannot be of any use but when it takes over decision making it causes many to cease thinking.
I can only infer what you mean from what you say. When you said “always dubious”, I took you to mean what you said. Even in public policy making it is possible for models to be both useful and used well.
You do know that the Treasury have been running models for far longer than the Department of Health? Models are always interpretted in the context of observations.
It’s only corrupt if it’s applied without the necessary validation and verification. Climate science is fine as a field where hypothetical scenarios are played out. There’s a lot of theoretical physics and maths fields that do just that.
It’s the application not the substance that is the issue.
Its not fine though if we are taken back to the stone age on the base of it. Mind you thats what happening with Covid too.
Or as is said “decision-based evidence making”
Is it a bit like creative accountancy?
If you don’t mind answering, do you work in a village, town or city, Peter? Also, North/South?
Sorry I have been very careful to not give any identifying evidence since day 1 as I am fully aware of doctors who have been sacked for being open. I might be male or female who knows. I can assure you I am a registered doctor..
No problem, I understand.
male or female..? what about all the other genders? are you ruling those out? you will have the LBGT XYZ zealots after you for being so discriminatory!!!
Blimey isn’t the NHS great! Just another organisation in which it is not allowed for you to have an opinion.
The plural of anecdote is not data. Whilst some areas may have relatively low levels, others do not. Nationally there is a rising epidemic of patients being subjected to ventilation that is at odds with typical years. There is much empirical evidence, but looking locally is not going to see the picture.
Daren Austin, OBE for “Services to the Corona”, mathematician pretending to practice medicine, and GSK-Ferguson link-man, comes to the aid of his Imperial buddies again.
“Operation Moonshine: New Rapid Test Misses More Than Half of Infections”
Infections?
What infections?
The epidemic is over. insofar as it ever existed.
That’s the FUN part! Two Winter seasons into this FRAUD and the Billionaire controlled WHO still has the sign “PANDEMIC” on…
Clearly they need it to justifying the deployment of the new TOOL for command & control of the Herd of moron slaves.
And it is working very well for Them.
I am somewhat baffled by the first article which seems to give credence to the discredited pcr test. So 50% of the positive pcr tests didn’t show positive on the new test? What amount of amplification was used for the pcr test? Is it possible that 50% (or more) were false positives?
Those were my thoughts when I read it.
Lots of people going about their business as usual this morning in town. Nice to see. Have a wonderful day wherever you are.
Where I live most slaves (>95%) are wearing a muzzle outdoors… Good slaves!
Does anyone know of any churches in England that are intending to have a service tomorrow? I’ve mentioned this on here before as there have been a lot of church officials complaining publicly and it would be nice to think that at least one would follow their words with action.
As far as I understand part of Simon Dolan’s court case was that it was outwith government’s powers to close churches and the first judge threw out everything else but agreed with that part but no further action was taken as they had just allowed them to reopen at that point. If this is right then surely any church official consulting with a lawyer will be told that they can stay open and refuse them entry if any police turn up?
https://www.achurchnearyou.com/ I’m going to have a look here. From what I understand there is a loophole that if a service is being streamed you can have a congregation. It might be worth contacting said services to see if this possible
Ours is following the rules and our previous planned remebrance day service will be via Zoom. We have all been asked to put a cross, bible and poppies on a table which looks as near as we are getting to any celebration of the day. Under the rules they could choose to live stream it from church and I could attend ‘for private prayer’.
A truly wonderful way to honour those who died for our freedom.
Excuse me while I puke
In Wales we are allowed to gather at a war memorial or cenotaph,as long as there are only 30 or fewer, so we will.
Can Acts of Remembrance take place at War Memorials or Cenotaphs? Acts of Remembrance that are outdoors at War Memorials or Cenotaphs are permitted to take place on 7 or 8 November. Indoor services are not permitted.
Up to a maximum of 30 individuals, including event organisers, are permitted to gather outdoors and can take part in an Act of Remembrance. Those who organise an event will have a duty of care to those attending to make it as safe as possible and uphold guidance around physical distancing and hygiene.
So what if more than 30 rock up? A lottery for who stays??
It’s under judicial review. Not sure how long that takes but no church will open without approval from church authorites.
Democrats 2020: We have the most robust election voting system in the world.
Democrats 2016,17,18,19 The nasty Russians rigged the election.
And those pesky Russians rigged the election by placing some an infinitesimally tiny amount of click bait on the Internet.
Losers’ consent died in 2016, and those who now support Biden killed it.
If Trump has evidence of fraud he should fight this to the death.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEsjv9vKCGc Watch from 33 minutes in to see votes being manipulated *on screen*, in front of people’s eyes!
thats the second time you have falsely linked to a 9/11 conspiracy video. either get the right link (which i would like to see) or stop peddling shite
I am no fan of Trump but the Democrats are undeserving of winning the presidency, I don’t mean Biden Pelosi Schumer Schiff are dreadful the Labor party is similar in arrogance
Winning by cheating is hardly a win.
