Border Chaos Continues
The list of countries restricting or banning travel from the UK today grew to over 40, including much of continental Europe. The international responses to the new ‘variant’ of the virus range from outright bans to new self-isolation requirements regardless of a negative PCR test (as in the case of Greece). The border closures are not all limited to UK travellers either. Sweden has banned visitors from Denmark as well as the UK, and Saudi Arabia has slammed its borders shut completely. The knee-jerk actions are reminiscent of the early phase of the pandemic, where country after country copied each other’s panicky lockdowns. It deals yet another blow to the ailing travel and airline industries, as cancelled flights out of the UK number in the hundreds and climbing.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson held a press conference yesterday and scarcely mentioned the unfolding travel bans. Instead, he focused on the ongoing issues at the Dover-Calais crossing, insisting that the blockade would be resolved in a matter of hours after a conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes in today’s Telegraph, closing the UK-France border is just another exercise in closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.
Emmanuel Macron’s ban on lorries entering France wins the prize for the most pointless political gesture since the onset of this pandemic. The mutant strain B.1.1.7 is already all over Europe.
British scientists spotted it early and have tracked it in real-time because the UK has carried out almost as much genome sequencing of COVID-19 as the rest of the world combined. Harvard epidemiologist William Hanage says the UK has the most advanced genomic monitoring regime on the planet.
Denmark is one of the few other states in Europe that also does extensive and rapid sequencing. Lo and behold, the Danes have found the same mutation. Many countries do little or no genomic sequencing at all.
It stretches credulity to imagine that a variant picked up in samples as far back as September is not already rampant in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, and indeed France. It had months to run when borders were wide open, long before the second lockdowns.
He goes on to quote the German virologist Christian Drosten whose somewhat sceptical comments in a German radio interview were also picked up by the Daily Mail.
Christian Drosten, Angela’s Merkel’s pandemic guru, says the mutation is almost certainly spreading in Germany already and he is sceptical about the data interpretation by Prof Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial. “I am not particularly worried,” he told Deutschlandfunk, taking a gentle swipe at headline bio-hysteria.
Prof Drosten is careful not to violate scientific etiquette but he came as close as you can to rebuking the British Government – and by implication the modellers on the NERVTAG committee – for pushing a conclusion beyond the known evidence.
He questions the pseudo-quantification behind claims that the new strain is 70% more transmissible. “There are too many unknown strains to say something like that,” he told Covid reporter Kai Kupferschmidt.
Interesting that Christian Drosten, the lead author on the paper that wrote the rules on mass PCR testing that is currently being challenged by Dr Mike Yeadon and others, is a “mutant strain” sceptic.
Another expert to add a note of moderation was the microbiologist Dr Hugh Pennington, whose comments yesterday were reported in the Press and Journal.
The Aberdeen University Professor said: “The big issue with the variant is that it’s no nastier than the first one that came in March.
“It doesn’t kill people more readily or make them any more unwell but it’s said to be more transmissible. However, that’s what we’re being told. We have not seen any evidence to back that claim up.
“We haven’t seen any data that shows the increase in England is down to the new variant rather than people just not behaving themselves. Politicians won’t want to say that.
“If this virus has mutated to become more transmissible that would be a scientific novelty.
“It could be a coincidence with it getting commoner as the infection rate goes up.”
He said the only way to be sure, ahead of waiting on retrospective studies, would be to find out if the variant is more transmissible by checking what the infected dose is of one person to compare.
Mr Pennington added: “Is it more transmissible because you only have to breathe in a smaller dose of it? Or does somebody infected with it breathe out more virus?
“That’s what they need to find out.
The only other way to find out if people were more susceptible to this variant was through a volunteer study where you’d “pump the virus” into a room full of people… “and that’s unethical”, he added.
“It’s very hard to prove whether something is more transmissible or less. I’m not saying it’s not possible… but I would like to see more evidence.”
The Telegraph also reports that the ‘variant’ was spotted in Brazil eight months ago, adding weight to the idea that the strain has been circulating much longer than was thought to be the case – much like the ‘original’ strain for which patients in Italy had developed antibodies as early as September 2019, months before there was an official case recorded anywhere.
It’s even possible that the increased transmissibility could be a good thing, and an inevitable step in the well-established evolutionary process by which viruses become more infectious and less deadly, as the long-standing sceptic and retired NHS Consultant Dr John Lee writes in The Daily Mail.
Mutation of this (and every other virus) is inevitable – and, in fact, it needn’t always be a bad thing.
As new strains of a virus emerge, they naturally evolve towards variants that may be more transmissible but which cause mild or no disease.
Why should this be so? Because it actually benefits the virus – it is more likely to survive, reproduce and spread to ever increasing numbers of individuals if it doesn’t kill its hosts.
Crucially for us, if the new strain isn’t as virulent, its spread among Britain’s healthy populace could even be advantageous.
Exposure to it would stimulate the immune system to produce a response against it, so providing future protection as we move to a general level of immunity in the population.
So why don’t Johnson or Hancock publicly acknowledge this? Why do they persist instead with terrifying rhetoric of a ‘mutant’ virus spreading out of control?
Dr Lee’s piece is worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Regular Lockdown Sceptics contributor Dr Clare Craig gave a comprehensive interview to talkRADIO yesterday morning with Mark Dolan, covering topics including the new ‘variant’. Worth watching.
Stop Press 2: At the time of writing, the complete list of 42 countries which has banned travel from the UK is: Belgium, Italy, Austria, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Hungary, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, South Africa, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Croatia, France, Malta, Sweden, Turkey, Hong Kong, Canada, India, Russia, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Jordan, El Salvador, Ireland, Czech Republic, Colombia, Morocco, Chile, Finland and Argentina.
Stop Press 3: Boris Johnson has agreed to set up testing facilities to allow stranded hauliers to enter France, conditional on a negative test.
Scientific Advisers Clamouring for New National Lockdown
The Government’s scientific advisers have been clamouring for even more restrictions – Tiers 5, 6 and 7. The Guardian has more.
Andrew Hayward, a Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at University College London and a member of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), said the new variant had the potential to spread around the UK and overseas.
“I recognise that we have restricted travel from the Tier 4 areas… but this transmission is not only in those Tier 4 areas, it’s there at some level across the country,” he said. “We’re just entering a really critical phase of this pandemic, and it makes absolute sense… to act decisively I would say across the country, as many other countries have done, despite them not as far as we know being affected by this strain.”
Asked if it would be advisable to have a national lockdown, Hayward said: “Personally, I think it’s clearer to give a consistent national message because although the levels of risk are different in different parts of the country, they’re still there and they’re still substantial.”
Personally?!? Does that mean he doesn’t mean “objectively” – it’s just his opinion? Rare candour, if so.
Hayward was not the only SAGE member to do an impression of a headless chicken.
Robert West, a Professor of Health psychology at University College London’s Institute of Epidemiology and Health, who sits on the advisory group on behavioural science for SAGE, said his personal opinion was that the current system was “unlikely” to contain the spread of the virus.
He said: “We need to reset our strategy and move rapidly to a zero Covid strategy of the kind that many have been proposing. This will involve stricter but more rational social distancing rules across the country, and finally doing what we should have done from the start – to build the kind of test, travel, isolate and support programmes they have in countries in the far east.
