Happy Christmas!
For the next three days – starting tomorrow – I’ll be publishing a pared down version of Lockdown Sceptics so I can have a bit of time off over Christmas. Cartoonist Bob Moran has very kindly given me three original cartoons which I’m going to run on consecutive days and, below them, I’ll include a round-up, as well as an And Finally…, but little else.
Happy Christmas to all our readers. Thanks for all your links, stories and suggestions, as well as your comments below the line and in the forums. Lockdown Sceptics is really a collaboration between our small team, the commenters and the people who email us at lockdownsceptics@gmail.com – like Mitesh B. Karia, who sends us dozens of links to interesting articles every day. To date, we’ve had over 21,000 emails and we do our best to read every one.
Back in April, when I set up this blog, I imagined I’d be signing off about now. Turns out, that was a bit naive. God knows when this madness will end, but at least there are some comforts in this digital camaraderie. Readers often get in touch to say Lockdown Sceptics has kept them sane. The feeling’s mutual.
Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk join London and Kent in Tier 4
In a last-minute Christmas gift, Matt Hancock announced yesterday that West Sussex and those parts of East Sussex, Essex, Surrey and Hampshire not already in the top tier will enter Tier 4 from one minute after midnight on Boxing Day, along with Oxfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. That’s 24 million people in total – 43% of England’s population. Not that other parts of the country have got off scot free. MailOnline has more.
Bristol, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Swindon, the Isle of Wight, the New Forest and Northamptonshire will go from Tier 2 to Tier 3, as will Cheshire and Warrington.
And Cornwall and Herefordshire will enter Tier 2, meaning only the Isles of Scilly remains in the lowest Tier 1.
An extra 50,000 business premises, including non-essential retailers, hairdressers and gyms, will be forced to close, according to new data from real estate adviser Altus Group.
A total of 168,448 businesses are already closed in Tier 4 areas, according to the data.
Additionally, a second new strain linked to South African arrivals has been identified in the UK, and Mr Hancock said all flights from the nation had been halted.
However, there are fears that a new nationwide lockdown for England is inevitable in January – when children are due to return to school.
In spite of these increased restrictions, a third national lockdown in the New Year looks all but inevitable, with various SAGE members lobbying the Government via the media with that object in mind.
SAGE experts have repeated their calls for tougher action, with behavioural psychologist Professor Robert West warning the Government’s current curbs were unlikely to contain the spread of Covid.
He argued the UK needed to bolster social distancing rules and build a test, travel, isolate and support programme similar to ones used in East Asia.
And the Mail understands that Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty has warned the Prime Minister that the number of patients in hospital with coronavirus is on course to match the April peak by New Year’s Eve – and will continue increasing in January.
Downing Street yesterday tried to play down suggestions that a third national lockdown was imminent, but Sir Patrick said the new strain, which is thought to spread up to 70% more easily, was already present ‘around the country’.
Worth reading in full.
More Evidence Lockdowns Don’t Work
According to an end-of-year report by Neil Ferguson et al, introducing the first national lockdown a week earlier than March 23rd would have saved 21,000 lives. But would it? As we’ve documented many times on Lockdown Sceptics, the evidence that lockdowns significantly reduce virus transmission – or mortality – is threadbare at best. Which makes the Government’s strategy of constantly ratcheting up restrictions rather nonsensical.
I’ll give three examples to illustrate the point.
First, let’s look at the rise and fall in daily cases in North and South Dakota. Both states have imposed some of the least severe restrictions in the US, according to the Blavatnik School of Government’s stringency index. Yet in both states, daily cases have begun to decline organically as we head towards Christmas.
Next up is Switzerland, which has imposed fewer restrictions in 2020 than anywhere else in Europe, save for Sweden and Belarus.
The Swiss Doctor has provided a summary of this year’s mortality data in Switzerland compared to previous years and the overall picture suggests it has fared a good deal better than most of its European neighbours.