The Undemocrats have spelled out all long what they intended. Add to that their shameless exploitation of a frail old man who’s lost his marbles and I wonder what kind of weirdo would vote for them – other than to keep out Trump.
On the other hand it was to keep out Hillary that Trump got in.
“Democratic” elections. No such thing!
Operation Bull**** more like, anything to drag this fraud out as long as possible. When are the legal eagles going to put a stop to it.
I was thinking about the Simon Dolan court case. Seeing as they have delayed it and we are still awaiting the findings of the three judges, haven’t we now turned a corner?
Due to the government admission of the dodgy data, this will throw doubt on the data and highlight their misuse of power. granting ultra vires power from the health act due to a now largely non existent virus. it was downgraded by the government in March to flu like risk, so i think the government has shot themselves in the foot, very publicly.
To find in favour with the government now will show that the courts are bent, so surely the only logical choice is to find in favour of Simon Dolan.
Even better, trust in the government must now totally evaporate. The MSM reporting that tests don’t work, testing centres are empty and the goverment admitting their lies.
I’m wondering whether the judges have been informed of Michael O’Bernicia’s case, and are considering their options…???
That is really interesting, I have been following that, I don’t understand the implications of common law. My father a retired solicitor, who hasn’t subscribed to full scepticism, but doesn’t seem to agree with the government, explined that the elements of the law are pretty ancient. He’d have to do some pretty serious reading to explain it to me, but I have found the case fascinating.
I also that Michael is correct, even if he is only half right, the powers that be much be shitting themselves.
Again, remember the sheep thing, where one goes others follow. So into lockdown it only took one to go in for others to follow. Watch what happens when someone decides to publish the truth and rip up the mask…… I’m an optimist…
Watch this:
The Dissident’s Guide to the Consitution
Episode 2 now available too:
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/dissidents-guide-constitution-episode-1
I think the problem here is that the judges can’t take recent events into account as they were not presented as evidence. I have been wondering how they can reach a verdict given events of the last couple of days.
I believe it would just show how much doubt there must be on all earlier evidence from the government. It should kind of cement it.
We as Britons have the Human rights act and UN convention’s to turn to
For now!
DO NOT WORRY!
Degenerate and scum salves at MIT have come up with this lovely APP for you morons to use on your REAL brains – aka smartphones –
The best and funniest part is that the algo was calibrated using the PCR results!
WAIT FOR IT…
This will be a MANDATORY APP, it will be installed remotely.
Don’t forget to remove the muzzle while coughing!
how will it be mandatory? what is the source for this?
The source for the NEW TOOL is this
The source for the MANDATORY part is… Look around! Most stuff is now mandatory. And that new tool (app) is too goddamn good to go to waste.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54780460
BBC had it a couple of days ago. Hasn’t yet been developed into an app, won’t be, never will be mandatory, just another fun thing like the dogs who are being trained to detect the smell of covid….
Here is the actual paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9208795 It’s complete nonsense of course. If you look at Table 1, you can see that most of the reference negatives had no symptoms of anything. So basically the AI can tell between a real cough and a fake cough. Gosh. So can I. There’s some amusing schientific drivel in there: “Biomarker 3 (Sentiment): Studies [14] show a cognitive decline in COVID-19 patients and clinical evidence supports the importance of sentiments in the early-diagnosis of neurodegenerative decline [19, 30]. Different clinical settings emphasize different sentiments, such as doubt [31] or frustration [31] as possible neurodegenerative indicators. To obtain a biomarker that detects this decline, we trained a Sentiment Speech classifier model to learn sentiment features on the RAVDESS speech dataset [32], which includes actors intonating in 8 emotional states: neutral, calm, happy, sad, angry, fearful, disgust, and surprised. A ResNet50 [28] was trained on 3 second samples for categorical classification of the 8 intonations with input shape (300, 200) from MFCC which achieved 71% validation accuracy.” They’re basically saying that Covid makes you unhappy and this is reflected in the sound of your cough. How did they ingeniously incorporate these sentiments into the algorithm? There’s… Read more »
ha ha
Who’s the moron?
Everyone still using “smartphones”!
I have never used them….give me an old Nokia anyday for text and call. Battery lasts all week too!
Me neither… And I’m in tech stuff since the early 80’s!
Same here – Nokia C2 still going strong – battery lasts all week!
Happy to hear there’s another C2 fan out there! Had it for 10+ years now and it’s still going strong, no need for anything fancier.
A smartphone is a tool. It can be used to improve our lives and help hold our governments to account or it can be used to destroy and control our lives.
We are not going to ‘win’ this by abandoning the tools at our disposal rather then address our ignorance as to how to use them effectively for our benefit.
Usual brainless slave talk! Keep on…
Ad hominem attacks are usually a sign you think your argument is weak
Your believe that a fact is an attack says it all.
OK, how do you work that one out?
I don’t need to work anything out…
These rapid tests were evaluated using pneumonia patients therefore the 80% + rate. If not pneumonia patients then the accuracy rate plummets.
BUT BUT… “COVID-19” is a NEW DISEASE… not old pneumonia!!
