Matt Hancock’s Bad Day at the Office
The Health Secretary didn’t have a good day yesterday.
It began with an interview on Good Morning Britain in which Piers Morgan attacked him unrelentingly for refusing to appear on the programme for the previous 201 days.
“Do you think it’s right and proper than in the biggest health crisis this country has faced for a hundred years, that you as Health Secretary and the entire Cabinet and the prime Minister have boycotted a big morning breakfast television programme and our viewers for six months?” asked Piers. “Did you support the boycott? Did you agree with it?”
Gurning and waffling didn’t really cut it. After cataloging all the health failures on Hancock’s watch, Piers told him he should resign.
That was followed directly afterwards by an appearance on Julia Hartley Brewer’s talkRADIO show in which she pressed him on whether the Government had “ruled out” a mandatory mass vaccination programme.
“Honestly, I’ve learnt not to rule things out during this pandemic because you have to watch what happens and you have to make judgements accordingly,” he said.
That surely wasn’t part of the script? It generated headlines afterwards, such as this one in the Telegraph: “Matt Hancock refuses to rule out making coronavirus vaccine mandatory.”
He then had to step in for Boris at the Downing Street briefing, where he made a series of implausible claims, including that “the virus remains a potent threat… not just to the oldest and the most vulnerable but to anyone of any age and of any background…”
Eh? As I pointed out yesterday, 88% of those who’ve died so far in Scotland are aged 70 or over and only 8% of the people who’ve succumbed to the virus have had no underlying health condition. According to John Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine at Stanford, the infection fatality rate for healthy under-70s is 0.05% – hardly a “potent threat”.
Worse was Hancock’s admission that it was “too early to know” whether the second lockdown would end on December 2nd, or whether some areas might be plunged into Tier 4 restrictions on December 3rd, prompting an angry exchange afterwards between the Prime Minister and member of the Covid Recovery Group. The Telegraph has the details.
Conservative MPs have blasted the “grim” and “terrible” suggestion that lower tiers could be “strengthened” after national lockdown is lifted, with Boris Johnson on another collision course with his backbenchers.
Tories had hoped for a general loosening of restrictions ahead of Christmas, with those in the lower tiers particularly aggrieved at the blanket measures.
Hancock claimed daily cases were still rising, comparing the daily average last week with the daily average the week before. But as Carl Heneghan pointed out on Twitter, the latest ONS infection survey suggests otherwise.
Mass Testing – an Unevaluated, Underdesigned, and Costly Mess
Mike Gill, a former regional director of Public Health England, and Muir Gray, a visiting professor at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at Oxford, didn’t pull their punches in an editorial for the BMJ about the Government’s £100 billion mass testing programme.
With incidence across Liverpool already falling, attributing and quantifying any additional effect from the programme may prove complex. Instead, similar programmes are being rolled out across the country to universities and local authorities even before this pilot is complete.
The queues of people seeking tests in Liverpool suggest the initial acceptability of this pilot is high, at least to some. Its ethical basis, however, looks shaky. The council claims, wrongly, that the test detects infectiousness and is accurate. In fact, if used alone it will lead to many incorrect results with potentially substantial consequences. The context for gaining consent has been tarnished by the enthusiasm of some local officials and politicians. In the case of schools, the programme has been culpably rushed: parents have had to respond unreasonably promptly to a request to opt out if they do not want their child screened.
There is no protocol for this pilot in the public domain, let alone systems specification or ethical approval. The public has had no chance to contribute, as required by the UK standards for public involvement in research.
Spending the equivalent of 77% of the NHS annual revenue budget on an unevaluated underdesigned national programme leading to a regressive, insufficiently supported intervention – in many cases for the wrong people – cannot be defended. The experience of the National Screening Committee and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) tells us that allowing testing programmes to drift into use without the right system in place leads to a mess, and the more resources invested the bigger the mess. This system should be designed with up to 10 clear objectives to deliver the aim of reducing the impact of covid—for example, to identify cases more quickly or to mitigate the effects of deprivation on risk of infection and poor outcomes. Progress in each objective (or lack of it) should be measured against explicit criteria. Screening programmes based on experience and on the literature relating to complex adaptive systems offer a model for rapid progress.
At a minimum, there should be an immediate pause, until the fundamental building blocks of this mass testing programme have been externally and independently scrutinised by the National Screening Committee and NIHR. In the meantime, nobody’s freedom or behaviour should be made contingent on having had a novel rapid test.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: A panel of scientists form universities in Newcastle, Birmingham, Warwick and Bristol sounded the alarm yesterday about the dangers of mass testing. The Mail has more.
They described it as the “most unethical use of public funds for screening” they’ve ever seen and claimed it had the potential to “actually do a lot of harm”.
The panel said it was telling that population screening for COVID-19 has not been endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO) or the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).
At a virtual press conference today, Professor Allyson Pollock, clinical professor of public health at the University of Newcastle, said: “The evidence for screening is not there.
“The evidence around the tests is poor and weak at the moment, and needs to be improved.
“We’re arguing the moonshot programme really should be paused, until the cost effectiveness and the value for money of any of these programmes is well established.”
Also worth reading in full.
Is the Pandemic Machine Similar to the German War Machine in 1914?
What follows is a guest post by longtime contributor Guy de la Bédoyère.
Reading the interview with the epidemiologist Tom Jefferson in Der Spiegel flagged up in Lockdown Sceptics yesterday really made me think. When he said:
The WHO and public health officials, virologists and the pharmaceutical companies. They’ve built this machine around the impending pandemic. And there’s a lot of money involved, and influence, and careers, and entire institutions! And all it took was one of these influenza viruses to mutate to start the machine grinding.
I was instantly reminded of Germany’s Schlieffen Plan. Human beings always want to plan for the future, offset future disasters, protect the population and so on – and it’s usually for the best possible reasons. The Schlieffen Plan had a totally different purpose in mind. It was supposed to protect Germany in a war with France.
In 1914 the Plan was all set up and ready to go and had been since Count Alfred von Schlieffen had dreamed it up in 1906. Except that the circumstances in 1914 weren’t what Schlieffen had quite imagined. A Serb had killed the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austro-Hungary, in Sarajevo. The Austro-Hungarians were outraged and threatened war. Russia said it would support the Serbs. The Germans said they would support the Austro-Hungarians. It looked like Germany was about to go to war with Russia – but France was Russia’s ally and that meant – wait for it – that Germany might have to go to war with France.
And that’s when the Schlieffen Plan came off the shelf and how a conflict that started in Sarajevo ended with a war between Germany and France, leading to four years of unbelievable brutality and bloodshed, millions killed and a fallout that echoes down to today via the Second World War. Let’s not forget that huge amounts of money were involved – every one of the belligerents believed they could get the defeated enemies to pick up the bill. They all got that wrong: the world has been paying for the Great War ever since.
No, that’s not a bit like dealing with a pandemic. Of course it isn’t. But it’s a real warning from history about overplanning in advance of circumstances that will always be unrecognizably different from what actually happens. Then put in charge the sort of people who can only operate to a rule book and the scene is set for believing that just following the bullet points means the problem will be sorted. Instead, the pit just gets dug deeper and deeper, positions get entrenched, money gets spent. But perhaps that’s just the way human beings are. I’m not suggesting for a moment the intentions aren’t sincere.
I have a creeping feeling that however things look right now, when our descendants look back on this time in the decades to come, there’s a more than sporting chance that just like us looking back at 1914 they’ll be saying, “What on earth were they thinking?”
Just imagine how different everything would have been if the powers that were had got together at Xmas 1914 and said: “This is absurd, let’s stop now and rethink it all – there’s no point in destroying the world.” But they didn’t. They just ploughed on to save face.
Government Admits It’s Been Miscounting Cases – Again
Oh dear. Public Health England announced yesterday that NHS Test and Trace has been wrongly identifying the location of people testing positive, using their address on the NHS database rather than the location where they’ve been tested. Until recently, there wasn’t much discrepancy – only 4% of people were living in a different area to the place they got tested, according to PHE. But between September 1st and October 12th, this increased to 12% of cases, driven mostly by younger people aged 17 to 21 relocating from their homes to universities.
The upshot is that the number of positive cases per 100,000 has been inflated in London, while the cases per 100,000 in university towns has been understated.
The Evening Standard identified this problem over a month ago, running a story on October 12th pointing out that the number of cases in Richmond had jumped by an implausibly large amount at exactly the same time that term started at universities.
The coronavirus rate jumped in the borough to 130.8 new cases per 100,000 population in the week to October 8th (259 cases), compared with 78.8 (156 cases) for the previous seven days, according to an analysis.
Borough chiefs believe a significant part of the rise in recent weeks, possibly more than 16%, may be due to students from Richmond at universities in other cities around the country, including Leeds, Exeter, Manchester and Durham, being included in its figures.
One obvious question is whether London needed to move from Tier 1 to Tier 2 towards the end of October, given that the number of positive cases in London was being inflated by this glitch. At the time, Sadiq Khan told the London Assembly that the decision was based on “expert public health and scientific advice”. But was the Mayor aware that the students who were pushing the numbers up were located in cities like Leeds, Exeter, Manchester and Durham rather than the capital? I doubt it.
According to a well-informed Twitter thread by Dr Duncan Robertson, a Fellow of St Catherine’s College, Oxford who specialises in COVID-19 modelling and analysis, this was a cock-up by the commercial company NHS Test and Trace hired to run the programme and can’t really be laid at the door of PHE. “It is unfortunate that PHE are making this statement as opposed to NHS Test and Trace or DHSC (who is responsible), as the error appears to have been with the methodology employed by commercial DHSC Test and Trace,” he Tweeted. Presumably, Hancock and co thought it would be prudent for PHE to take the blame because the agency is due for the chop shortly.