The 2020 annual all-cause mortality rate of just under 0.86% was last reached during the flu and heat year of 2003 and the flu year of 2000. The median age of corona deaths in Switzerland is 86 years, that of hospitalized patients 74 years. Approximately 50% of the deaths occurred in nursing homes, which comprise 1% of the population. In the age group below 65 years, no excess mortality is apparent – in contrast to severe flu outbreaks.
As for Switzerland’s ‘second wave’, daily cases are declining in spite of minimal restrictions. For instance, restaurants and bars, as well as sports, cultural and leisure facilities, were only closed on December 22nd.
Finally, there’s Spain. Admittedly, Spain imposed some of the most severe restrictions in the spring, but the Spanish Government has been much more lackadaisical this winter. Its current restrictions resemble those of a Tier 1 area. Yet in spite of this, daily cases have declined in Spain, too. (Although, there has been an uptick in the last week or so.)
In short, daily cases in all three regions have begun to decline quite naturally in spite of the relatively modest social distancing measures in place.
Stop Press: The staff of the American Institute for Economic Research have pulled together a compilation of the best studies showing how ineffective lockdowns are. Viewers of Ivor Cummins’ YouTube videos will be familiar with most of them, but it’s useful to have them all in one place.
Canaries in the Mine: Seasonal Peaks
Today, we’re publishing the latest instalment in the ongoing series by Dr Rudolph Kalveks, who has a PhD in theoretical physics, in which he uses a simple epidemiological model (an SIR model) to look at Covid mortality across the globe in an attempt to isolate the factors causing deaths to rise and fall. His conclusion is that lockdowns don’t have a big impact. Here’s an extract:
It is notable that Sweden, which introduced few lockdown restrictions, enjoyed a summer lull followed by a small autumn peak, while other European countries, which implemented many and varying lockdown restrictions during the year, have found themselves faced by larger autumn peaks. The models indicate that the overall susceptibility in Sweden, taking spring and autumn together, may end up relatively low within Europe.
The key question is what has driven the summer lull followed by the autumn peaks in Europe. It is implausible that lockdowns were responsible for the summer lull, since the subsequent tightening of lockdown policies has not prevented the autumn peaks. Is there any plausible mechanism other than the commonplace observation that there is a high level of natural seasonal variation in (the susceptibility to and transmission of) respiratory infections? As Prof. Ioannidis notes, “Seasonality may also play a role in the dissipation of the epidemic wave.”
We should recall the findings in the Lancet,1 that even the most draconian (and impractical) combinations of lockdown policies only reduce R to around 65% of its initial R0 value after seven days, and to around 48% if continued for a month. Once lockdown restrictions are limited, the R values revert.
Coronaviruses can start with an R0 in the range of five to ten times, so that a much greater reduction of 80% – 90% would be necessary to reduce R to below one. Simple arithmetic shows that for readily transmissible viruses, lockdown restrictions are insufficient, and that the spread of infections can only be halted by some combination of herd immunity (whether by vaccination or by recovery following infection) and seasonality.
Worth reading in full.
Triple Strength Super Mutant Ninja South African Virus Found in UK
If you thought our “mutant super strain” was bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet. At yesterday’s Downing Street presser, Matt Hancock upped the ante once again by revealing that a new even scarier variant originating in South Africa had been detected in the UK. Ooh, mother! Better shove some more areas into Tier 4, eh?
But this does beg the question: Is Hancock going to conjure up a new strain every time he wants to tighten the lockdown ratchet?
Needless to say, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps shut the stable door as soon as he discovered the horse had bolted. The Mail has more.
In a series of tweets described as an “urgent update”, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps wrote: “I’ve taken the decision to temporarily stop flights and arrivals entering England from SOUTH AFRICA from 9am tomorrow following an outbreak of a new strain of coronavirus.
“British & Irish Nationals, visa holders and permanent residents arriving from South Africa will be able to enter but are required to self-isolate for ten days along with their household.
“Visitors from South Africa will not be permitted to enter, to stop the spread of COVID-19.”
Worth reading in full – unless you were planning to go to Cape Town this Christmas, in which case I suggest you lie down with a wet towel over your head.
Stop Press: A Philosophy Professor who has written for Lockdown Sceptics before has written a short squib about the mutant Covid strain.