The charts I saw last week suggested the window for picking up pre-symptomatic people was very narrow, a day or two at most before they develop symptoms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKHTZZMRcFk&feature=emb_logo
Franz Ruppert – German psychologist on psychological impact of the ‘pandemic’
40 Minutes
There is no impact… Just RELAX and SLAVE on!
Do shut up.
Don’t get upset with me fellow slave… focus your little upset on the jesters!
Littlejohn at the Mail has picked up on the healthcare assistant in Toby’s piece yesterday whistleblowing the tiny amount of covid activity at Risky Treliske hospital in Truro.
Not so many comments yet but I have never seen so overwhelmingly sceptic response.
Just two ‘worst comments’ both ill written two liners downvoted 100-1.
This from someone who knows about the virus. Even without the minks there are already mutated virus around throwing a spanner in the wheel for the vaccine manufacturers.
https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois
“Interesting preprint describing the evasion from antibody-mediated immunity through a single, fairly common mutation in the Spike protein without noticeable viral fitness decrease or symptom reduction (and no minks involved).
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.04.355842v1
This raises the spectre of immune evasion similar to the ‘antigenic drift’ in influenza. This would considerably complicate effective vaccination and deepens concerns about the focus on recombinant/mRNA vaccines solely targeting the Spike protein.”
“Most ‘hight-tech’ vaccines tend to focus on eliciting narrow antibody responses. T-cell response works best against the whole viral diversity. This raises the question whether there should not be more efforts towards ‘traditional’ vaccines (i.e. attenuated/inactivated).”
Stop referring to this RNA as “virus”! There is no scientific evidence that this RNA is an infectious viral particle.
Surely you have to start with an actual virus to attenuate. The jury seems to be out on whether a specific one actually exists.
Besides, this isn’t about the virus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSAlLGwNhu4
A look at the Million Mask March in London 5th November – 7 Minutes
Great video – especially the woman who had six police telling her to go home. She was clued up to tell them that she was not breaking any law. Interesting that the police speaking all had non-UK accents.
Also, not sure what to make of the chap in a military police beret who seemed to be part of the march.
Foreign police is treason remove Johnson Hancock Gove Patel and Jenrick now
Non-UK accents? Israelis? We should not consent to be policed by anyone who has not been resident in this country for more than five years and who is not a British citizen.
This is almost farcical. The mask fanatics thought they had a good paper on the effectiveness of masks but Mother Nature cheated them!
https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1324799371347722241
“Decrease in Hospitalizations for COVID-19 after Mask Mandates in 1083 U.S. Counties” Really? Well, no: “The authors have withdrawn this manuscript because there are increased rates of SARS-CoV-2 cases in the areas that we originally analyzed in this study”
Probably a similar result in the Danish study….
In the UK, the mandatory mask wearing was introduced in late July in England and in August in Wales, not sure when in Scotland and positive tests began to rise. I know correlation doesn’t prove causation but it certainly didn’t seem to help!
As my local council leader hasn’t contacted me with a rebuttal to my letter 3 weeks ago just sent him et al this, the attachments are: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/charter/pdf/text_en.pdf https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/draft_articles/7_1_1950.pdf “Sirs, It has been 3 weeks now since I sent my e-mail to you and in it I said: if you do decide to answer me, please do not insult my intelligence by using the phrase “just following guidance” or some such nonsense but include facts and scientific data that actually supports your position As there has been no reply from any of you nor a request for my sources of information, the FOIs and so on then all I can do is come to the following conclusions: You have no scientific evidence to support or justify any of the actions that either the Councils or central Government are taking and that are now starting to fall under the definition of Crimes against Humanity and breaching both the UN and European Charters of Human Rights.. You have no interest in the scientific evidence. You have no interest in challenging the official narrative. You will be attempting to use the defence “I was just following orders” to justify your position – not… Read more »
Excellent. 👍
Re link to Ripped Gym (Harlow) staying open. The owner was apparently arrested on Thursday, detained over night and due to be on video link call on MONDAY !
That’s some swift injustice. For a court system under “so much pressure”.
If we had a written constitution we could reign in Government and police
Interesting thread again about the missing intermediary of Sars-Cov2.Contrast this how much we know now of C-19 jumping from humans to animals, tigers, minks and then back again. But the Chinese has not found the original intermediary for the human C-19.
https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1324791547355955200
“The situation is actually reversed. For SARS1, it took years to confirm bats as the reservoir (intermediate hosts were found within weeks-months). But for SARS2, we already knew from the beginning that bats in Yunnan are the reservoir, but the intermediates are still missing.”.
The mink story is rubbish. Ignore it. We have confirmed cases of Cats with Covid – we are not killing cats (yet)
We had the same bullshit stories coming out of Holland in the summer. Although I don’t remember a nice flat figure of 200 infections being reported.
There was some talk of pangolins being the intermediate. Has that now been ruled out?
Dr Chan is very well researched in this matter and she states that an intermediate host has not been found although earlier, pangolins were suspected but never proved.