The Law Commission Wants New Blasphemy Law by the Back Door
Andrew Tettenborn, Professor of Law at Swansea University, appeared on Julia Hartley Brewer’s talkRADIO show yesterday morning to raise the alarm about the Law Commission’s new hate crime proposals. According to Andrew – a member of the Free Speech Union’s Legal Advisory Council – if these proposals become law an author of a novel like The Satanic Verses could be jailed for seven years.
You can read the Free Speech Union’s briefing document about these dreadful, anti-free speech proposals here.
Why is the Medicines Regulator Seeking an AI Software Tool to Process Vaccine Side Effects?
Several readers have alerted me to a recent invitation to tender by the medicines regulator that seems to suggest the Government is expecting a huge number of negative reactions to the Covid vaccines. I asked the Lockdown Sceptics test and trace correspondent – who tracked the failure of the NHSX Covid-tracking app for us – what this was all about and whether it was cause for concern.
There has been some excitement over an announcement spotted in the Official Journal of the EU by the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA):
MHRA urgently seeks an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software tool to process the expected high volume of Covid-19 vaccine Adverse Drug Reaction (ADRs) and ensure that no details from the ADRs’ reaction text are missed.
Adverse Drug Reaction? Expected high volumes? Is this playing into the hands of the vaccine conspiracy theorists? Not so fast. The actual story is a familiar one in this pandemic response: failure of Government planning, wasted money and a last minute dash to build an IT system, all summarised rather nicely in the announcement itself:
Award of a contract without prior publication of a call for competition in the Official Journal … Reasons of extreme urgency — the MHRA recognises that its planned procurement process for the SafetyConnect programme, including the AI tool, would not have concluded by vaccine launch.
The collection and analysis of Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) is a standard part of all drug development. Pharma companies employ hundreds of experts in “Patient Safety” teams and numerous IT systems and processes to handle it, and it is partly why drug development takes so long and costs so much. But if that is done by the drug companies then why does the UK regulator, MHRA, need its own ADR processing system?
The scrutiny of drugs does not stop when they get a license. Following the thalidomide tragedy in the 1960s, the WHO set-up adverse event [AE] vigilance systems in countries like the UK. Here it is called the Yellow Card scheme. You may never have heard of it, but there have been over 700,000 ADRs submitted since it was established. With the number of adverse events increasing dramatically each year, pharma companies and regulators are reaching the limits of what people can do accurately and efficiently. Heaping the nation’s largest ever mass vaccination campaign onto the regulator’s human based systems was not going to work. A problem for AI to solve? Perhaps Matt Hancock’s £250m National AI Lab, announced in August 2019, could help? Indeed MHRA were onto a similar idea as early as Oct 2018 when their board said:
MHRA has been encouraged to put forward bids to several government programmes for funding/ external resources to explore the utility of artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver enhanced vigilance capability.
Nearly two years later and how has the time and money been spent? Not all that productively it seems as on Sept 14th EU procurement rules had to be bypassed as a £1.5 million contract was urgently awarded to GenPact (UK) to process an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 ADR reports over a six- to 12-month period. Even then, the MHRA said the system would not be ready for the vaccine launch date.
Someone should tell Kate Bingham, chair of the UK’s vaccine task force, who said the use of AI was “just what the MHRA should be doing”, adding that the UK is “incredibly well set up to do this given we all have NHS records which are electronic and connected”. Err, no we don’t. Connecting all patient records in the NHS was the NPfIT programme, which cost £12.7 billion before being cancelled and described by a House of Commons enquiry as “one of the worst and most expensive contracting fiascos ever”.
Still, I am sure it will be different this time.
Why is Sweden Imposing Restrictions When ICU Admissions are Falling?
What follows is a guest post by Will Jones.
Stefan Löfven, the Swedish Prime Minister, has announced he will pass a law to ban public gatherings of eight people or more.
“Do your duty,” he said. “Do not go to the gym, do not go to the library, do not have parties. Do not come up with excuses that would make your activity OK. It is your and my choices – every single day, every single hour, every single moment – that will now determine how we manage this.”
This shift in strategy to a nationally enforced “Rule of 8” does not appear to have the backing of state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, who has said he wants to use the same no-lockdown approach for the “second wave” as he did for the first.
Perhaps the PM is listening instead to Fredrik Elgh, Professor of Virology at Umeå University, who recently claimed Sweden is two weeks away from surpassing the first wave’s peak hospitalisations. Has he not noticed that ICU admissions are currently in decline? And does he not recall that the health service coped fine in the spring?
Prof Elgh also noted that lockdowns appear to have worked in Belgium and the Czech Republic. But it’s cherry-picking data to look just at two countries where a decline happened to coincide with restrictions.
What about the fact that Sweden’s first wave declined with no lockdown, while in the UK the R rate dropped below 1 before lockdown both in the spring and in the autumn?
Why is the country introducing lockdown measures now, when there is nothing to indicate an autumn out of the ordinary? It may be because the country had hoped to have a milder autumn surge than they are experiencing. But that disappointment doesn’t change the basic parameters, which is that Covid has not been responsible for more than a medium to severe flu season anywhere, whatever restrictions have been applied. The graph below illustrates this point perfectly, showing Sweden’s 2019-2020 flu season death toll scarcely higher than earlier years. Not locking down does not result in a death toll much beyond the normal range, and most of those who die are already past the average life expectancy.
Lockdown zealots have recently taken to arguing that Sweden is so different to the UK and the rest of Europe that its example is of no practical relevance. They claim, for example, that Sweden has lower population density than the UK. But they fail to mention that most of it is empty space and that Sweden is in fact a more urbanised country than the UK (87.7% vs 83.4%). They also omit to note Stockholm has a similar population density to London.
They argue Sweden has more single occupancy households (39% vs 28%), but fail to mention that that translates to 17.8% and 15% of the population respectively so isn’t really significant.
They argue Swedes are a more naturally compliant people who studiously follow all the guidance so don’t need coercive rules. However, Stockholm in April was notorious for young people crowding into nightclubs and cafes while the rest of the world locked down. Karolinska Institute immunologist Marcus Buggert was quoted in the BMJ in September saying social distancing in Sweden was “always poorly followed, and it’s only become worse”. Conversely, Brits have been surprisingly conformist (and fearful of the virus), especially in the first lockdown.
In terms of the unfavourable comparison of Sweden to the death rates of its neighbours, that appears to be largely a result of a run of mild flu seasons in the country, leaving more “dry tinder” (older people vulnerable to respiratory infections), which is why 70% of Covid deaths in Sweden occurred in nursing homes.
What a shame that the chin-wobbling Swedish politicians seem at this late stage to have developed a hunger for locking down. Whatever restrictions they now impose though, Sweden remains an important demonstration of what happens when a country refuses to lock down. Sweden may not want to heed the lessons of its own example, but others can.
Round-Up
- “Denmark throws epidemic law in the bin” – Great news out of Denmark yesterday. Its proposed new epidemic law, which would have given Danish health authorities the power to force people to be vaccinated, among other horrors, has been scrapped after several days of protests outside the Danish Parliament
- “Children must be excluded from ‘rule of six’ over Christmas, MPs say” – MPs are demanding children are excluded so traditional family Christmases can go ahead
- “The ‘nanny-in-chief’ is wide of the mark on Covid and obesity” – Christopher Snowdon in CapX says Dame Sally Davies is wrong about obesity being a major factor in Britain’s above-average Covid death toll
- “Medical Doctor Warns that ‘Bacterial Pneumonias Are on the Rise’ from Mask Wearing” – American doctor suspects bacterial pneumonias are becoming more common and blames face masks
- “Can We Challenge the Official Covid Vaccination Narrative?” – Niall McCrae on why not everyone who has reservations about the safety and effectiveness of the Covid vaccine should be dismissed as an “anti-vaxxer”
- “The Moderna vaccine offers more hope” – Ross Clark in the Spectator says the Moderna vaccine looks, at first blush, to be better than the Pfizer/BioNTech one
- “Boris’s ludicrous self-isolation has brutally exposed the idiocy of test and trace” – And here’s Clark in the Telegraph pointing out how absurd it is that the PM has been asked to self-isolate given that, in his own words, he’s “bursting with antibodies”
- “Fear, not data, shapes the public’s view of COVID-19” – The Telegraph‘s Tim Stanley says our response to the virus has been hysterical, even though we have access to more data than ever before
- “Who’ll grab the steering wheel from out-of-control Johnson?” – Coruscating profile of the Prime Minister by Daniel Miller in the Conservative Woman
- “If Sacha Baron Cohen wants to ‘stop hate for profit’, why is he still making jokes at Kazakhstan’s expense?” – Excellent comment piece about Sacha Baron Cohen’s hypocrisy by Noah Carl in RT
- “Scotland’s largest teaching union issues strike warning and demands return to part-time schooling” – Down tools, comrades. In the incredibly unlikely event of one of us catching Covid, there’s a 0.05% chance we’ll die. Time to throw the kids under a bus
- “Angela Merkel faces rebellion from regional leaders over Covid rules” – Regional leaders openly accuse the German leader of trying to bounce them into accepting a detailed set of new restrictions
- “Labour’s plan to censor anti-vaxxers would only make things worse” – Good piece by Benedict Spence on why censorship will not allay the fears of vaccine worrywarts
- “We don’t have the luxury of being semi-locked down until vaccine is rolled out” – Excellent leader in yesterday’s Sun
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Just one today: “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC.
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, I’m flagging up Christiane Amanpour’s bizarre comparison of Donald Trump’s four-year term with Kristallnacht, the infamous night in 1938 in which the Nazi Party and its supporters ransacked Jewish schools and hospitals, damaged or destroyed over 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses, arrested 30,000 Jewish men and murdered at least 90.