The former Covidian Cult, known globally for its practice of worshipping a respiratory virus by shutting down entire countries and making their populations wear face coverings, has mutated into a more dangerous form. The Newstrainian Cult emerged remarkably quickly in December 2020, shortly after the Covidians had locked down the entire English population for four weeks. Several cult members had noted that, although cases of the virus had plummeted in the North of England during their lockdown, cases had continued to rise exponentially in parts of the South. Faced with this striking contrast, the Covidians proved constitutionally incapable of entertaining the possibility that lockdowns are not only destructive but also ineffective and that other factors, such as differing levels of prior exposure and immunity within populations, have considerably more influence on the trajectory of the virus. Instead, so as to preserve their belief system, they seized upon a “new strain” (one that has in fact been around for some time), which has now become the principal focus for their various bizarre rituals.
Having projected magical powers upon this strain of the virus, the “Newstrainians”, as they are now known, have started to advocate even more extreme and harmful measures. Worryingly, they are increasingly turning their attention to children, who their Imperial Priest has declared to be more susceptible to the new strain. Concerns have been raised by opponents of the cult that this will further fuel earlier Covidian demands to conduct mass virus testing in England’s schools by poorly trained volunteers recruited at random without adequate background checks, inflict numerous other psychological harms on children, and ultimately ruin the education and life chances of an entire generation. When these concerns were put to cult leaders, they refused to comment and instead chanted the words “protect the NHS” and “the third wave is coming”.
Déjà Vu All Over Again
Today we’re publishing another original article by veteran journalist Neville Hodgkinson, a former medical and science correspondent of the Daily Mail and Sunday Times and the author of AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science. When he heard Boris talk about the new variant on Saturday, it reminded him of something. The AIDS pandemic occurred on his beat and he covered it extensively for the Sunday Times. Turns out, scientists warned of a deadly new HIV strain too. I’ll let Neville take up the story.
An awesome, sinister sense of déjà vu grows by the day. Suddenly, a second variant of the COVID-19 virus is said to be rampaging across Britain, just in time to create utter seasonal chaos and ensure that the loving spirit of Christmas does not obscure the fear we are all supposed to be experiencing.
It was much the same 35 years ago, when a panic over AIDS was being talked up by scientists to global proportions and an HIV variant, HIV-2, suddenly caught the headlines. The new purported villain added to the fear and led to an era in which any ideas or evidence as to the cause of AIDS that did not keep HIV centre stage were ruled out of order.
That was despite some experts, including top-ranking Nobel prize-winning scientists at the heart of the fight against AIDS, trying to let us know that HIV had never been established as the cause of the syndrome. They showed that both predictions of spread, and tests claiming to show infection with the virus, were invalid.
As now, an epidemic of inappropriate testing led to a false impression of a pandemic. Models predicting near-universal spread bore no relation to actual illness and death, which remained confined to relatively small sections of the population who had other risks in their lives.
The illusion was boosted by widespread use in “HIV-positive” patients of lethally high doses of a toxic drug, AZT, at a time when no other approach to treating AIDS was permitted. Doctors who dared challenge the zeitgeist were struck off the medical register.
After several years, AZT was proved useless, at best, in a major Anglo-French trial. It fell out of favour, and AIDS deaths dropped dramatically.
Yet a generation of young people was falsely led to equate sex with death by Health Department propaganda, supported to the hilt by mainstream media (with the notable exception of the Sunday Times under the editorship of Andrew Neil).
Billions of dollars (mainly American taxpayers’ money) went on a fruitless search for a vaccine, still, incredibly, continuing to this day.
Having reported AIDS conventionally for several years, in the 1980s, before realising the virus theory was fundamentally flawed, I know from experience how hard it can be to change direction. It is as though a kind of “herd insanity” takes a grip on one’s mind.
Worth reading in full.
Is the BBC Making People Ill?
A reader has followed up on our post from yesterday about a doctor suggesting to a reader that if he wanted his tummy ache to get better he should stop listening to the Today programme in the morning and read Lockdown Sceptics instead.
I just read your Gaviscon item, which reminded me of my experience.