“It sounds expensive but the alternative could well be a catastrophic collapse in confidence in the country’s ability to control the virus and the economic, human and social disaster that would follow.”
Human and social disaster?!? If the Government is hearing this kind of hyperbolic language from its scientific advisors on a daily basis, it’s no wonder Boris is constantly being bounced into ever more hysterical policy announcements.
CDC Reports on Post-Vaccine Health Outcomes
The CDC has produced a document documenting the side effects of the mRNA Covid vaccines. Infrequent cases of anaphylaxis (a severe allergic reaction) have been reported already. However, a more interesting figure is to be found further down in the presentation, in a table entitled “V-Safe Active Surveillance for COVID-19 Vaccines”.
Out of the 112,807 doses administered, 3,150 experienced a “Health Impact Event”, described above by the CDC as “unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from doctor or health care professional”. That’s about 2.8% of recipients, although it does not mention the severity or duration of those events. If the UK Government’s declared target of vaccinating approximately 25 million people in “priority groups” is met, and the proportion remains stable, that could mean around 700,000 people potentially requiring some kind of medical care post-vaccination.
Isn’t mass vaccination supposed to protect the NHS?
Ferguson: Forgotten But Not Gone
In a development we mentioned in passing yesterday, which will raise the hackles of any sceptic who has kept a close eye on developments since March, the man behind the notorious model which panicked governments into lockdowns at the beginning of the year, and stepped down from SAGE after flouting his own rules, is back in the Strangelove hot seat.
Robert Mendick in The Telegraph has more.
Professor Lockdown is back. Neil Ferguson, the epidemiologist widely credited as the architect of the first national lockdown in the spring, has emerged once again as the most influential adviser to the Government during the current coronavirus wave.
For more than six months, Prof Ferguson has remained largely in the shadows, the result of his own indiscretion that forced him to take a backseat.
He continues:
Now, it has emerged Prof Ferguson – if he did go away – wasn’t gone all that long. His name appears on the list of 15 members of NERVTAG who met for two hours on Friday December 18th – between 11am and 1pm – that concluded the new variant of COVID-19, named VUI 2020 12/01 “demonstrates a substantial increase in transmissibility compared to other variants”.
A day later, Prime Minister Boris Johnson appeared on television to perform a spectacular U-turn, effectively cancelling Christmas for millions of people across London and the South East caused by the rise in infections by the COVID-19 mutation.
The Spectator‘s gossip columnist Steerpike also picked up on the indefatigable professor’s reappearance.
In sum, it appears that far from quitting following his lockdown breach, the Professor stopped his membership of NERVTAG for fewer than two months, and became a regular advisor once again in August.
Mr S would not, of course, be in favour of anyone being driven out of public life for a single transgression. But it is worth noting that Prof Ferguson was happy to receive praise in May for quickly stepping down to protect the Government’s credibility during lockdown. If these minutes are correct, it appears that his sacrifice was rather smaller than the public were led to believe. It also calls into question the Government’s own assertions in May that Ferguson had stepped down from his NERVTAG role. The Department for Health has been contacted for comment.
Ferguson himself told MPs in June that he was still a member of the SPI-M group, which advises the Government on coronavirus modelling, but did not mention returning to NERVTAG. Ferguson added that he was only attending other meetings on an “ad hoc” basis.
Since then, those “ad hoc” meetings appear to have morphed into full-time membership of another committee.
To Mr Steerpike at least, it looks very much like Neil Ferguson never stopped being a Government advisor, after all…
Correction: Excess Deaths in the US
Yesterday’s item in Lockdown Sceptics about the retraction by the Johns Hopkins News-Letter of Genevieve Briand’s suggestion that Covid wasn’t causing any excess deaths in the US contained some bad sums from a commenter we quoted. Our own Will Jones took another look at the CDC Data and figured out that at the current rate there would indeed be higher mortality this year than last – and more than the 1.2% increase in mortality that typically happens year-on-year. Although, as ever, how much of that can be attributed to the disease itself is an unanswered question. There have been concerns about lockdown-induced deaths in the US for months, not least from drug overdoses as the existing opioid crisis was worsened during lockdowns.
Using the data available here, Will concluded that the increase in total deaths this year compared to last year would be about 12.6%.
However, a reader who wrote in to prompt us about our maths slip-up also pointed out that the figures contain evidence of the so-called ‘Dry Tinder’ effect since the percentage increases for 2018 and 2019 (0.91% and 0.56% respectively) were low compared to previous years, suggesting mild flu seasons.
In case you’re not familiar with the ‘Dry Tinder’ effect, this article in the AIER discusses it in relation to Sweden and the Nordics and Ivor Cummins’ has produced several videos on the topic.
Bob Moran Gets It
Our favourite political cartoonist Bob Moran composed a reassuring tweet thread about the realistic risks of Christmas gatherings (though they could equally apply to any social occasion). Unfortunately, Twitter’s thought-police decided to delete the first tweet on the grounds that it “violated their rules”, though the meaning is still clear. Reproduced in full here, minus the offending first tweet:
First of all, given that you have no symptoms, what are the chances that you are infected with SARS-CoV-2? The ONS estimates this to be 1 in 115, or 0.87%.
Now, imagining you are infected, but you don’t have any symptoms, what is the probability that you will infect somebody else with SARS-CoV-2? Recent studies show this is around 0.7%.
If we multiply the probability of these two events, we can calculate the likelihood of you a) being infected & b) passing that infection on without symptoms. This gives a figure of 0.006%.
To put that figure in context, it’s roughly the same as your chance of dying in a car crash over the course of any given year.
But if you infect someone, this doesn’t mean that they are going to end up dying of Covid pneumonia. Far from it, in fact. There is a lot of debate regarding the IFR of SARS-CoV-2, but the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine puts it at roughly 0.5%.
Now, if we multiply the chance of infecting another person (without symptoms) by the fatality rate, we can estimate that the risk of “killing” one of your relatives is roughly 0.00003%, or 1 in 3 million.
Obviously there are a lot of caveats. If one of your relatives is very old and very ill, then the IFR is going to be higher. If they are relatively healthy, it’s going to be lower.
But there’s another caveat. PCR tests. The first number we used (the number of infected individuals in the UK) is based on positive PCR results. It is possible that only 3% of these positive results are accurate.
Which means that the risk of a person “killing” a relative without any discernible coronavirus symptoms may well be as low as 1 in 30 million – the same sort of likelihood of you winning the National Lottery.
Clearly, it is for individuals to assess risks for themselves and make decisions accordingly. But they should do so in the knowledge of how big those risks actually are. And nobody should be calling others “irresponsible” for taking a risk this minuscule.
Finally, this risk isn’t just the justification for ‘cancelling Christmas’, it’s the justification for all of it. Lockdowns, masks, school closures, undiagnosed cancers, suicides, stillbirths, unemployment. All done because we were told this specific risk was just too high.
Hear, hear, Bob.