“This week, 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened,” Amanpour said at the top of her CNN show last Thursday.
It was the Nazis’ warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to genocide against a whole identity. And, in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on fact, knowledge, history and truth.
After four years of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden/Harris team pledges a return to norms, including the truth. And, every day, Joe Biden makes presidential announcements about good governance and the health and security of the American people, while the great brooding figure of his defeated opponent rages, conducting purges of perceived enemies and preventing a transition.
CNN hasn’t exactly been pro-Trump for the last four years, but even by the network’s partisan standards this was over-the-top. To compare Trump’s Presidency to Kristallnacht is to wildly exaggerate his sins – the ultimate example of Trump Derangement Syndrome – and, at the same time, minimise the crimes committed by the Nazis on that terrible night.
Not surprisingly, top Israeli officials have demanded an apology, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Diaspora Affairs Minister Omer Yankelevitch said on Sunday that the US news network “should be a partner in the global effort to fight antisemitism and not fuel the fire”.
“Using the memory of the Holocaust for cheap headlines or a political agenda is concerning and distorts the historical and moral truth,” Yankelevitch said.
Stop Press: Liz Truss has been accused of “gross negligence” by a Lib Dem MP after appointing David Goodhart, a member of the Free Speech Union’s Advisory Council, to the Equality and Human Rights Commission. His sin? To describe the claim that Britain is systemically racist as “statistically naive”.
Stop Press 2: There’s a good piece in the Times on the difficulties various companies have got themselves into by trying to appear woke.
Stop Press 3: Suzanne Moore has left the Guardian, presumably forced out as a result of dissenting from woke orthodoxy. Watch me sticking up for her in a ding-dong with Owen Jones on Sky News a few months ago.
“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.
If you’re a shop owner and you want to let your customers know you want be insisting on face masks or asking them what their reasons for exemption are, you can download a friendly sign to stick in your window here.
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.
Stop Press: Joe Biden, in his first economic address since the election, said he supported a national mask mandate to help curb the rise of the virus.
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 ever since. 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 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 my 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 over 650,000 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.
Update 3: You can watch Sunetra Gupta set out the case for “Focused Protection” here and Jay Bhattacharya make it here.
Update 4: The three GBD authors plus Prof Carl Heneghan of CEBM have launched a new website collateralglobal.org, “a global repository for research into the collateral effects of the COVID-19 lockdown measures”.
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 and is challenging the 10pm curfew. The hearing date is set for December 3rd, the day after we come out of lockdown.
Christian Concern and over 100 church leaders are 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.
Quotation Corner
It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
Mark Twain
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.
Charles Mackay
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions…
Ideology – that is what gives the evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
Nothing would be more fatal than for the Government of States to get into the hands of experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man, who knows where it hurts, is a safer guide than any rigorous direction of a specialist.
Sir Winston Churchill
If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.
Richard Feynman
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C.S. Lewis
The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants.
Albert Camus
We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
Carl Sagan
Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell
We’re Hiring
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Shameless Begging Bit
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And Finally…
In the latest episode of London Calling, my weekly podcast with James Delingpole, we discuss how Boris became Prince Harry to Princess Nut Nuts, condemn the Labour Party for demanding that anti-vaxxers be even more censored on social media than they already are and review The Queen’s Gambit, which James thought was unrealistic because, according to him, you need an “autistic” male brain to become a chess champion.
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Top o’ the morning.
https://twitter.com/DarrenPlymouth/status/1328422535680192512/photo/1
Dear Lockdown
You must write to your MP and ask them to stop the Great Reset
– If you’re writing to a Labour MP call it the Great Capitalist Reset
This Is How Great Reset Will End Western Democracies
Mahyar Tousi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk2W7rOFatg
And if writing to a Conservative MP, call it the Great Marxist Reset.
The left have totally hoodwinked by tbe Ahern, Biden, Tredeau types.
Wasn’t aware Bertie Ahern was a lockdown zealot: don’t you mean Jacinda Ardern?
You forgot Madge Hancock’s hero, Chairman Kim Jong Dan of Victoria, Australia.
Yes.. agreed.. just like the Bolsheviks were with their Russian Revolution. The usual suspects were funding it and then pulled the rug when things quite go to plan. Bankers eh!.. who’d have em..
If writing to an MP, stick to the facts of what has been done and the implications for physical, mental, economic and social health.
Demand a change of course, but avoid triggers like “Reset” etc which might be counterproductive.
Keep it polite; keep it brief – better two shorter, narrowly focussed letters than one long rambling one.
Address the recipient correctly. Each MP’s preferred form of address is given as part of their contact information at https://members.parliament.uk/members/Commons
I was advised by one of my family who has to deal with MPs in a professional capacity to type a letter, print it, manually write the salutation “Dear <name>” , sign it, then scan and email (or post) it.
That’s the ideal – more work, but it’s the preferred standard.
It’s been working for me – so far.
Good advice.
Lengthy ranting is a waste of breath, time and energy.
The problem that I find is that MPs are so sucked into the narrative that unpicking their assumptions is difficult in a short space.
but the world economic forum call it The great Reset
https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/
MPs don’t work for us. They naively believe they’ve been promised a seat at the World Economic Forum’s table (they haven’t)
No, they’ll possibly pick up a few crumbs, but then they’ll be down and out just like the rest of us (if they have their way, which they won’t)
https://dailysceptic.org/2020/11/17/latest-news-196/#comment-250767 A cartel monopolism has corrupted capitalism from the outset. It is a kind of corporate socialism that is overtly associated with Fascism, but can and does operate any and many faces or fronts – such as to exercise controlling interests through any and every vector of influence. Part of its ability to set up polarised narrative identities, is the funding, and promoting of its own ‘opposition’. Thus arenas of contained or open conflict feed a hidden third party. The underlying pattern of such corruption is within us, even if manifesting as a world to which we are subjected. The masking of grievance coupled in fear of pain of loss, presents the face of control, set in the judgements from which an identity is maintained. To suppress corruption at the level of symptoms without addressing the underlying causes within us, is to persist in masking corruption in ever more insidious deceits of control – such as ‘the great reset’. Corruption is firstly a false currency of identification. Evil is derivative. The quickness to first accuse in the other, or to pre-empt their own frame of defence is a ‘woke’ facade of fear and guilt driven grievance that has all the power… Read more »
Hi Binra
You are obviously a CIM advocate. I would like to talk to you about this perspective. Can you email me please: jclfind@mac.com
Good afternoon Binra.
‘What we give we strengthen in our selves. What we choose NOT to give, fades from non use.’ This is lovely.
It is. Thanks
Dear Barney
** Denmark Says NO To Lockdown Law & Government Relent #PeoplePower **
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zadErfQ2pMY
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4436
Spending the equivalent of 77% of the NHS annual revenue budget on an unevaluated underdesigned national programme leading to a regressive, insufficiently supported intervention—in many cases for the wrong people—cannot be defended. The experience of the National Screening Committee and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) tells us that allowing testing programmes to drift into use without the right system in place leads to a mess, and the more resources invested the bigger the mess.
Good morning to you Barney 👸🥜🥜
New face mask that kills 90% of the Covid could be available by December.
The anti viral face cover features a fluid repellent outer layer which
“reduces the inhalation of droplets”(🤔).
There is also a copper lining which kills the virus if it comes into contact with it.
‘When will it be available to the buy (sic)?’
The masks go into production in late November and will be commercially available (£1.00 each) in December.
Brought to us by Dr Gareth Cave who is a nanotechnology expert and scientist at Nottingham Trent University.
Oh, and they also kill off 90% of the flu. Isn’t technology marvellous.
H/T ITV online >central>health>coronovirus.
A fluid repellent outer layer that inhibits the inhalation of droplets?
Droplets coming from another person, then.
But zombies wear the current face nappies so that their droplets can’t get out and travel to other people.
Obviously they are wasting their time – as if we didn’t know.
Copper, BTW, is toxic at more than minimal levels in the human body. I don’t know if having it clamped over your mouth and nose is a good idea or not.
Hence the quotation marks and (🤔) Annie.
Yuk, indeed.
Let’s guess ”not” to be on the safe side.
Is this not a backhanded way of confirming that masks don’t work?
DO NOT COVER YOUR SOURCE OF OXYGEN!
I wonder if people muzzled up to the eyeballs in the open air ever consider that people with respiratory problems are given oxygen.
Nature got there first.
Silk is hydrophobic and contains copper, to stop the baby silk worm from getting diseased and going mouldy.
Silk has also been used for sutures, as it eventually dissolves in the body. By contrast, cotton absorbs moisture and grows fungi, and as for microplastics, inhaling these is not good for you long term.
Moral – the Government should issue us all with free Hermes scarves, which would be much cheaper than the current measures.
The Egyptians knew a thing or two about the medical efficacy of copper but I don’t recall if it’s effective against virus, bacteria or both.
Like the copper doorknobs in hospitals that were replaced with stainless steel ones.
And cruise ships.
So, after all these months I’ve been inveighing against the mask law, it seems there really is a way to persuade me to accept the barmy practice with enthusiasm! Yes, kindly deliver my state-issue Hermes scarf. I’ll have the Jardins de Soie Shawl 140 in vert/rose/blanc (£880), please.
She had won the victory over herself. She loved Matt Hancock.
Can I have my tax payer funded face covering in the form of a full set of shirts, underwear, pyjamas and bedding, please?
Still not going to put it over my face, though.
Fie upon thee, selling thy soul to an Rsoul for a silk scarf!
Actually £880 per head would be a bargain, compared with the billions squandered on useless testing.