My Chiropractor advised me if I wanted to cure my neck problems I needed to stop listening to the BBC and shaking my head in disbelief.
Ode to a Nightingale
According to the Telegraph, London’s Nightingale Hospital has no intensive care beds. And not much else, either.
Staff shortages have left London’s flagship Nightingale hospital empty without any equipment or its 4,000 intensive care beds, despite Covid cases doubling in the capital.
One of seven built at the start of the pandemic at a cost of £220 million, the Nightingale hospital, at the ExCel Centre, was shut and placed on standby soon after, although 90% of the building has returned to how it was previously.
The Nightingale at Birmingham’s NEC and the one in Sunderland are also empty but on standby, while Manchester’s was open for “non-Covid care”, with those at Exeter and Harrogate being used as “specialist diagnostics centres” and Bristol’s deployed for “local NHS services”.
The Royal College of Emergency medicine said: “With regard to the Nightingale Hospitals, the challenge is safely staffing them. A bed requires nurses, doctors, pharmacists, anaesthetists in some cases, porters, cleaners.
“The health service already faces staff shortages in many hospitals and some staff are also self-isolating or off sick due to COVID-19.”
Saffron Cordery, the deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, said: “The Nightingales are on standby as a last resort. They do not have the same resources and facilities as purpose built hospitals so can’t provide the same comprehensive care in every circumstance.
“They would also draw on the staff who are currently working in NHS trusts, so diverting them would also impact on the standard of care patients would receive.
“The fact that the Nightingales have not yet been deployed does not mean they are being ‘wasted’. They are there as a backup, and that’s how they will and should be used.”
Not as useful as “purpose built hospitals”?!?
Weren’t the Nightingales built with the express purpose of providing critical care to Covid patients to relieve the NHS?
Twitter’s New Censorship Rules
On December 21st, Twitter announced it had tightened restrictions on what people are permitted to say on the social media platform. To date, it hasn’t been quite as censorious as YouTube and Facebook, but it sounds like that’s about to change.
Our expanded approach
In the context of a global pandemic, vaccine misinformation presents a significant and growing public health challenge – and we all have a role to play. We are focused on mitigating misleading information that presents the biggest potential harm to people’s health and wellbeing. Twitter has an important role to play as a place for good faith public debate and discussion around these critical public health matters.
Under our current policy, we already require the removal of Tweets that include false or misleading information about:
- The nature of the virus, such as how it spreads within communities;
- The efficacy and/or safety of preventative measures, treatments, or other precautions to mitigate or treat the disease;
- Official regulations, restrictions, or exemptions pertaining to health advisories; and
- The prevalence or risk of infection or death.
Moving forward and beginning next week, we are expanding the policy and may require people to remove Tweets which advance harmful, false or misleading narratives about COVID-19 vaccinations, including:
- False claims that suggest immunisations and vaccines are used to intentionally cause harm to or control populations, including statements about vaccines that invoke a deliberate conspiracy;
- False claims which have been widely debunked about the adverse impacts or effects of receiving vaccinations; or
- False claims that COVID-19 is not real or not serious, and therefore that vaccinations are unnecessary.
Starting in early 2021, we may label or place a warning on Tweets that advance unsubstantiated rumours, disputed claims, as well as incomplete or out-of-context information about vaccines. Tweets that are labelled under this expanded guidance may link to authoritative public health information or the Twitter Rules to provide people with additional context and authoritative information about COVID-19.
What’s next
Using a combination of technology and human review, we will begin enforcing this updated policy on December 21st, and expanding our actions during the following weeks. We will enforce this policy in close consultation with local, national and global public health authorities around the world, and will strive to be iterative and transparent in our approach. We remained focused on helping people find credible health information, verifying public health experts, and updating our policies in an iterative and transparent approach.
The best way to avoid being censored on Twitter, according to my sources, is to always include one of the following along with your tweet: (a) a link to a scientific paper in a respectable journal like Nature or the New England Journal of Medicine; (b) a graph/chart from a reputable source, such the WHO, CDC, Johns Hopkins, PHE or the ONS; (c) a link to an MSM news article. This should fool Twitter’s AI into thinking you’re a Covid conformist and, hopefully, your dissident Tweet won’t be flagged for “human review”.