Statisticians Ask Questions of Government
Quantitative Analyst Joel Smalley and Statistician Marie Oldfield have produced a new document containing a series of clincher questions for the UK Government. Smalley commented, upon its publication:
Updated report on England COVID. Focused on clinical data and classical surveillance systems. It’s pretty conclusive that the epidemic was over in Spring, probably made worse by interventions, and most of Autumn COVID is wrongly attributed. Can the Government disprove any of this?
It is 19 pages long, replete with graphs of official data, and might even be worth sending to your MP. The full document can be found here.
How to Defeat Cancel Culture
Check out Toby’s conversation with Angelo Isidorou of The Post-Millennial on cancel culture and how to defeat it. Toby talks about being on the receiving end of the social media mob, as well as the efforts of the Free Speech Union to protect other people who find themselves in the same predicament.
Stop Press: Listen to Toby and James Delingpole have their usual argument about whether the Covid crisis is cock up or conspiracy in the latest episode of London Calling.
Round-up
- “There’s more to life than avoiding Covid” – Blistering anti-lockdown piece in spiked by Emily Hill
- “The British blockade: another self-inflicted catastrophe” – Another good piece in spiked by Assistant Editor Fraser Myers on the UK’s border chaos
- “Be ‘sleek and silent’: how China censored coronavirus news at home” – Sydney Morning Herald article about the tight manipulation of information by the Chinese Communist Party at the beginning of the pandemic
- “There are thousands of Covid strains, so this new scare is NOT a big deal, but politicians just love their new authoritarianism” – Science journalist Peter Andrews writes in RT about the fearmongering over the new strain
- “London’s New Year’s Eve fireworks to be replaced by live TV show of 2020 highlights” – Brace yourself for a nauseating celebration of our ‘Blitz Spirit’. Expect lots of NHS rainbow pictures
- “Why Many Bosses Won’t Require Workers to Get the COVID-19 Vaccine” – Not quite as simple as it sounds, as the Wall Street Journal reports
- “Piers Morgan’s son Spencer reveals he escaped ‘cancelled Xmas’ in Tier 4 by travelling to family’s Tier 2 Sussex home” – The junior Morgan, a lockdown sceptic, is not taking after his father
- “Covid infections caught in hospital rise by a third in one week” – The HSJ reports that around one in four cases are now caught in healthcare settings
- Students were better at following rules than general public – Surprise finding by the ONS
- “Inflation basket must reflect drastic changes wrought by pandemic” – Philip Aldrick in The Times on changes needed to way inflation is calculated
- “Covid: Wuhan scientist would ‘welcome’ visit probing lab leak theory” – John Sudworth at the BBC with a long and fascinating story centring on the mysterious and controversial origins of SARS-CoV-2
- “January school closures considered as fears grow over new Covid strain’s spread among children” – Children’s education may be headed for another setback, reports The Telegraph
- “Is the mutant virus really out of control?” – Prof David Livermore, regular Lockdown Sceptics contributor, says we’re over-reacting to the new strain
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Four today: “Driving Home for Christmas” by Chris Rea, “On the Border” by Al Stewart, “I‘ll Be Home for Christmas” by Bing Crosby, and “Trust Me I’m a Doctor” by The Blizzards.
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 so you can share it. To do that, click on the headline of a particular story and a link symbol will appear on the right-hand side of the headline. Click on the link and the URL of your page will switch to the URL of that particular story. You can then copy that URL and either email it to your friends or post it on social media. Please do share the stories.
Social Media Accounts
You can follow Lockdown Sceptics on our social media accounts which are updated throughout the day. To follow us on Facebook, click here; to follow us on Twitter, click here; to follow us on Instagram, click here; to follow us on Parler, click here; and to follow us on MeWe, click here.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, we bring you the heartwarming news that singer Sam Smith has announced that they wants [sic] to “be a mummy” by the age of 35. The Mirror has more.
Broody Sam Smith “wants to be a mummy” and have children by the age of 35.
The music superstar has opened up about their desire to become a parent in the years ahead.
Sam is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns – and can’t wait to start a family.
The 28-year-old, though, admits the struggle to find a boyfriend is real – and joked that that special someone is nowhere to be found in London.
Time is on Sam’s side of course and they said in an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe that kids are a must in the future.
Sam said: “I want kids. I want all of it. I want all of it. I want to have kids.”
“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. Another reader has created an Android app which displays “I am exempt from wearing a face mask” on your phone. Only 99p, and he’s even said he’ll donate half the money to Lockdown Sceptics, so everyone wins.
If you’re a shop owner and you want to let your customers know you will not 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. See also the Swiss Doctor’s thorough review of the scientific evidence here.
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 in October 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 Toby’s Spectator piece about the attempt to suppress it is among the top hits – although discussion of it has been censored by Reddit. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job.)
You can find it here. Please sign it. Now over three quarters of a million 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”. Follow Collateral Global on Twitter here.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many JRs being brought against the Government and its ministers, we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
First, there’s the Simon Dolan case. You can see all the latest updates and contribute to that cause here. Alas, he’s now reached the end of the road, with the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear his appeal. Dolan has no regrets. “We forced SAGE to produce its minutes, got the Government to concede it had not lawfully shut schools, and lit the fire on scrutinizing data and information,” he says. “We also believe our findings and evidence, while not considered properly by the judges, will be of use in the inevitable public inquires which will follow and will help history judge the PM, Matt Hancock and their advisers in the light that they deserve.”
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 last but not least there’s the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. A High Court judge refused permission for the FSU’s judicial review in December and the FSU has decided not to appeal the decision because Ofcom has conceded most of the points it was making. Check here for details.
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
We know they are lying. They know they are lying, They know that we know they are lying. We know that they know that we know they are lying. And still they continue to lie.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
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 would give up essential liberty to purchase 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.
Alexander 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
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
Marcus Aurelius
Necessity is the plea for every restriction of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt the Younger
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
Joseph Goebbels (attributed)
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
H.L. Mencken
I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
Thomas Paine
Shameless Begging Bit
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And Finally…
Trapped abroad or stuck in Tier 4 over Christmas? We may have found just the thing to ease your homesickness.
Bottles of fresh air from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales are being marketed as the perfect gift for homesick Britons living overseas this Christmas. Relocation website My Baggage is offering fresh air bottled from the four home nations for £25 each and claim the bottles are already being snapped up by families with loved ones living abroad – in a bid to remind them of home and possibly tempt them back to our shores.
The company is also offering special limited edition bottles featuring air captured on the London Underground and air from the inside of a busy Norfolk fish and chip shop. Each 500ml of air comes with a cork stopper so the owners can open for a moment, take a breath and quickly close again, allowing many weeks or even months of use. My Baggage is also willing to fulfil special customer requests by bottling air from any UK location, and have already fulfilled an order of air from the misty summit of Snowdonia for a homesick Welshman living down under.
Sounds made up, but it’s actually real. For £25, residents of Tier 4 areas can get an authentic blast of what it smells like to be outside the home you’re imprisoned in.
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Glory be.
Coroner blasts COVID-19 death rates, calls data misleading
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM7XaALbhwk
Two of the covid deaths had actually died of gunshot wounds
Specially manufactured Covvibullets fired from Covviguns.
PS. Covviroulette. Every shot in the barrel is a Covvishot.
Allegedly spread by covigina’s too
Is that the new assisted death protocol for Covid victims?