Well, the old champagne socialists used to say that under communism, every car would be a Rolls Royce. Looks like every scarf will be a Hermes scarf as well!
There is no virus
There is – but the hype is infinitely more dangerous.
How do you know there is a virus, where’s your proof or is it just belief?
You may be better to use terrain theory to contextualise what you may believe you are saying but which will not be received. Psycho-pathological anthropomorphism is the miraculous capacity of mind-extending or projecting meanings – that are self-attacking contradictory or insane, as a means to construct a world from doublethink as if a unity – set in and of itself – rather than inhering or inheriting its qualities directly – or miraculously – as in unself-conscious joy that need take no thought for itself. The mind-virus underpins the way we see ourselves, each other and our world. Interpreting all things to a dogmatically held masking narrative by which we think to aggrandise, save or protect our ‘self’. This is obvious to that the humans are the virus being ‘controlled’ – and inducement to fear and guilt is the underling directive backed by coercion and threat, under masking in ‘concern’ that conceal an immediate outrage if openly challenged. The love that turns to hate is not love, but the masking over a hate that cannot abide itself. I will not say there is no hate, toxic thinking or evil, but that these are derivatives of a profound mis-identification, running headless –… Read more »
‘The love that turns to hate is not love, but the masking over a hate that cannot abide itself.’ As when the covid zealots issue fluffy injunctions to ‘be kind’ before trying to force a mask over my face by law and shouting at me in public when I don’t comply.
The virus isn’t alive. One cannot kill something that is not alive.
Don’t shoot the messenger please Steve.😉
OK, I think “destroys the virus” would be a better phrasing.
Deters the virus?
Are there any nanobots scurrying about in the mask’s material?
Apartheid Britain
“Please pay at the window if you don’t have a face covering”
Shame on you (major supermarket petrol station). The blurry bit in the attached image explains that face coverings are mandatory unless you are exempt or have reasonable excuse not to.
Naturally I ignored this demand to be a second class citizen and the staff couldn’t care less.
Maybe it’s time to stop calling them ‘gas’ stations…
Well, an American would say ‘gas station’, whereas I would probably just say ‘garage’. So what though? Here’s a good book on British and American English variants, beautifully written, and one which explodes a lot of myths: http://www.theprodigaltongue.com
Nice find. Thanks for the terrific link! The vocabulary between the two great variants seems to differ more than average in the area of transport. My American relatives smile at my use of ‘bonnet’, for example.
My American friend didn’t know what a ‘lorry’ was.
You’ve got to forgive them: they are only ex-colonials.
My driving instructor always used the word ‘gas’ because it took less time to say, and fast reactions were of the essence when teaching somebody like me to handle a potentially lethal machine.
Gas! sure beats accelerator pedal. And accelérateur in French. Too late.
Thanks, looks good, on the Christmas list
I thought so, there are a lot of books out there on ‘popular linguistics’, and an awful lot of them are pretty dire. This one struck me as an exception. (BTW I am not on any commission from the author! LOL).
The problem with using “gas” to mean motor fuel is that it’s inconsistent with the long-established terminology of solid, liquid, gas for the three phases of matter.
The problem with using ‘garage’ to mean a place that sells petrol is that it’s inconsistent with the long-established meaning “A building or indoor space in which to park or keep a motor vehicle”.
How do the British manage not to get completely mixed up, and confuse one with the other, going out to look for petrol in their garages?
We avoid that problem by using the phrase that a four-year-old taught me; “petrol shop”.
Out of the mouths of babes…
which supermarket?
Another one with a death wish.
Boycott!
My local Shell garage has had the same sign up since masks were made “mandatory”. I’ve never seen anyone pay it the slightest heed.
Do they want the money or don’t they?
You get the petrol before they get the money.
more about arse-covering than face-covering
That would make a good sign. ‘Help us cover our arses by covering your faces. Thank you.’
Can everyone confirm that I’m not mad?
Am I right in thinking that the fundamental issue is that this virus just isn’t that serious?
I say no. I think the fundamental issue is that serious or not, the way to deal with the virus was not to shut down the world and destroy the economy.
Of course, but to do it for this one is even more crazy.
Unless you are an ardent depopulationist à la Bill Gates or Klaus Schwab.
I think the fundamental issue is whether the state has the right to over ride peoples ability to make their own judgements. All the rest of the evils follow from this with no limit in sight…eg possible forced vaccinations etc.
The virus is clearly no more serious than seasonal flu. Also the death toll put down to Cocid-19 has been rigged from day one. Now why would they want that? It’s not just about wasting millions on useless tests and dodgy tests and thee is clearly a much bigger agenda at work. The Great Reset is simply another name for Depopulation.
Depopulation is Bill Gates middle name.
Unless you are over 80 and at deaths door already you have a much greater chance of dying in a road traffic accident.
I expect that Galileo felt it necessary to Praise the Lord before expounding his heretical beliefs.
You, me and all sceptics are sane, but the lunatics have taken over the asylum.
Asking that question is proof of your sanity.
But it’s not about the virus
Of course. Which makes lip service to the stupid rules a collaboration with evil?
Yep, but the moment you question it, you get the accusations thrown at you of ‘granny killing’, ‘conspiracy theorist’ and told that you should go on the frontline etc. Perhaps we should be focussing on the destruction of civil liberties, freedom of speech and the decimation of or economic and social structure. How people cannot see this still staggers me beyond belief.
Well that wasn’t what they intended – maybe someone should draw that to their attention – they’ve accidentally stopped de-populating the planet!
The vaccines are intended to fix that oversight.
Interesting flag you’re waving. What’s the bit in the middle – the Isle of Man?
The REAL virus is HUMAN FEAR. Look at the hideous ways in which virusphobic people are wishing harm On those of us who tell the truth. “Hope you get it and don’t get a ventilator”, “when you kill your grandparents maybe you’ll be sorry”, “wear a fucking mask, stupid”… all REAL quotes on social media. Frightened people pose the greatest threat to us right now. Too frightened to open their eyes and ears to the truth. Fear of others. That is what has led to every war in human history. History repeats itself. Again and again and again. We are at the start of WW3. Without a doubt.
It’s funny how people who are spreading the fear, like Neil Ferguson have broken the rules to meet their married lover
Pro-lockdowners are some of the biggest hypocrites
These are the “facts” that Obama was wittering on about the other day.
Does anyone listen to Obama?
2020 sanity test:
Shrink: (Places hacksaw in front of patient) “CUT YOUR ARM OFF NOW”
Patient: No!
Shrink: You did not follow orders, you are insane.
If you are over 80, then you are on the last bus anyway, so why worry about the ephemeral coronavirus, which is less lethal than flu.
I know several over-80s – and no, they’re NOT afraid of the virus. (Especially the ones who are still playing tennis and cycling every day.) They ARE afraid of the last bit of their lives being blighted by this disgraceful bunch of self-serving, smug b*ggers who ”rule” us. They’re afraid of separation from their families, either through illness or just ”rules”. THAT’s what scares them.
I doubt very much if there are many grannies who’d mind being killed by their families if it meant they could be with them in their final days.
Yes indeed, to all of that.
I know of a family of smug b*ggers who love Boris Johnson and who endorse lockdowns but who have consistently broken lockdown rules from the beginning. They see no irony.
What’s the betting that the pro-lockdown TV celebs, politicians, police who’ve arrested the unmasked, journalists and Piers Morgan break the rules at Christmas
I think you’re right that the virus is no worse than many other flu viruses BUT the shocking level of wasteful spending is serious.
77% of annual NHS budget (approx £100B) will be wasted over Xmas in (so called) testing using unsuitable methods. Just to generate false positives!
But worse, will our country be able to fund the NHS, the armed forces, schools etc in prospect of future annual false pandemics? When will the credit card be maxxed?
Research The Great Reset, Bill Gates, China’s social credit system.. And it will all begin to make terrible sense – unfortunately
If people don’t know by now, that Bill Gates is at the very heart of the Covid fiasco, then just what have they been doing all their lives?
From the number of up-votes you got for that question, I’d guess that just about everyone here is with you!
From Toby’s piece about students away at University testing positive but being included in their hometown cases.
About a month ago there were widespread revelations that students were being included in both their home town and at their university location so each positive student counted as two cases.
Double plus good!
I think we can be certain that the “cases” recorded at home won’t have been deducted, they will just have been double counted. It does provide further evidence that London has achieved effective community immunity though which is a positive.
A bit like them being registered to vote at home and the university. Back when he was at university, the whole cohort were registered by the university without any action on the part of the student. He was never that politically motivated but being so close to home he could easily have managed 2 votes in one day.
I did that once. Travelling from home in Yorkshire back to Uni in Reading! Voted in both places. Heh heh!
weekly emails from local council would provide counts of “infections” and would specifically mention the numbers attributed to students who lived in the area, who had been tested away at university, which were included in the local totals
I asked my local council covid advisory panel medical twat about students being counted twice when away at university.
Cases in our area in the 16-25 age group was the highest in the area over the last few months which was….
weirdnot surprising.I am not at all sure I will get an answer but perhaps I rattled a tree with my questions and just perhaps one of them picked up the big red telephone and got those student counts looked at properly.
They are idiots mind you, that is clear.
Something else about the Schlieffen Plan.
It coldly and deliberately envisaged the violation of Belgian neutrality, which Prussia, the forerunner state of Germany, had undertaken to respect under the 1839 Treaty of London.
In 1914, Belgium was invaded and occupied. The invasion force was instructed to treat the population with atrocious brutality in order to induce terror and eliminate resistance.
Germany was obsessed by an unfounded fear of. ‘encirclement’ and was determined to get its retaliation in first.
Bad faith, deceit, cruelty, panic: Wancock and his gang would have felt quite at home in 1914 Germany, though not quite so much in their element as in 1939 Germany.