Big Tech’s justification for censoring scientific debate about the virus and the vaccines is that “misinformation”, by which they mean any dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy, can be harmful to public health. But that is tantamount to taking sides in the ongoing scientific debate about everything to do with COVID-19, rather than acting as the keeper of the ring. After all, it’s only if you take it for granted that, say, mask wearing reduces transmission that it makes sense to claim that any information casting doubt on the effectiveness of masks is potentially harmful. Which begs the question, why has Big Tech decided to side with government officials and public health panjandrums instead of remaining neutral? James Delingpole would say it’s because they’ve been enlisted by the architects of the Great Reset (see today’s And Finally…), but my view is it’s probably just a combination of rank opportunism (governments are less likely to regulate the Big Tech companies or look into their creative tax arrangements if they behave “responsibly”, i.e. toe the line) and status signalling (among the Silicon Valley Brahmin caste, being a lockdown zealot is a high-status indicator).
Stop Press: Whatever you do, don’t Tweet about this FDA investigation into allergic reactions to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
The Travel Ban Myth
David Mackie, Head of Philosophy at d’Overbroeck’s, Oxford, has written a guest post for today’s update about the travel ban – or lack of it, even in Tier 4 areas.
Every weekday morning, between 7 and 7.30am, I cycle along Cornmarket Street in Oxford on my way to work. On most but not all days, I am shouted at by at least one enthusiast for law and order. The personnel detailed to harass me in this way changes from day to day, but the selection criteria seem to demand that all candidates for the role be male and obese. ‘No cycling!’ they don’t shout. The meaning of what is shouted is nonetheless clear enough. I’m breaking the law.
Except that I’m not. Cycling is banned on Cornmarket only between 10am and 6pm. But, of course, these people think that cycling ought not to be allowed there at 7am; and they are aware that there is some sort of legal restriction on cycling there. And so, understandably enough, they invent, and seek to enforce, a law that does not exist.
The situation has a close parallel in the world of lockdown. On weekends, I often drive to London to pick up my children. ‘Essential travel only’, say the motorway signs. Every day, virtually every newspaper refers to the ban on travel to and from Tier 4 areas. Social media are littered with apparently sincere assertions to the effect that travel into and out of Tier 4 is forbidden, in reply to queries about the legality of travelling for purposes such as renewing passports, transferring children between separated parents, and taking exercise.
Nonsense. All of it. The legislation concerning tiers makes no provision at all concerning travel between areas in different tiers. The imagined travel ban is as unreal as the non-existent local cycling prohibition.
The mechanism that the Government has chosen to limit movement is simply to restrict the right to be outside one’s home (for residents of Tier 4 areas), to restrict the right to attend ‘gatherings’ (for residents of all areas). and of course, to reduce the attraction of leaving home by requiring (differentially, depending on tiers) the closure of many of the businesses that people might have wanted to go out to visit.
But where a legally permitted reason for being outside one’s home exists, which may take the form of any reasonable excuse, or where a legally permitted reason for attending a gathering exists, the location is irrelevant.
Oxford will be in Tier 4 from Boxing Day; but if I could not work from home and my work required me to be in, say, Penzance, then travel to Penzance would be entirely legal. Similarly, I am permitted to travel wherever necessary for the purposes of contact arrangements with my children, to view a residential property, to attend a place of worship, and so on. The law does not care where. Nor does it require my reason to be ‘essential’.
But the Government has chosen, disgracefully in my view, to supplement the law that it has actually introduced by means of unenforceable ‘guidance’ that goes far beyond the legal restrictions, and by means of well-publicised criticism of free citizens (such as Matt Hancock’s condemnation of the recent exodus from London) for doing things that they are perfectly legally entitled to do.
Depressingly, the public and much of the media, in misrepresenting the law as restricting behaviour that is perfectly legal, have become complicit in the dirty work of constraining people’s behaviour still further than the Government has so far dared to do by means of secondary legislation.