Better check you raccident insurance policy people. If you die in an accident and have tested positive for COVID-19 it could be classed as natural causes, and give the insurance company an excuse for a reduced or no payment.
Having worked as a claim assessor in the past I would concur – these rats are always looking for reasons not to pay
A 20-year-old was listed as a CV19 death in the U.S.
This was queried as to whether he had any previously unknown underlying conditions.
Oh, no, was the reply, he was killed in a motorcycle crash. But he was still listed as a CV19 death because he tested positive….
Sir Desmond Swayne Interview Exposes BBC Hypocrisy As They Help The Government Hide From Scrutiny
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQiNXFfbGa0
Captain Tom CANCELLED By Twitter Mob!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaR4C9rgsXE
so here’s what John Hopkins University is planning for us in 2025, the next ‘Pandemic’ and next vaccine MVAX and corovax….All to keep the people locked up at home
https://www.bitchute.com/video/5B3gXR8Q6Wcx/
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=jicrcr
2nd close but no cigar!
3rd. 😁
The Sam Smith caption made me chuckle.
Imagine the scene at the Miraculous birth:
Midwife: It’s a bbbbb- ggggg- well, I think it’s human….
It’s a Borg. Aarrrghh!
Good to see that this has been included in today’s main headlines but in case you missed it please up tick this! Solid, up to the minute evidence that the vaccine roll out is harming people. The latest findings from a report to the CDC (Centre for Disease Control) from ACIP (Advisory Committee on immunisation practice) has highlighted the fact that over a four day period (Dec 14th—18th) out of 112,807 registrations who received a vaccination, 3150 of them shortly afterwards were *unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from doctor or health care professional* This is 2.8% of the group. Needless to say this is a horrendous percentage and should, in a just world, be headline news on the BBC. At the very least this should result in nothing short of a full suspension of the vaccine rollout. This was first highlighted by Dr Vernon Coleman here: https://brandnewtube.com/watch/urgent-news-about-the-covid-19-vaccine_botqwzI8R7UUVY2.html And the full report is here: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2020-12/slides-12-19/05-COVID-CLARK.pdf The above news is REAL and IMPORTANT. It needs to spread throughout your contact lists and more. I’ve sent it to my GP surgery and a friend I know is writing to our local papers. We must stop talking to… Read more »
The zombies will still fight for the jab that will Keep Them Safe, who are we to stop themz?
And they would roll over Granny who they are supposed to be protecting to get theirs first
In the U.S., that’s precisely what they’re doing.
With no vaccine which number lockdown will we be on in 12 months and up to which number tier. If people want the vaccine let them have it, I just want lockdowns to end.
You think that they will end when people have been vaccinated?
Really?
Wow, I admire your optimism. ‘Vaccine to end lockdown’ is the same as ‘three weeks to flatten the curve’, I fear.
Endless vaccines and vaccines boosters tied to a lifetime of immunity passports and track-and-trace is another kind of lockdown. This is not about a virus. It’s about money and control.
Hard to see how anyone could disagree with this now Ben.
It’s about genocide.
Lockdowns and other nonsense won’t end because of a vaccine, whatever gave you that idea. Clearly something big is going on and I’m not talking about the ephemeral coronavirus. It is genocide by vaccine.
77th Brigade type thinking and all your workmates voting it up.
Saw yesterday that a hospital in the States suspended vaccination of health care workers after several of them displayed adversa reactions to the vax.
But not to worry, they’ll soon start it up again.
I’m absolutely resolute I won’t be having this vaccine after reading evidence that genetics can predispose you to having adverse reactions to vaccines. I was adopted by my step father at a very young age and thanks to an idle social worker producing a very sparse adoption report I’ve been unable to trace my biological father. Consequently I only know 50% of my family medical history. In view there being so many unknowns regarding the long term effects of this vaccine I’d rather not risk the possibility of long term disability.
none of us should risk it.
That is correct, these wretched vaccines will be intentionally harmful.
I fear the immediate short term problems will pale into insignificance once the long term effects of gene altering therapies start to take effect. I sincerely hope I am wrong.
We need more information and context before people will take that seriously. Most people will think that’s made up of people experiencing a head ache so “unable to work”. More digging is needed before this can properly be called a smoking gun.
In the U.S., they’ve decided that “essential workers” should get the vaccine first, before the vulnerable elderly.
The former tend to be from minority ethnic groups, whereas the latter are majority white.
Wait for the screaming of racism to start when the essential workers (which includes Congresswomen such as Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, a healthy 31 year-old) start developing serious side effects…
London and the Southeast were put into lockdown tier 4 and Xmas cancelled to stop the spread of the scary mutant virus ?
Local Live (mirror group news).
‘The new Coronovirus variant has been in (my tier 2) region for weeks but appears to be spreading slower than in other areas.
‘ONS stats suggest that 27% of cases in the region were the new strain (w/c 9 Dec) which is one percentage point lower than the previous week.’
It is already out of London and the S/E so no point locking them down bozo you clown🥳.
There were nill, zero, no deaths reported for yesterday, go figure the scary new mutant covid.
Good God, are you seriously suggesting that the pig dictator is lying?
Soz for poor quality but this ONS graphic shows that the scary mutant is already in all 9 English regions
Declining as a proportion of all cases in 4 of them. Baseline week commencing 30th Sept-9th Dec.
The plot doesn’t really tell us anything other than they have been tracking the new variant since September and that numbers are low with the possible exception of London and the East. Witness the random jumping around of most of the data – a pretty good sign that levels are at or below the detection level and all that is being recorded is noise!
So just another scary graph then ?
Yes!
And the basis for their next decision to lockdown the whole country again soon I imagine.
Yet again another delayed reaction. Can’t remember where I checked it, but my borough has one of the lowest rate of cases despite having a segment of the population that are not known for following the rules on social distancing (but would happily muzzle up).
So the government has been lying to justify this “Tier 4” scam.
The mutant strain rubbish was put about in order to stifle dissent as Christmas mixing was cancelled for millions of people.It will also be the pretext for putting the rest of the country into Tier 4 in readiness for the vaccine.
We are being played time and tine again using the same tricks but even on here people still try to see the logic in Government policy.
The measures only make sense when compared to what an occupying force would enact.
Agree. It was always the intention to have a Lockdown 3: The Sequel to the Sequel but they needed something to soften up the populace for it.
Lockdown 3 seems pretty inevitable and no doubt planned long ago.
Reminds me of Hollywood.
Yes I agree wholeheartedly with this. We have what UK Column calls a Government of occupation. All the mutant strains, ‘Tiers’, cancellations, lock-downs, restrictions, apparent contradictions, last-minute U-turns, ‘lunacy’, ‘cock-ups’ etc are psyops and we run the risk of counting angels on pin-heads if we try to explain it any other way or waste our efforts in trying to unpack the USA death figures, say. If you have lived with people who are suffering under brutal occupation, as we have, it is impossible to mistake what’s happening in this and nearly every other country. Every hallmark is there, closures, contradictory orders, herding, curfews, lock-downs, censorship, violent repression, minute control of people’s personal lives. Not to mention constant outright lies! One of Israeli’s favourite tactics is to issue leaks to the media about easing or tightening of restrictions which every Palestinian knows always means the opposite. Maybe this experience is why we became sceptical very quickly when all this started. A friend of ours escaped to Spain the day before the latest orchestrated panic. While she’s away, I have inherited her mid-90s lady who she helps out with shopping. Apart from refusing to wear a mask on principle, I am actually… Read more »
He’s also guilty of causing huge disruption to people visiting the UK, whose ’home’ countries will now not let them back in for the foreseeable future 😡
“Because unfortunately people around the world still have respect for what a British Secretary of State says“
Seems incredible, absurd even.