The observation by Guy de la Bedoyere about the need of the Germans to follow the Schleiffen Plan being comparable to the overeaction to covid by governments throughout the world follows the wonderful and erudite A.J.P. Taylor in the 1970s.
He goes further back (on topic still), it was the pre-planning by all the major powers and in particular the reliance on the technology of the time particularly railways that made avoiding general war impossible even before the war had begun.
The parallel between pre covid ‘Pandemic Planning causing disproportionate lockdowns and the Army mobilizations in 1914 causing WW1 could not be clearer.
Youtuber Major Esterhazy
The Outbreak of the The First World War
A.J.P. Taylor How Wars Begin 1977.
30 mins, the relevant stuff starts after ten minutes.
Further to Annie’s remarks about the atrocities committed by the Germans while undeniably true the authorities on all sides initiated psy ops on their populations based on ever more lurid claims of atrocities committed by their enemies.
Historians like to blame Nationalism for WW1 in fact it was those same Psy Ops that whipped up nationalist outrage as a result of war, not its cause.
Another Covid lockdown parallel.
You’re right about the lurid claims. But the German atrocities were real. Germany invaded neutral Belgium on 4 August 1914. From the next day, civilians were executed en masse, as the invasion force advanced on its first obstacle, the ring of forts around Liège. To retaliate for the shelling from these forts, the German troops rounded up inhabitants of surrounding villages. Victims were selected and shot, those still alive being killed off with bayonets. By 8 August, nearly 850 civilians were dead. By then, several of the dynamics of this particular type of violence had fully emerged. First, the massacres occurred where the invading army suffered setbacks; the German military did not consider Belgium’s military defence to be legitimate. Second, the victims were accused, incorrectly, of being franc-tireurs (civilian snipers). Most of the German rank and file genuinely believed that the locals were attacking them; this sniper delusion was sometimes countered by the commanding officers, sometimes not. Third, there were women, children and old men among the victims but the vast majority were men of military age. These were more likely to be suspected of sniping; moreover, the invading troops resented them for still enjoying the civilian life that they themselves had… Read more »
very scary indeed
Edward Bernays had been perfecting
mass marketingbrainwashing in about 1910. He was known for persuading women to smoke cigarettes in huge numbers by selling them as “freedom torches” and how they were a signal of the emancipation of women.This new fangled propaganda tool, or using the new mass media (cinema) and magazines presented the opportunity to roll out mass brainwashing.
I guess because it was brand new, an unknown force and applied with brutish clumsiness it is why WW1 and WW2 resulted in the anti-human carnage that ensued.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
Well the Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was not the cause. That was on the front page of UK papers for one day, day two it was the inside pages and by day 3 it had gone.
It was the planning that caused WW1 and it was the planning that created lockdown.
I like the WW1 analogies but I think what we have now is more like 1917 than 1914. It’s grinding on and and on into lunacy, but those in power won’t stop because they can’t back down and there are too many vested interests involved, either wanting to make money or use the war to force societal change. Remember that the poet Siegfried Sassoon, one of the few high-profile soldiers to speak out against the war, was persuaded to commit himself to a mental institution to avoid court-martial.
Very quickly the War Aim of all the powers became the same.
To not lose.
As has been said above, the aim of the lockdown merchants is simply to not lose face.
‘All Quiet on the Western Front’.
That’s right and Bismarck knew that France would do its utmost to exact revenge and regain Alsace-Lorraine. That’s why he built alliances such as the Three Emperors’ League and one with the Austro-Hungarian empire to neutralise the French threat. Of course it also benefited him too that Britain was engaged in a policy of “splendid isolation”
IIRC Bismarck wanted to let France keep Alsace-Lorraine (because he knew taking it would make France a long-term enemy of Germany) but was overruled by a Kaiser anxious to please jingoistic public opinion.
Austria-Hungary was actually part of the Three Emperors’ League, but that alliance fell apart when Austria-Hungary and Russia came into conflict over the Balkans.
Looks like Bismarck was right. There was a monument in France that was draped in black after the Franco-Prussian War owing to the loss of Alsace-Lorraine and it only came down when the two provinces again became part of France in 1919.
As for the second bit, that’s what I was going to say but don’t why it came out the way I typed it. DOH!!!
Exclude children, enjoy Christmas…
He meant excluded from the ludicrous Rule Of 6 I expect.
Sure, only joking.
Hahahaha!!
So. In today’s list of pieces we have had news of a new ‘hate speech’ law (just call it censorship) being proposed in England with a penalty of 7 years in jail. Funny, Scotland were also pushing for the same thing, coincidence? I don’t think so. I wonder what else they will be trying to sneak in while everyone is focused on the flu…sorry ‘covid19`! Then we hear of AI dealing with vaccine issues, not good and AI is routinely warned against and for good reason. Slowly like the frog in increasingly hot water we are being herded towards our collective demise. What worries me more is the likes of JHB etc being pro-vaccine for covid as if it undoes allll the many issues that we have experienced since this overblown farce came into public consciousness. Why is the focus not on the recovery from the deliberate devastation we have been put in. Where is the chat about that? Talking about cases etc is exactly what the govt wants us to do as it distracts us from the real issues. Let us call it for what it is, covid19 is about as dangerous as the flu. I’m sure many being… Read more »
Perhaps the Covid Recovery Group would be better called the Lockdown Recovery Group.
Definitely!
Big Brother Recovery Group.
How are we going to sabotage The Great Reset?
Big Brother and the Holding Company.
AI or artificial intelligence is a phrase like algorithm much bandied about by people who
A) Have never had to specify or create a decision tree for a program or suite of programs
B) Wish to hide the fact that ALL these decisions are made by human beings usually with an agenda
If anyone is wondering why Sweden is now introducing ‘measures’ similar to that of other countries need to look hard in the mirror and realise that all of this is a plan. One by one we will all fall in line as we are collectively weak and won’t do anything as long as we think it will mean we are left alone.
The human condition is to adapt, it also that condition that will lead to our collective demise, ‘they’ know it. We’re too bothered by what’s on social media to care.
Don’t start moaning when it’s all taken away and even posts like this will come with repurcussions for ‘violations’.
Gulags aren’t required in a digital age.
The inner skeptic in me as always wondered whether Sweden was “allowed” to follow Anders Tegnell’s logical plan for the reason that a minimal amount of research would have shown that the casualties from any respiratory illness was always going to be much higher than it’s Nordic neighbours and would hence give credibility to the assertion that Lockdowns work. Even before the LD in March when cases were already much higher in Sweden, it was known that the previous season had seen very low flu casualties (dry tinder) and the pollution maps, the huge nursing homes and other factors could have predicted the higher death rates with some certainty.
Alternatively maybe Swedish politicians are subject to the same pressures as leaders everywhere else, and Swedish people are susceptible to panic, and irrational fear/obsession that “something must be done”, and their media like a good doom story.
I agree. This change signifies a move away from a reasonable scientific approach to a political one. Whether that’s because of pressure on politicians from without or within It can only go downhill from there with masks, etc. an inevitability.
Yes this. The politicians have now taken over and is a perfect example of why politicians shouldn’t get involved in things they know very little about. This whole thing has been political everywhere else and Sweden is bowing to the international pressure of ‘being on the right side’. They are probably worried about Swedens international reputation and probably been lent on by powerful forces or interests who are threatening (already started) to ruin that reputation for them.
Probably economic vulnerability made evident.
The WHO u-turn on face nappies was a response to political pressure. Who’s pulling the political strings ……….?
The World Bank, the IMF and lots of other large banking firms across the globe.
Cases cases everywhere.
The problem is always the PCR casedemic and the shared view among ill informed ministers across Europe that it has any basis in reality. The fear agenda relies on it and it seems to be a drag net on such weak individuals.
Bribes, blackmail or coercion more like. The destruction of the economy that’s happening globally will harm and kill millions for generations to come
I can’t believe that all politicians want to do this, because history will hold them responsible
Why did the Nordic countries other than Sweden do so much better than the countries of core Europe (even Germany), even though they didn’t lock down to the same degree?
It’s also possible that just by chance they had picked a health minister who was a thoughtful adult instead of another monstrous politico-administrative type.
I think Sweden’s change of heart is more down to the belief that we’re now only a few months away from a vaccine, and that the people and economy will tolerate a 6-month lockdown when they wouldn’t have tolerated a 14-month lockdown.
I predicted this
I knew it would happen, because a global Covid Cabal is in charge. Governments are not in charge
Every country is under occupation
It’s because the Covid Cabal leaned on them. (The WEF, banks, UN, Pharma, Gates etc)
Digital Gulags.
Most prisoners sentenced by a court in the UK serve a third of their sentences
We have all been banged up for eight months now
That is the equivalent of being sent down for 2 years by a court
These length of sentences are usually reserved for serious offences such as grevious bodily harm
Might as well get hung for a sheep as for a lamb
We have nothing left to lose
Prisoners still have Association and communal dining while many of the general population remain in solitary confinement.
they could require us to be rogered in the showers… (in Tier 4 regs, I suspect)
A while ago Toby or a colleague posted a whistleblower’s news about massive staff shortfalls in some NHS regions. This I think was down to the inadequacies of test and trace getting people to self-isolate in particular. This seemed like significant news. Has anyone got any updates?
You can see the position of staff absences from the monthly downloadable NHS spreadsheet titled November 2020 COVID Publication (XLS, 9.6mb)which goes up to 4th November
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/
Total NHS staff absences were levelling off at 4th November in the North West it appears at about 60% of the maximum staff absences in March/April so I’m guessing they are causing about the same level of issues.
Absences highest as a percentage of absences in the first wave in the North West and North East and Yorkshire so consistent with those reporting most covid+ deaths. Lower relative absences in other areas although increasing from these lower levels.