As the Government is doubtless aware, and as it presumably foresaw, the dishonest policy of misrepresenting to the public the content of the laws that bind them is now being furthered by the millions of well-meaning lockdown zealots who don’t bother to consult the legislation any more than the rest of us routinely do. Such people reason that, ‘surely’, the whole point of a system of assigning regions to different tiers ‘must’ involve restriction of movement between regions in different tiers. And so they invent, publicise, and seek to enforce supposed laws that simply do not exist, just like the fat wannabe policemen who confront me every other weekday morning.
When our liberty is being stolen, we owe it to ourselves and others to be informed, and to refuse to be bound by restrictions of our own invention.
South Western Railway Hits New Low
A reader has been in touch to reveal the latest horror that South Western Reailway inflicted on her today.
I have just caught a train from Clapham Junction Station to make an ‘illegal’ journey out of Tier 4 London to, soon to be but not quite Tier 4 Hampshire. I have got used to the usual station Covid propaganda that gets blasted out, but am used to zoning out while waiting mask free on the platform. However today there was a new announcement, one I haven’t heard before and one that really hits a new low on the propaganda levels.
The new announcement is done using a kids voice, and went something along the lines of, “Hi I am Evie, my mum, dad and grandad work for South Western Railway. Please socially distance and wear your face masks so they stay safe and I can hug them soon.”
Pass the sickbag.
Free Speech Union Uncancels Julie Burchill’s Book
Julie Burchill’s book on cancel culture – Welcome to the Woke Trials – was cancelled by its publisher last week after she got into a Twitter spat with Ash Sarkar. But it has now been uncancelled, thanks to the Free Speech Union. Guido Fawkes has the story.
Julie Burchill’s publisher has agreed to pay her in full and relinquished all rights to her manuscript, following an intervention by the Free Speech Union. Last week, Little, Brown announced it would not be publishing Burchill’s book, Welcome to the Woke Trials, after she got into a Twitter spat with literal communist Ash Sarkar. The hard left pundit had attacked Rod Liddle for making light of child rape, having dug up an eight-year-old Spectator article in which he said he had avoided becoming a teacher because he couldn’t trust himself not to try and have sex with his teenage pupils. Burchill told her that was a little rich coming from a Muslim, given that Mohammad’s wife Aisha was a child when he married her. “I don’t WORSHIP a paedophile,” she said. “Lecturer, lecture thyself!” Little, Brown promptly cancelled the book.
As Brendan O’Neill commented: “Julie Burchill was hired for being Julie Burchill – and then Julie Burchill was fired for being Julie Burchill.”
Guido doesn’t like to criticise other people’s faiths, however it should not be an offence to be blasphemous…
Luckily for her, Burchill is a member of the Free Speech Union and reached out for help. Following an intervention by the FSU’s legal team, Little, Brown has now agreed to pay Julie’s advance in full and returned all the rights in the book to her so she can take it elsewhere. According to her agent Matthew Hamilton, several publishers have contacted him expressing an interest in the book.
Toby Young, FSU General Secretary, says: “For a publisher to cancel a book on cancel culture because a self-proclaimed communist has denounced the author is completely unacceptable. This is Great Britain, not Stalin’s Russia. I’m glad we were able to help.” Julie is unrepentant. “I’ve been upsetting bourgeoise bed-wetters since I was 17 – now I’m 61 and nothing has changed. Last time I checked, that wasn’t against the law. I am indebted to the Free Speech Union for stepping in to protect my rights.”
They would have got away with if it weren’t for that pesky Free Speech Union…
Anything thinking of joining can do so by clicking here.