Didn’t Tony Blair remove the mechanism for Treason?
Yes he must have seen it coming. In fact funny how he has suddenly disappeared again. I wouldnt be surprised if he is behind this!
Hsnging, drawing and quartering was on the statute book until at least the 1960s. The four quarters to be affixed to the walks of the four chief cities of the realm.
Who’s for a chunk of Wancock?
The pig dictator says the cheque is in the post and will start to arrive at Easter
I am very puzzled by your retraction of the statistics about ‘excess deaths’ in the USA. I spot checked the yearly total deaths on the CDC website itself, and it seemed to match to the digit….
I don’t know if this is a good source, but the CDC total deaths as at 21/12/20 is 2,823,030:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
But these data lag, according to the website. Even so, there would have to be at least 375,000 more deaths in the next nine days for the total to be 12% higher than 2019. Could Will Jones please explain?
If you add in another 60k per week for the missing weeks in that year’s data (6, in January, and rest of December), and bump up the last couple of weeks which seem likely to be affected by late reporting to 60k, which seems about the ballpark for December deaths, you get about the 12% increase we are talking about here (slightly more, actually, but these are likely over-estimates).
So the issue would have to be, how many of those are actually due to covid and how many to the response.
This is really really important actually – if Will Jones and the media are right, and the total US mortality in 2020 does reach about 3,200,000, then all of us sceptics are wrong, and the virus really has had a massive impact. I’m going to feel really ashamed admitting to everyone I know that I was wrong!
That depends on what you’re sceptical about. I’m sceptical about lockdowns, not denying that covid exists or has had an impact.
Hi Ellis – I like the name!
Lockdown causes excess deaths by people not getting medical attention, suicides etc..etc..
I’ve always believed the virus can be dangerous and I take precautions as much as I can(as I do with flu and so on) but I am strongly anti lockdown as I believe we should make our own choices while enabling vulnerable people to be protected if they wish. I don’t think it possible to control a virus and the height of Hubris to believe you can.
Why? We know the claimed covid death figures, what we don’t know without further analysis is how many excess deaths were caused by covid vs the government’s response to the virus.
For example if there’s 20% excess deaths in 30-40 years olds but they account for 1% of covid deaths then we can say they were sacrificed by the government on the altar of hysteria.
I was reading about a lady who died of covid who was denied medical attention for several days when she got pneumonia. she would most likely have survived with prompttreatment.
There are also a lot of other conflating issues in the USA though…obesity, poverty, the fact that you can’t seek medical treatment without getting a massive bill even with insurance…
Even if here have been lots of excess deaths I suspect they’re still older than average life expectancy and with multiple comorbidities. Whether the numbers are different between lockdown and non lockdown states is what we need to know.
C’mon, this is the USA we’re talking about – where obesity and junk food were invented and exported globally with glee. They’re always going to take the hardest hit with a respiratory pathogen, new or old.
Make yourself feel better and shut the shamers the fuck up by gathering them all round the tv for this jaw dropper…
https://youtu.be/vWRx1aZ5YoA
“If Will Jones and the media are right, and the total US mortality in 2020 does reach about 3,200,000, then all of us sceptics are wrong, and the virus really has had a massive impact.“
Less of the “all of us” please. A 12% increase in annual deaths where the average age of death is about the overall average age of death is not my idea of a once in a lifetime catastrophe that means we should all abandon our liberties, our economy and our societies out of fear, and hide under our beds. Rather it’s exactly the kind of situation where we should keep calm and carry on.
US excess deaths are at about 10% this year but, as I have said below, this is not the effect of the virus. The reason this is clear is that 57.65% of the excess deaths are in the under 75s age groups – 65,000 excess deaths between 45-64 years old – if it were COVID it would be no more than 25%
So clearly this is not COVID but something else – most likely the effects of the hysterical reaction to COVID on welfare, employment, poverty and cancelled medical care.
Not only are we right, but the reaction has killed huge numbers of people by itself. Aside from killing so much of the reason for living in the rest of us.
If US mortality is over 3.2m, that shows the evil of lockdown and the blood of those people is on the hands of those that gave rise to it, such as Fauci.
Not for nothing, a Wall Street Journal analysis suggest that upwards of ONE-THIRD of hospital deaths, early on, were due to aggressive intubation and excessive sedation. Read: panic.
From the main text.
‘Scientific advisers clamouring for new national lockdown’.
The experts parting shot on yesterday’s Jeremy Vine show was
‘. . .well yes Jeremy, it is partly a political response, the advisers wanted a harder lockdown over Xmas and the politicians have seized on (scary mutant) to justify it’.
Jeremy let it pass without further comment.
Yes, an inspired decision, really had a beneficial effect, eh?
hancock only takes advice from advisers who agree with him
Telegraph YouTube today
Wankok and his fellow thugs only notice the WHO data if it suits them.
Could be a useful point to put to semizombies, however
What makes my blood boil is if you take away the personal protection officers/SAS etc, these pussies would soon be partial to hearing alternative opinions.
They better hope this all goes to plan because if we can’t execute them they’ll be spending an awful long stretch as somebody’s girlfriend amongst a very willing and motivated new family.
From the NERVTAG document:
“It was noted that VUI-202012/01 has demonstrated exponential growth during a period when national lockdown measures were in place.”
They just admitted lockdowns are useless.
Anyone else fed up of the continual use of ‘exponential’ in relation to C-19? This type of rapid growth has never been seen throughout the pandemic in any setting or country.
It seems this mathematical formula, indicating rapid and accelerated growth is being used to create fear. Seemingly rolled out whenever a new lockdown or restriction is announced.
Will next years editions of dictionaries include the new meanings of Pandemic, Exponential and Vaccine ?
Anyone thinking of attending a demo should check out the YouTube channel of a solicitor called Neil Heffey. Lots of useful information in case you get arrested!
Coroner blasts COVID-19 death rates, calls data misleading
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM7XaALbhwk
Two of the covid deaths were from gunshot wounds
They have been lying about the actual cause of many deaths since before lockdown.
The key figure remains total 2020 mortality adjusted for lockdown induced suicide and death by NHS neglect both of which will rise long into the future.
Sir Desmond Swayne Interview Exposes BBC Hypocrisy As They Help The Government Hide From Scrutiny
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQiNXFfbGa0
Is it any surprise the Neil the Knob never did stand down from giving crap advice to our useless leaders.