Thanks.
The interesting one is that covid staff absences at 4th November were at about 40% of what they were in the first wave in the North West (which is consistent with covid+ deaths being about 40% of the first wave peak in the North West).
But TOTAL staff absences at 4th November were 60% of the first wave total staff absences peak (so higher than this 40%). This supports the theory which has some supporting anecdotal evidence also that some staff have been off sick in the Autumn for reasons of stress or because they didn’t want to be allocated to treat covid patients.
Looks like from your findings that it might be worth more digging by someone. It seems a significant phenomenon.
There is also the issue that, like Boris, many NHS have had the virus but are being required to ‘self isolate’ over and over again if a colleague or one of their children ‘tests positive’. Shortage of NHS staff is the main reason for the lockdown but government policy is causing it.
I’d say thatT&T policy is a big part of the problem.
Don’t forget also that the obese can self-certify themselves as vulnerable and skive off – and there’s a disproportionate number of fatties working in the NHS.
In addition, those that have been working are being driven to the point of exhaustion on 12 hr shifts meaning some, and I mean some, are going ill due to stress or exhaustion. Lack of nursing capacity needs urgent investigation
Totally agree that the lack of nursing capacity needs urgent attention, but we’ve known about this for years.
The main argument for these measures is that the NHS needs protecting, but as we know it’s been at full capacity nearly every winter, where has been the contingency planning and where is the criticism? We’ve lost our individual liberty for the sake of protecting the NHS, but there seems to be very little questioning of how we have arrived at this place.
Surely with the bare minimum of good management we wouldn’t have to ‘protect the NHS’
Shifts in hospital are normally 11-12 hrs. This means only one handover a day. It’s called a ‘Long Day’. Rotas usually avoid back to back shifts, but sometimes staff will volunteer to do one if another person calls in sick. Stress is caused by vacant posts not being filled as well as staff sickness.
I should have saved it, but a week or so back I spotted a Twatter post which said that in a particular area NHS staff deemed to be in the “At Risk” category were being sent home on indefinite leave until such time as a vaccine is available. It was pointed out that this meant the fatties (and, let’s face it, there are a LOT of them) and BAME employees are now sitting around on full pay, while the remaining staff are working their butts off. I’ve not seen this mentioned anywhere else, so it may be “Fake News”, but then again, it sounds entirely plausible for an organisation obsessed with political correctness and diversity issues…
In my area ‘at risk’ staff are redeployed to non covid/ICU wards. Only a minority are allowed to shield at home.
Found this though: How should vulnerable workers feature in return to work risk assessments? Obesity Businesses will need to include obesity when considering who may be at risk in your workplace and then undertake individual risk assessments for anyone in that group – particularly as they may have other underlying health conditions that you may not be aware of. They will need to make sure that staff are aware of the steps that have been taken to protect them. As part of this exercise, employers could list the categories of people in the vulnerable group and explain that current advice is that they can return to work (if they can’t work from home) and ask them to contact HR so that it can consider their individual circumstances before a decision about whether it’s safe for them to do so is reached. We recommend that employers include links to the NHS BMI calculator to help your staff determine if they are “very obese”. Bear in mind that people who fall into this category may be reluctant to talk to their employer about it. If you believe that a member of staff is very obese, businesses may – depending on the nature… Read more »
Or they could insist that they lose weight……..!
Would that be discrimination, victimisation etc?
It may vary from trust to trust (and region to region)?
I’d seen it elsewhere. Sorry don’t know where ….
Good grief. It does have the ring of truth, unfortunately.
Won’t do as much harm as most things the PD does.
Many wonder about their relationship. I think Littlejohn pointed out what many have always thought: he looks more than old enough to be her dad. The relationship just does not ring true. They are an odd couple. Too odd. The Conservative Woman suggests Boris is a damaged personality…
I just hope Graham Brady and co save us from this madness.
Absolutely, I think that a 24 year difference is shall we say: “a bit weird”
I think that family follow the old saying about the aristocracy: “They f××k all year and share the babbies (babies) out at Christmas.”
😅
What’s the title of the book? Johnson’s former father-in-law had an interesting life as as a foreign correspondent.
Fantastic. Will check it out.
Boris is a manchild and easily dominated, Princess nut nuts is his handler.
The parallels between this and Harry & Meghan are eerie.
Is “damaged personality” politespeak for narcissistic sociopath?
The news coming out of Sweden really is a new low. Even their PM’s rhetoric sounds depressingly familiar.
External influences probably.
Sweden has a long history of neutrality. It’s possible that if globalist forces are running this pandemic, they made an initial show of respecting that neutrality, but now perhaps pressure is being applied against them, in the same way the Germans pressured them into allowing use of their railways to access Norway during WW2.
He probably received a letter from the World Bank. Or Klaus Schwab.
🐷❤👸🥜🥜
According to Littlejohn the last three emojis were used by Dom and wotsisname to indicate princess nut nut.
100% right. It’s not a traditional Christmas in my house if you have to limit it to six adults!
No children no Christmas.
Interesting how the BMJ is turning sceptical, or at least allowing sceptical views (and scathing ones at that).
I wonder if they would publish the Danish masks study?
Twice in one week and Editorials to boot.
Yes, interesting editorial here:
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4425
As are the responses to that editorial:
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4425/rapid-responses
Brilliant responses, thanks for the link
Yes, good to see those responses thanks.
Hopefully this will encourage them in further editorials along these lines.
If that Danish masks study is technically any good, I imagine there will be huge kudos – when better times dawn – for the journal with the integrity to publish it.
Deep Blue – thank you for posting this. I was beginning to lose my mind… it appears there is hope.
Am sure has nothing to do with the fact their members are first in the queue for the jab ! I would be seriously considering other career options right now…
The NEJM says “hold my beer”. Excoriating
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2029812
Thanks for the link – but the article rests largely on the premise that non-pharmaceutical interventions are effective, and are responsible for the containment of disease in places like China et al.
I don’t buy that, I’m afraid. A while ago on here there was a discussion on the proper mean of the phrase ‘begging the question’. The article is a good example of that proper meaning, I think.
That photo at the top of today’s post is nauseating. One face indescribably pompous and ugly, the other thick, arrogant and vacant.
We all know that hancock is one of the most hated men in the country but, to be fair, he does keep a straight face peddling shite in interview after interview sometimes with hostile presenters.
Perhaps that’s why he’s still in the job.
And, for all Toby says that “yesterday was not a good day” for him, I think he will have gone to bed thinking that it was a very good day. Morgan, Hartley-Brewer, both had a go and he just dissembled and rode them out. It’s all he has to do and he knows it. The law, the “experts”, the “science”, the so-called polls, everything is on his side. It’s almost as if it’s all been set up so that the likes of him have lines they can throw back.
Sociopaths like Hancock will always assume that criticism reflects more on the critic than themselves. Even if the entire country got together and strung him up from a lamppost he’d still assume they were only doing it because they were gullible enough to have been talked into it by someone else.
He’d still be strung from the lamp post. That’s good enough for me.
I’m beginning to think it’s our only option at this point.
Or shot. Either I suspect that he’s not going to meet a good end.
He deserves a bad ending, so do most of them in government.
Politicians’ smiles are duping delight
Yes…he sleeps like a baby. There will be no repercussions, no committee hearing, no investigations, he holds all the cards and he knows it. He could literally appear on the interview naked after a 6 days cocain binge and would be cool as as cucumber.. Like I said about 3 months ago ( oh my God I right again :-() he will probably be knighted for this . We are all in Lok Step going into the Great reset. Build, back, better !
Lying comes easily to him, some of his peers are more obviously uncomfortable defending the indefensible. Hancock will lie his way out of a corner with impunity, knowing even the more hostile interviews conducted by such as Morgan or Brewer, will stop short of really calling him out on the current subject.
A man too dense to understand he is to be the patsy.
Like the Prisoner episode at the great chess match when one of the villagers told the young woman ‘we’re all pawns’.
At least, unlike Sturgeon, he has to face hostile presenters. The real ‘disaster’ of devolution. I’m not sure if that’s what Johnson was getting at.
Or maybe it’s because he’s a sociopath.
I have been thinking of SAGE’s role in this
I would expect either
1 – SAGE looks at covid evidence, supplies information to PM who in addition to other information makes policy decisions
2 – SAGE looks at all evidence (covid and lockdown) and makes policy recommendations
I think what has happened is that
3 – SAGE looks at one half only (covid whilst ignoring lockdown) then makes policy recommendations
But I want to know what was SAGEs official remit? 1 or 2? They can never have been set-up to do 3. So either they were set up catastrophically wrong or they have reinterpreted their scope.
If I was Boris I would ask SAGE what economic forecasts they have been using to gauge the effects of lockdown using their health economists. If they say they haven’t then disband them and set up a new SAGE with a remit of 1 or 2 above.
SAGE does not consider the lockdown negative effects. Its focus is purely on the coronavirus. However, the government did get around to looking at wider effects of lockdown (after it had been implemented). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-estimates-of-excess-deaths-from-covid-19-8-april-2020
As you can see the government expects the lockdown to kill about two hundred thousand – although you have to add up totals.
“SAGE does not consider the lockdown negative effects. Its focus is purely on the coronavirus. ”
then it should never make policy recommendations!
And they certainly shouldn’t keep briefing the newspapers to try to bounce politicians into accepting them.
SAGE only does the science bit, hence the name. The problem is the weight given to their advice. Whitty being Chief Medical Officer needed to balance science with economics because that’s his job – to assess harm in a broader sense. When he couldn’t do that he should have sought expert advice.