Morning
Captain Tom CANCELLED By Twitter Mob!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaR4C9rgsXE
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/564421
Press release
Wales Tourist Board announce new initiative
A spokesperson said ‘,In these difficult times it important to support out tourist industry. We are there for turning the hole of Wales into a huge theme park
‘Stasiland 75’ will be a real life, real time, inmate centric experience for all the family
Special features will include police beatings, a despotic Marxist dictator, and daily propaganda announcements to give it that really authentic East German feel
The enhanced ‘Food and clothing shortage ‘ package will be available at no extra cost from early in terms new year
If you are booking for Christmas there are a few places on ‘ Get y
Apologies GCHQ have hacked my computer
They could reopen the coal mines to let the paying public watch captured sceptics slaving away for coal that nobody wants.
Coronacoal. Mutant coronacoal.
‘The hole of Wales’ is spot on. One great, big, horrible hole with a sadistic megalomaniac stalinist tortoise squatting over it.
I have nothing against genuine tortoises, I do assure you!
Everyday now.. with Boris in charge.. and the elite’s great reset/depression/fuck up affecting/hurting all around me.. I just keep thinking where would/could/should I tie the rope.. where is best.. not looking for ‘hang on in theres’.. just saying.
“Hang on in there” sounds about right for the rope thing! Sadly my flat doesn’t contain any suitable structures (I have checked thoroughly). Not as easy at it looks in the movies.
We’ll find a way.
From a tweet by Ben Bradshaw MP. Labour, Exeter.
He can’t even look right in a suit.
YouGov are claiming there is strong support for both Tier 4 and the Government’s scrapping of the relaxation rules. Absolute bollocks. There just isn’t! YouGov let slip their zealous stance in the summer.
I believe that there is massive support for Tier 4. People believe the bollocks because they want to believe. We are a remnant, and had better get used to it.
That’s still my impression as well. Though it’s not as bad as it was early on.
Too many people listen with apparent sympathy, make enthusiastic sounding criticisms of government, experts and policies, and can’t find arguments to respond to reason, but as soon as you are out of sight go back to meekly agreeing with the deluge of fear propaganda and blaming dissenters for the punishments inflicted by the regime.
And mask compliance is still near universal in the supermarkets around here.
I think thats very true. Unless you are a very committed sceptic its hard to stand up to the media onslaught and the enormous pressure to keep within the herd. As the young men who ended up going to fight in the First World War….and never came back.
Don’t believe anything YouGov says, their polls are always rigged.
Oh I don’t. It was founded by Nadhim Zahawi. Tory MP. Hardly impartial! Of course it will try to give the impression people are behind Boris.
People were behind Boris this time last year over Brexit. But now the true nature of the beast has been revealed, most of the people that were behind him would gladly push him off a very high cliff!
This is life in the DDR. The rules -as it were – are different now. The lies that can spaffed routinely over us are of a different order from the lies we were used to.
Sadly, Boris Honneker is more cynically and ruthlessly advised than Erich, and the regime is buoyed up by virtual international unanimity. There is no better life beyond the Iron Curtain.
it’s bit like the DDR being congratulated on building the Berlin wall
Especially now the idiot King of Sweden and his prime minister have decided to override Tegnell – the one free country has now also fallen.
There are no heroic countries, only heroes here and there.
To be fair to NERVTAG, the minutes from their meeting on Friday do not suggest that they had swallowed much of the “dangerous mutant virus” narrative. The minutes actually suggest a high degree of caution and scepticism, including comments like their being “moderately convinced” by PHE’s case, and their summary makes it clear that they felt they did not have enough data to form too many conclusions, and that they expected better data to be available within 7 days. (After all, we are led to believe that they were discussing this on Friday, only a matter of days before Hancock first raised it as a potential problem.) What SAGE and the government did to sex-up these issues between lunchtime on Friday and the PM’s press conference on Saturday would have made even Alistair Campbell blush!
They did such an effective job we now run the risk of mass starvation. Well done the psych ops/ nudge team give yourselves a fucking chocolate biscuit.
They’ve also succeeded in stranding British residents of other countries in the UK for the foreseeable future, since other countries are not letting people back in if they’re in the UK just now😡. I no longer live in the UK, but thanks to Boris I cannot go home after Christmas as I will not be admitted – even if I get tested on arrival…
They’ll probably still pad themselves on the back or have ‘journos’ do that when millions have perished but ‘positives’ have started to fall.
We are clearly at the state of complete insanity having been reached with all major decisionmakers, ‘scientists’ and
‘journalists’.
Zero Vovid my a*rse.
Switch to the GBD. Now.
Look at its success on the ground, in reality, in Tübingen, FFS!
I fully agree. Reading the minutes, it was shocking to see that there was no alarmist spin in the notes at all. Very much caution in the interpretation. This is a self-made political disaster. There is no need to blame the advisors this time. Another Fergusson hate diatribe is just another deflection method used by the government through their press contacts.
Possibly, but the odious Ferguson has a face that I simply wouldn’t ever get tired of punching.
Even to imagine that cheers me up.
I don’t think there should be any doubt that this total balls up is totally this idiotic, unscientific governments decision. They have not got one single decision right. It is just out and out fear porn to keep people terrified. You are supposed to be in charge you are making decisions affecting millions of people and you only seem to get advice from one group of supposed scientists, then totally ignore and actively suppress anyone who counters your narrative. Well how is that science? The sun does not go round the earth……
The varus can get you within 45 minutes!
These people are psychopaths.
How the hell is Boris still PM? How the hell are the MP’s not demanding for parliament to resit?
You think the average Mumbler of Parliament give a s..t?
Sign the petition below and let’s force the poisonous little worms back on to the surface.
The problem is the Tory MPs who can do something about it just moan. We moan but can’t do anything about it. They moan but can, yet don’t! He should be removed for circumventing Parliamentary scrutiny. He does it time and again and they let him get away with it.
I am thinking to start a petition to call for BoJo et al to resign and the Tory Rebels to take over… who would sign?
Would rather someone like Sumption took over. Will NEVER vote Tory again, whovever took over from Boris
My ‘MP’, the former Attorney General, is earning nearly half a million quid a year for legal services (nice work if you can get it). So in effect he’s not an MP at all but a lawyer.
He doesn’t appear to give a toss about covid or even to know anything about it. Instead it seems he pays assistants a few scraps to regurgitate platitude and cliche when they can be bothered to reply to letters at all.
When looking for the villains isn this pantomime we mustn’t forget that there are about 600 of them in the House of Commons. And I don’t recall a squeak of protest coming from that other august institution, the House of Lords.
You think anyone else would be different? (Keir Starmer is worse.) There’s only one person in the world who said ‘No’ to any of this – Alexander Lukashenko
I sent this to Sir Graham Brady yesterday:
‘Some weeks ago I suggested that it was time for the ‘men in grey suits’ to be sent to Johnson and Hancock. It seems to me now that men in white coats may be more appropriate.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXOwNOf2QXY
Just found a rare statement on-line that natural immunity to Covid exists. Boris won’t like that. Heads will no doubt have to roll at University of Lancaster.
“If you have tested positive for Covid-19 in the 90 days prior to your planned test, you are likely to have developed some immunity, and therefore taking a repeat Lateral Flow Test is not necessary.” Buried somewhere on this page.
https://www.uclan.ac.uk/students/news/student-covid-testing.php
Yes, this is what we’re told in the NHS where we have lateral flow tests twice a week. If you do test positive, its then “confirmed” by PCR, and after isolating you don’t have to do the test for 90 days. So this is widely known and underpins testing practice. Odd if Boris doesn’t know this.