Sadly it appears the medical establishment seems to think “do no harm” only applies to medical care and patient wellbeing rather than the greater impact on societal and economic impacts.
We saw that with the Charlie Gard case. I’ve had arguments with the wife over that because she can’t see past the medical “do no harm” either. Perhaps it’s because my profession (physics/engineering) has the eternal stain of “Destroyer of Worlds” on it.
The economic effect of lockdown on mortality is science
You mean “science” ?
Surely, as an engineer, you have to test hypotheses before implementing them?
Sage members was set up and positioned over the last 5 or so years with Gates funding almost everybody in it in either by pouring cash into their companies or universities or paying them directly.
SAGE was set up to steer the UK into covid/vaccine/test n trace/ corona bollocks hell, to ensure the UK “did its bit” in the global COVID scam.
That’s what SAGE is for.
Children have killed themselves because of lockdown. In all seriousness SAGE have committed crimes against humanity. Those responsible need to face trial
Vallance said at the “grilling” that they hadn’t taken the economic aspects into account because that’s not their remit.
Sounds as if, ideally, Sage should have been balanced with another group of socio-economic experts.
However, the predominance of modellers, psy-op experts and people with vested interests suggests the composition is deliberate.
https://twitter.com/spencermorgan93/status/1328450549302366214?s=20
I saw that earlier – so true.
Tears yesterday as my 11 year old was forced into a pointless self isolation because someone in his class “tested positive”. He is lucky because he won’t miss out on six and a half days of education because his private school have such an exceptional online offering. How many state educated kids enjoy a full online education while they are self isolating? I suspect the answer is the square root of fuck all.
This is criminal. In fact what’s being done to children is criminal, had a chat with a friend the other day and she predicted that anxiety and OCD will rise among children exponentially when this is all over and you can guess what will happen as they grow older and that remains unchecked.
Big Pharma will be rubbing it’s hands, just thinking of all the anti-anxiety and anti-depressants that will be being prescribed in future years to today’s children.
That’s a good point, they’ll be drugged till kingdom come and it will be seen as an easy way out especially as therapy and counseling will be overstretched for years, even decades.
They may not be as the drugs will probably come out of patent, however it does provide the impetus to create new drugs (probably by creating isomers of current drugs, giving them a new name and hence new patents). £££££
I am terrified of living, as a very old person, in a world run by today’s children and teenagers. Their mothers, particularly, are so brainwashed by government propaganda that they will never go out or take their muzzles off again.
I would like to see the children sent to boarding schools in the countryside with no television, lots of sport, outdoor activities, singing, the teaching of accurate biology, and other forbidden activities. Perhaps, then, we would have a future worth living for.
I know too many f*ed up people who went to boarding school!
And aren’t most of the Cabinet examples of boarding school products?
So would the kids.
A friend of mine spoke to a child psychologist because she is worried about her ten year old son – seems angry and withdrawn a lot of the time. The shrink said there has been a lot of this since Lockdown. Partly it’s the restriction on activities and partly the rise in computer addiction, which fries kids’ brains if they are on them for too long (and isn’t that good for us adults either!)
That doesn’t surprise me – they’re starved of face to face contact as well as just being normal kids which means being outside, playing with their peers, seeing their grandparents, getting dirty. Not being cooped up indoors, going to school in front of a computer screen, being sanitised from head to toe and being muzzled up.
We all know the answer to that.
These poor kids, terrorised by zombie parents and zombie teachers, living on a perpetual go-home time bomb that can explode any second.
I’m so glad I don’t have descendants.
Sadly agree with you on that. I see photos of my nieces muzzled and visored up and wonder what will happen to them.
I can imagine my sister invoking the Nuremberg excuse if and when her daughters go off the rails.
Likewise…
Annie I count my blessings we had no children, a decision we had no part in making but is proving to be more of a silver lining on what was a black cloud.
The private schools have had to do this to survive. They were threatened by ( usually wealthy ) parents with withdrawn fees in the spring, so had to act very quickly.
One issue that isn’t being discussed is increased screen time. It should be
We all pay for education if we pay taxes. It’s just more obvious to the parent of a privately educated child when they are paying on top of this and getting nothing.
All parents should be kicking up whenever their child gets no education.
But then we should all be kicking up when we get no healthcare from the National Covid Service. That isn’t free either.
Exactly. It should worry everyone that the services they pay for, are being reduced, or in some cases withheld.
Oh but there’s an emergency, a deadly pandemic!
The headmaster of my calf’s (now ex-) private school is a rampant bedwetter, refusing even to permit mask exemptions. From what I can tell, the
parentscustomers are no different. When the headmaster refused my calf access to remote learning as punishment for her refusal to wear a mask at school, we parted ways.The mask issue is down to HSE advice and the teaching unions who are, unbelievably, active in private schools as well as the state sector. Whilst some schools were being more relaxed around masks, most are now insisting on them because of their insurers and lawyers. A stupid situation without doubt, but the schools are between a rock and a hard place on this.
Except that they are liable if harm if caused from wearing masks. Business insurance won’t cover this as the fine print will say it must be established in science that the harm from masks is minimal. And of course it doesn’t say this.
Plus you need a procedure in how to wear them correctly to ensure HSE is met. But there’s no proper guidance on that. Masks are worn in the food industry from time to time and there are regulations on use and disposal. But that’s because mask use is only for specific cases and is hard to enforce. Hair nets and gloves are easier to manage, and yet there are still issues with gloves (latex/nitriles)
So, in short, a parent can sue the school directly for any harm or “perceived harm”.
In which circumstance the schools will have to close again which no one wants. Organisations have to take a pragmatic line on this even if they think the whole thing is a load of bollocks. If we didn’t have No win; No fee none of this would even be an issue.
Yes but the refusal to allow remote access was just vindictive and peevish.
…especially given that remote access was being provided to those children who were “self isolating”.
You did right!
It is as you say f..k all and this will go on and on..I am highly suspicious any child was even tested.this is the spiel being sent to parents around the country by the public health idiots sent from their masters…
I feel your pain. My own son had to endure two weeks of “self-isolation” because of a “positive test” in a pupil in another year group that he *might* have had indirect contact with at playtime. The chances of him interacting with anyone in the year above him was infinitesimally small. But no he had to self-isolate. I suggested to the head teacher that it was probably a false positive and demanded a second test be performed on the individual to be sent to a different lab for confirmation but was told no, that wasn’t going to happen.
Guess what? No symptoms in two weeks: I wasn’t surprised.
The result of this is that in the last couple of weeks he seems to have become more “clingy” to my wife and I.
https://twitter.com/HeckofaLiberal/status/1328242163344318466
This is a short video from June with Michael Osterholm about masks. What he is saying makes perfect sense about an aerosol infection. Osterhom is one of the leading epidemiologists and expert in influenza and respiratory diseases (contrary to Fauci,Redfield,Birx who are HIV experts).
And Michael Osterholm is now part of Project fear and wants a 2 week national lockdown of US and part of the mask mandate. He is also in Biden’s new C-19 group(hope he reverts to previous opinions like this one and he also was against lockdowns in the beginning)
Everything Osterholm says in the video makes perfect sense: viruses are everywhere, even in our ordinarily-exhaled air (not just when coughing), masks only work to the extent that they filter air and trap viral particles (so air leaks around the edges essentially nullify the purpose of wearing a mask), the studies after the Spanish Flu outbreak showed that cloth masks were pointless, and that forcing people to wear masks will be the thin end of a wedge that will lead to governments extend their coercive power into other areas like locking up the overweight and the old “to protect them”. However, his logic about the ineffectiveness of masks, and his recent appointment to team Biden may lead the people of US down a potentially worse path, that of total isolation: “If we don’t stop “swapping air” with our neighbors, friends, and colleagues, COVID case numbers will grow substantially…” — interview, CNN, 2020-11-16 Here, Osterholm is arguing for more lockdown to prevent people from breathing in the same place as other people. Masks don’t work, therefore lock up everyone. Once again we see the implacable logic of the scientist used to bludgeon the public. I was interested to read the final… Read more »
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcShFfB-62PTnq93odhnN6rpOF6hsbCwkO4FpA&usqp=CAU
Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble: inhabitants of the Central Belt are awaiting warp speed transport to the Tier 4th Dimension: abandon hope all ye who enter here.
It might be simpler to build an extension at the Bar-L and confine us all at the FM’s pleasure.
It would need to be a very big extension.
I wait with you. If she does as was claimed and shuts ALL but essential shops for four weeks, it will leave 6 days to do the Christmas shopping as a lot of people are relying on their November pay to do so and haven’t the luxury of choosing to shop earlier.
A bumper Xmas for Amazon and Netflix.
‘Hello, is that Nicola Sturgeon?’
‘Aye, this is she speakin,’ wha’s this?’
‘Hi Nicola. This is Jeff. Jeff Bezos. From Amazon.’
‘Whit? You the guy wha’s always droppin’ thae parcels on ma front drive when ah’m awa’ at work, an leavin’ them oot in the rain?’
‘I just love that British humour, Nicola.’
‘Wha’ ye callin’ British? An’ see my parcels, if ye drop one on the drive again I’ll skelp ye.’
‘No but seriously Nicola. It’s me, Jeff Bezos. I’m the boss of Amazon. I’ve got a little proposition to make to you…how would you like to make a million dollars?’
‘Aye, get away. Ah’m no bein’ fooled by that again. Last time it wis a Nigerian prince that wis gonnae gie me a million dollars.’
Exactly; the woman is power mad
In Phase III of the the Moderna vaccine clinical trial, out of the 15,000 people who were in the control group, only 90 became “confirmed and adjudicated cases.”
The total participant population was “approximately 30,000 participants (case driven) whose locations or circumstances put them at appreciable risk of acquiring COVID-19 and/or SARS-CoV-2 infection. ‘All-comers’ with regard to SARS-CoV-2 serostatus (baseline serology will be collected).”