COVID is not a disease. It’s an acronym for symptoms of coronaviruses – flu, the common cold.
More talk on the news about the NHS being overwhelmed, this issue raises a few points; 1, Since when did we agree that our human rights, civil liberties and hard won freedoms were a trade off with the NHS? I feel this is an important and fundamental issue and needs to be vigorously challenged. Any MP that does not feel this is not worthy of being in the so called ‘Mother of Parliaments’, by my reckoning this is most of them. The protect the NHS slogan seems more to be about politicians trying to avoid the public opprobrium that would come their way if the sacred NHS was perceived to be overwhelmed. 2, Are our hospitals organised properly? The figures on people catching Covid in hospital are backed up by people I know who report being in hospital and people around them catching Covid. Should there be separate ‘Covid’ and non-covid hospitals? 3, Why are people in hospital for Covid? At the height of the Spring first wave there were over 3000 people on ventilators but now, whilst hospital numbers are climbing the number on ventilator is much less, about 1300. I gather some Covid patients are receiving oxygen treatments… Read more »
You’re right, of course. My wife works at a local NHS general hospital where the staff are up in arms because they were not notified of a serious Covid outbreak in the Spinal Injuries Unit in November, which led a fatality. Presumably for cost reasons, modern hospitals like hers were rarely designed to promote infection control (for instance the corridors are too narrow to allow people to maintain effective social distancing when passing patients on trolleys) and the staff in adjacent departments felt that their health and safety had been compromise by the hospital’s failure to come clean over the infection in the SIU. (My wife contracted Covid-19 in November, presumably at work. Thankfully, she and I have both recovered fully.)
FFS you don’t catch a virus because the corridors are too narrow. This is the sort of messed up thinking that leads to people jumping out of the way of each other and facing the corners in the lift.
I just had an image of being on a trolley in a hospital being pushed through corridors and every one I pass is fiddling with their face masks, turning away, stepping into broom cupboards, and covering their face with their hand as I go past.
People are SICK.
Narrow corridors, ffs.
The real reason “the NHS is under threat of being overwhelmed by the covid”, as the BBC are constantly reminding us, is because of staff absences.
I reported last week of 1,000 absent staff from my large regional hospital either because they are ‘ill’, shielding or caring for shielding children sent home from school on some flimsy pretext so the teachers could go home.
Alex Belfied YouTube puts the National total at 90,000.
Government “the NHS is in danger of being overwhelmed” Remember the story about the boy kept shouting Wolf ! ?
As people arent tested until they reach hospital, there no way to segregate them before the results arrive unless they’re showing symptoms. Some hospitals have the luxury of single rooms but most don’t. Also people need to move through the hospital for xrays etc, and as we know, masks don’t work.
This time around, much more outpatient work is continuing, thankfully, which means large numbers of untested people coming in and out of the building.
Though many people would prefer to say NHS procedures are at fault, it simply isnt true, the above factors are the reason.
There is also a highly precautionary approach in primary care where people aren’t seen face to face, just sent into hospital. Our admission figures show a very quick turnaround with these precautionary admissions only staying a day or two as they are not unwell enough to stay on hospital. But it does mean admission figures are higher. Outcomes and length of stay also need to be taken into account.
Patients with prior appointments have to go to a special NHS only testing station the day before.
Inconveniently located nowhere near the hospital out beyond the by-pass.
Most reasonable folk (who understand the current realities) exercise the precautionary principle and go nowhere near a hospital without a genuine necessity. NHS procedures are at fault, because the protocols based on PCR testing are at fault. If you are admitted due to any condition other than Covid, you will still be tested. And if you pick up a false positive, you will then be moved to a Covid ward, leading to your required treatment being compromised. And perhaps expose you to a real risk of virus infection. Hence the approximately 30% of Covid ‘infections’ (read PCR positive) being currently detected in hospital. But there is no way of knowing what proportion of these are real nosocomial infections. Probably just a small fraction. This is the inherent uselessness of the PCR test. It really tells you nothing. The sensible thing to do would be to conduct a lateral flow test immediately on arrival/admission, allowing for an immediately informed bed allocation, where admission is necessary. And back this up with a confirmatory PCR test at 30 cycles, if you really must. I’m quite sure that many individuals who turn up at A and E with any indicative Covid symptoms are admitted… Read more »
“Are our hospitals organised properly?”
There are around 4,122 adult critical care beds in England. This seems a ludicrously small number of critical care beds for a country (England) with a population of 56,287,000 – a country with a relatively high median age. The system must be teetering on the brink of being “overwhelmed” the whole time. A feature, not a bug.
I sometimes wonder whether the cost of maintaining twice, three or ten times that number of adult critical care beds over the last twenty to thirty years would have been less than the amount we have spent this year on responding to SARS-CoV2.
There’s a lot to be said about specialist hospitals and convalescent homes which existed in the past but have now gone in the way of the dodo.
If we still had those I get the feeling that the NHS would have coped with this properly.
There is only a contrived crisis. Covid-19 is at a minimum 99% scam and it’s all being done so that people will volunteer for the genocidal vaccines.
Very good questions. I’ve been thinking along similar lines.
The NHS has been broken for many years. Both my wife and I have lived on the continent, in Belgium and France. Both systems are considerably better on many levels.
Back in March when we were told it was all about not putting the NHS under strain, my view was that the Tories/Al Johnson panicked that their inability over 10 years to face into the structural and funding issues within the NHS would be revealed. Many months on, I still think that is a large part of their political motivation for this shitshow.
It doesn’t matter what the structural or funding issues are in the NHS, there would still be a crisis because that’s what the government wants. The government’s wants us all injected with the intentionally genocidal Covid-19 vaccines and everything it does is to further that aim. It’s all preparation for the WEF’s Great Reset and UN Agenda 2030.
There would be just a fraction of the number of C-19 patients in hospital if HCO and Ivermectin treatments were not denied by as a political scam by the ‘government’.
Indeed, and no need for a vaccine.
Am I the only person who keeps thinking that it is not my job to keep the NHS safe it is their job to protect me. If they cannot do this then shut the fucking place down and come up with something that is fit for purpose. The amount you have spent on track and trace and furlough would have meant we could all have carried on as usual if you spent that money on hiring and training more nurses. The truth is most of the money spent on the nhs seems to go to people in suits that spend all day on computers and have no idea about anything to do with saving a life. Next to my old workplace was an NHS site filled with about 700 people all wearing suits and never leaving this building. I saw about one nurses uniform in the five years I worked there. Looking at their car park none of them were badly paid, what benefit do these people give to sick people?
“The figures on people catching Covid in hospital are backed up by people I know who report being in hospital and people around them catching Covid.”
How many people in hospital can you possibly know so that it can back up the statistics?
ICNARC, which is ignored by the controlled opposition, has never suggested that hospitals have ever been overwhelmed.
Covid-19 In A Nutshell
the NHS is a socialist monstrosity, even if it was funded properly it would still perform terribly. goes without saying that the staff are not the issue, the overall structure and management is. it is an international laggard and embarrasment, read Kristian Niemitz ‘ universal healthcare without the NHS’. no other country has a health system that’s population must protect it rather than the other way round. it is a disgrace yet worshipped. this populace has stockholm syndrome regarding the NHS , helped by relentless propaganda.
I’ve changed my mind, I’m now totally pro-lockdown. My mother-in-law has decided not to come to spend Christmas with us because Boris says so. Destroying the economy was worth it after all.
I think it is. I used to spend the entire Christmas period with gritted teeth as my mother-in-law took over my house, my husband and, far as possible, my life.
That said, I’d rather go through it all again than have Stalin Dungford telling me who can and cannot come to my house.
I love the, “I bought my mother in law a chair for Christmas, ungrateful bitch still hasn’t plugged it in.”
Ernie K. Doe – Mother-in-Law 1961
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EN5eJf5h_k
Thank you for the Smalley & Oldfield document.
I have saved it on my PC.
Do we know when they expect to receive a response as I| think it will be a rare opportunity for scientific debate if they do and it can be published…or am I being too hopeful…still it’s Christmas whatever the Prime Muppet says.
Sally Oldfield Mirrors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-jzTSm-0hk
Kin ell remember that one?
“We are perfect”!
A theme tune for the Illuminate along with “Age of Aquarius”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjxSCAalsBE
This agenda has been in the pipeline for a LONG time.
Off topic, I remember seeing Mike when he performed side one of tubular bells, back in the day when the BBC was good. Don’t know if it was an ogwt special? The original shoe gaze, never looked up once. I think I’ll dig that out and have a listen.
I don’t think it was an OGWT, I think it was a one-off or maybe an arts programme like Arena if that existed in those days. I once went to a live performance of the orchestral Tubular Bells with Steve Hillage as the guitar soloist.
It was indeed a one-off special on 30th December 1973, a time when the world made sense. And Steve Hillage was one of the musicians (he’s wearing the pink and blue beanie) in that performance. Here’s the link
https://youtu.be/KXatvzWAzLU Enjoy!
I have run through the US death numbers up to week 46 (latest reliable figures) and the excess death rate, adjusting for population growth and ageing, is around 10%.
However, this is clearly not an effect of Covid, at least not the disease. But it is most likely the effect of the hysteria surrounding it – just read the New York Times any day to see an example.
The reason I say this so categorically ? 57.65% of excess deaths are in the under 75 age groups. If it were just COVID related it would be around 30%.
See yesterday’s roundup, San Francisco Chronicle reporting huge increase in drugs overdosing leading to many times more deaths than the inflated numbers for Covid.
Not surprising, just saw a video of a guy at muscle beach and golds gym in LA. All closed down and surrounded by a sea of homeless tents.
People used to live along the beaches of California in the 50s and 60s.
Most of their shaks were made from string, milk cartons and tin cans. Free rent.
10% though it within typical swings over decades. If it were 2 or 3 times more then that’s serious.
Ive uploaded yesterdays interview with Desmond Swayne (BBC Radio 4 – The Today Programme) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyB73rUvZMw&t
Thank goodness for the few MPs such as Sir Desmond still ready to put the truth out there.
Clearly he has no hope of advancement within this putrid government.
Why would anyone want to be a part of this farce of a government. He has consistently been talking sense.
Did you hear how the bbc presenter was batting for the home team. My god the quicker we can shut down all the bbc the quicker this will all end.
Breaking News: Mutant Ninja Turtle virus eats all our lettuce! Army called in to protect our sprouts.
Kale might be a minority interest but they still deserve our love and support.
Save our carrots!
I have never understood the fascination for sprouts so I am not particularly interested in saving them. I always insist on a Brexit Christmas dinner – no Brussels.
Same here!
Hear, hear!! No Brussels allowed in our house either.
Despite their name, they are seriously healthy things. A cabbage in miniature is your sprout !
Cook until just tender but not mushy, add some chopped roasted. chestnuts, toss in butter with a little black pepper. Yum.
The glorious Andrew Lawrence bas been busy on Youtube. Go and feast!
He’s a sanity saver! Wonderful!
Have been enjoying his stuff. A tonic for the nerves!
Morning regime to try and stem anxiety caused by Boris:
37mg Venlafaxine, 1g magnesium malate, 20g inositol, 6g glycine, 3g beta-alanine, 1g taurine, 1g acetyl carnitine, 500mg thenanine, high dose b-complex with methyl folate, 2g vitamin C… venlafaxine was much higher but it made me more ill…
Please stop the government hurting us.
Hibiscus tea will help,as will a daily B12 , magnesium gel and a daily teaspoonful of ground linseed.
I wouldn’t actually take any of the things on your list, although I appreciate that they are helping you, but my favourites are safer and recommended.
While I am sure that your advice is well intended, and I agree with your reservations about some of these drugs, I presume that these have been prescribed by a doctor and I think that people should listen to their GP rather than people they haven’t met on the internet.
Personally, I think solely listening to one’s GP is not a good idea. You simply cannot have a quality consultation in 10 mins anyway. And that was when face-to-face consultations were the norm. We all know the quick resort to the prescription pad syndrome.
Doing one’s own medical research online makes perfect sense to me.
More so now than ever.
I knew that immune-supporting Vit C, Vit D, and Zinc were ideal prophylaxis (not just for Covid) a very long time ago. No GP told me that.
Doing personal research is essential if you receive a cancer diagnosis, I believe.
You just need to exercise a critical and discriminating mind.
I am much more suspicious of the typical BBC line about not listening to those ‘charlatan selling supplements’
And if you read up about prescription inducements, opioid epidemics, Vioxx deaths and the like, you may reach a similar conclusion.
The pervasive (and often malign) influence of Big Pharma is real.
Quite agree,which is why my list of recommended remedies was posted: many years of experiencing horrible iatrogenic side effects ,led me to tackle hypertension, anxiety and depression by means of research and experiment.
It took several years and some false starts, but I got there in the end, and have no regrets.
This is by no means to indicate that I never believe doctors; I’ve been fortunate enough in recent years to have met some really good ones whose expertise benefited me, but they are,sadly, outnumbered by the less impressive and rather arrogant variety.
That is fair enough, but making medical recommendations online for someone you have never met can have unintended consequences. Your advice can be very good in general, but not necessarily for the particular recipient.
It’s advice, not a prescription and meant with good intentions. Advice can be accepted or ignored, depending on an individual’s judgement and experience.
Many of us on this site have exchanged advice and offers of help and support over the past months.
What, ’bout things like covid ?! Ffs.
http://www.horsdoeuvre.fr/oenologie/soignez-vous-par-le-vin
225mg Venlafaxine more-or-less works for me!
PG Tips works for me.
Try a hot-water bottle on the tum, it helps loosen those knots.
I’m on the 70mg of Venlafaxine for my CPTSD…still fell like shit most of the days..
a bottle of red wine does just as good a job!!
Speed
Lots of it
Has always knocked every virus on the head in the past
Even flu
Intravenous chilled Hydrazine in the morning does it for me every time.
Charles Walker MP with a scathing attack on the latest restrictions and those responsible;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJluyXUCY2Q
He has been a class act for the past few months.