8,000 + participants were “living with chronic condition.”
Yet there has been no comment on quite how few in the control group became “cases.” 90 out of 15,000 in the control group, of whom presumably some 4,000 were living with chronic conditions.
See:
https://www.modernatx.com/sites/default/files/content_documents/mRNA-1273-Update-11-16-20-Final.pdf
Half of the participants received two doses of the vaccine, 28 days apart. The other half received placebos on the same schedule. The total 95 cases (90 control group, 5 vaccine group) were found two weeks after the second vaccine dose. So that’s 90 cases in the control group after 6 weeks. That doesn’t seem like such a low number to me. And having a chronic condition doesn’t necessarily make you more susceptible to contracting the infection.
“That doesn’t seem like such a low number to me.” Relative to what? In the latest ONS Infection Survey in the community for England, 1 in 85 “had the coronavirus.”
Not backed up by the Liverpool results, which have been rather ignored by the BBC.
So the control group had a 0.6% pos rate. Exactly the same as picked up in the Liverpool mass testing charade and highlighted in the BMJ piece above. Hmm?
And similar but higher than the Pfizer vaccine trials (86 out of 21,683 non vaccine so 0.4%)
They are, however adjudged based on symptoms, then confirmed by test. Not randomly selected for testing. Not the same as any FPR at all
Where are the details of the cases, with symptoms? Didn’t mention FPR
‘All-comers’ with regard to SARS-CoV-2 serostatus (baseline serology will be collected).”
Does that mean that even people with pre-existing immunity were enrolled on the trial?
It has always been the plan to exclude children from the rule of six. The only question is when to announce it for maximum political benefit.
The comparison to the First World War is a good one. 1914 was at the end of a long period of unprecedented peace, economic growth and global integration. Just like today. It then started with an event in Sarajevo that no one remotely felt at the time could lead to world war. Nobody believed our current dystopia would be the consequence of the first outbreaks back in January. Miscalculation and Fear then got going as each country believed it might be attacked or suffer ruin if it did not join in. This is all very like the approach to Lock Downs – we will all die if we do not take action and every country then joins the same contagion. It was also deeply popular, at least at the start. There were crowds cheering in the streets in all the European countries. Every government and populace also convinced themselves that they were morally virtuous and in the right. Just like now. Then, once the disaster unfolded it was found to be impossible to back out. But, as Guy says, any rational agent would have ended it by December 1914. Instead, it lasted 4 years and even then the result was… Read more »
Rigid battle plans turn out badly as Helmuth Graf von Moltke (the Elder) advised, also Japan’s undoing in Burma. No doubt coronanists will still be muttering about lockdowns as they emerge from the jungle years from now. Those that aren’t boasting about their brave resistance to lockdowns of course.
They will be like that Japanese soldier who was found in the Philippines years after the war ended who refused to surrender and only did so when the Emperor had to order it personally.
Interesting twitter thread about seasonality of Coronaviruses in Canada
https://twitter.com/rubiconcapital_/status/1328087905580048390
“PCR positivity is occurring everywhere and to a greater magnitude and well-before other Coronavirus seasons; despite masking / distancing / restrictions / lockdowns. Why?”
Nice find.
I expect coronavirus #5 has a more susceptible population to go through. As we saw for UK, the suppression in Spring/Summer could have come from 3 things – summer, herd immunity and lockdown. Comparison between UK and Sweden shows lockdown had a smallish effect, so it must be summer and herd immunity. Anything suppressed by summer will re-emerge in autumn until its gone through everyone and it settles down into being just another coronavirus
When you use vague and imprecise measuring techniques you get vague and imprecise measurements.
The trouble is when you adopt vague and imprecise measuring techniques the advocates proclaim detailed and precise measurements.
Such is the irrational mind.
https://apnews.com/article/65-virus-cases-who-staff-geneva-4e133325afec1d3f309ab184138e6f73
WHO HQ Geneva has now C-19 amongst staff(65)
You log of Matt Hancock’s day at the office missed his earlier appointment with BBC Breakfast, where Dan Walker, one of the BBC’s pretend journalists, tried to challenge Hancock on the failure of Boris Johnson and Mr Anderson to observe social distancing. Mr Hancock was in the BBC’s newsroom, and throughout the interview BBC personnel could be seen failing to observe social distancing. This virtue signalling hypocrisy has become institutionalised, and not just in the BBC. The few Lockdownistas that I know have consistently broken all the ever changing lockdown rules from the outset and have simultaneously complained about and condemned other people (who they do not know) for not observing the rules. One apparently unintended consequence of the lockdown has been to significantly increase the level of virtue signalling and hypocrisy in society generally, something that was bad enough already.
Yes and Hancock is perhaps the biggest virtue signaller of them all, with his National Death Service badge and face muzzle. Cover yourself privately is surely the best advice now in terms of personal health. CCP Virus is only a worry to me if admitted to an NDS Hospital for other reasons, round this way they are a complete disaster.
Do you call the 2009 pandemic the Smithfield virus?
No but nor will I use the WHO, let our Chinese bosses of the hook name for the current virus. China Virus or Wuhan Virus is unfair on the people who have no choice in tolerating the new Nazi’s who run their country. So CCP Virus it is, after those who at the very least knowingly exported their virus. Unless you can think of better.
Smithfield were responsible for the swine flu pandemic of 2009.
I do not see how China’s authorities can be responsible for the current pandemic as they reported it to the World Health Organisation in December 2019. The government of this country was informed (as were all the others) and decided on scientific advice not to secure the borders and a month later two people with the virus freely entered the country, at Heathrow, travelled around London, headed north and got to York before seeking medical attention and were found to have the disease. Even then the government did not secure the border (on scientific advice), allowing more infectious people to freely enter the country and spread the virus. There are plenty of people who are responsible for the spread of the virus, but the Chinese government is certainly not responsible for the actions and inactions of the government of this country: and those policy decisions have caused, and are causing, far more harm than the virus ever could.
Not to exempt the govt in any way from the accusations you’ve made, but didn’t China threaten the doctor who first tried to alert the authorities to the new illness?
There’s increasing evidence now that it was around in various countries well before Dec 2019 anyway.
We should call it stupidity signalling.
Maybe it just shows that the virus spreads anyway and that masks, social distancing etc. do not stop it. Sneaky, naughty viruses. They are older than us. Somehow they always get through. Otherwise, surely, some animal would have evolved masks and socially distanced procreation as a defence. But no animal ever did. Or at least not one we found.
Is it not strange that Hancock et al cannot see that graphs of the virus’ effects all have the same shape, regardless of the measures a country takes or does not take?
Where would the human race be if it wasn’t for our Immune Systems? I put my trust in my own immune system rather than the deceitful lies of globalists.
I don’t think it has so much increased virtue signalling and hypocrisy as exposed it. I said the other day when feeling very low that I will never look at my fellow human being the same way again. I still feel it today, that by and large they are nasty and hypocritical and the veneer of civilisation has always been very thin indeed. We are just seeing it now.
Sigh. I feel the same way, and it’s not a good feeling.
Any psychologist on here who can give an expert opinion of Hancock’s personality type? I always class him as a psychopath having met a few very successful ones in the business world but I may be wide of the mark. Any help please?
Definitely- no empathy whatsoever.
He’s a sociopath, they don’t have empathy.
The notion that Hancock is a psychopath is patently wrong.
Please expand. What is his personality type?
It is not a matter of Matt Hancock’s personality type. He is in fact a typical careerist politician. The lesson from history – one that so many people shy away from even though it has been repeated so often – is it does not take bad people to do bad things; good people are perfectly capable of doing very bad things and indeed are much more efficient and effective. Take the care home massacre. Virtually all the people involved in those tens of thousands of premature deaths are good, caring people, concerned to do their jobs as well as they are able. Yet, they placed old, vulnerable people in virtual solitary confinement, denied them access to the comfort (and oversight) of their relatives, denied them any social interaction to speak of, denied them access to the outdoors, denied them access to medical attention, put DNR notices on their notes, and many of them, entirely predictably, out of isolation and anxiety and confusion and depression simply gave up and died. This massacre of the most vulnerable is just one example of the horrors good people have inflicted since March. Good people happen to be precisely the people one needs to carry… Read more »
I think you’re right – there’s some quote somewhere that tyrants who genuinely believe they’re acting for your own good are far more dangerous than those simply doing it for power, because they are true believers in the cause and will never stop.
Arrogance covering up ignorance. An ability to lie with impunity. Extrovert personality (likes to party). Err possibly an inferiority complex needing highly boosted approval levels to keep in check and membership of a wider group to hide behind or gain a lift in status from. Hence the slavish corporate arse-licking.
*Disclaimer
I am not a psychologist. I am a village idiot.
In order to diagnose personality disorder (and you can look at either ICD-10 or DSM V) you need to see if the traits (not necessarily all) apply. To be accurate you need the relevant training but you can have fun looking and making your own mind up. In order to do a proper job you would also need to have his personal and developmental history, and information about his relationships, especially with parents and partners. There are many types of personality disorder, some with overlapping traits and be aware that clinicians will often not agree on diagnosis. So good luck with that!
I worked within two clinical teams in Broadmoor for 5 years. So I have met plenty of psychopaths.
Could you find the time to do a bit of investigation into Wancock and decide whether or not he really has psychopathic tendencies?I know we non-experts tend to throw the word around in our righteous anger.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder I bet.
Not a psychologist, but he obviously thinks he’s the best thing since sliced bread.
He thinks he’s exempt from basically everything because he’s a Top Gubberment Health Officer battling the Deadliest Pandemic of All Time.