Round-up
- “Why are ministers causing irrational panic about the mutant Covid strain?” – Philip Johnston asks a good question in the Telegraph
- “Rapid Covid testing sites for people with symptoms shelved amid accuracy concerns” – The Government has shelved plans to roll out rapid testing centres across England after lateral flow tests failed to turn up more positive “cases”. Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina says that’s because the tests are doing their job, not because they’re insufficiently sensitive
- “Tony Blair calls for the UK to use up ALL coronavirus vaccine supplies to get at least one initial dose of the jab to millions of people as NHS doctors are ‘frustrated’ with slow roll-out” – Unhelpful intervention from the former Prime Minister. Apparently, giving people the first dose with no guarantee of the second hasn’t been approved by the MHRA
- “Lockdown money-printing sets us up for an even greater Covid collapse” – Liam Halligan is pessimistic in the Telegraph
- “COVID-19: new powers for ‘stay at home’ message” – The Stormont executive’s stay-at-home lockdown message in Northern Ireland was made “legally enforceable” last night, granting police the power to force people to return home if they’re out between 8pm and 6am between Boxing Day and Jan 2nd
- “Calgary AB youth arrested for playing hockey” – George Dance blogs about an unpleasant incident in which a young man in Calgary was assaulted by the police for the crime of playing hockey
- “A vaccine won’t protect us from the economic disaster of further lockdowns” – Ross Clark in the Telegraph says we cannot afford to lockdown until most people have been vaccinated
- “Could 30% of Brits have some Covid immunity?” – Yes, says Philip Thomas in the Spectator
- “NHS office staff ‘given Covid vaccine before doctors’” – Doctors are very upset about this – but for status rather than health reasons
- “Travellers into Scotland may face stay in quarantine hotel” – Gawd help us. But cheer up – you might see a maskless Nic Sturge-On in the lobby
- “No situation BoJo can’t make worse” – Alistair Osborne in the Times says the last few days have seen a fresh high for No 10’s chaosometer
- “Lockdowns have become the default Covid policy – but do they actually work?” – Good review of the evidence by Kai Weiss in CapX
- “Thérèse Soukar Chehade: COVID Wars” – Article in the Daily Hampshire Gazette making the case for the Great Barrington Declaration
- “‘Tier 4 has left me stranded in university accommodation for Christmas’” – A poor student at UEA is going to be stuck self-isolating in his dorm room tomorrow
- “Christmas with family isn’t irresponsible – it’s a human right” – Allison Pearson’s column in yesterday’s Telegraph
- “Coronavirus Scandal Breaking in Merkel’s Germany” – Good piece about the mounting doubts surrounding the Eurosurveillance PCR paper Dr Christian Drosten and colleagues
- Tim Spector on Spectator TV is unimpressed by the Government’s constantly changing restrictions
- Roger Bowles has interviewed his local publican for his forthcoming documentary about Covid madness. Must watch
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Five today: “Christmas Convoy” by Paul Brandt, “Cross the Border” by Marlon Asher, “Let Me Be Free” by Yvonne Chaka Chaka, “New Age” by Softer Still and “All We Like Sheep Have Gone Astray” by Handel.
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
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Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, we bring you the story of Steve Finn, a Coronation Street director who has been dropped by ITV for wrongthink. The Huffington Post has more.
ITV has dumped a regular Coronation Street director following a series of online posts rubbishing concerns of racism in the media industry, HuffPost UK can reveal.
The broadcaster said Steve Finn, a freelancer who has worked on the soap over the last two years, made social media posts that were “inconsistent with the values of both Coronation Street and ITV”.
In one of the posts, all of which are public and still available to view, Finn poked fun at David Olusoga after the TV historian told the Edinburgh TV Festival that being marginalised in his career had left him feeling “crushed, isolated” and “disempowered”.
Finn wrote in response on his Facebook page: “Oh poor dear, so crushed by his success on the unenlightened British media. Could I get just a tenth of his salary for making programmes which people actually watch, as he is so crushed.”
Around this time the historian also delivered a lecture on his own experiences of racism.
Finn claimed that he had never seen any racism during his four decades working in TV and dismissed concerns as the “fabrication of fashionable claims”.
He said: “I have worked in this business for over 40 years and I have not seen one instance of racism. I’m afraid I find people like him [Olusoga] beyond contempt because he has made a very nice earner out of his niche abilities, but now wants to ride the racism high-horse to maximum effect.
“I am a product of the white working-class, and have often felt alone and isolated, and yes unwanted, especially in the BBC, but I would never have made such a shameful parody of myself just to further my career.”
In a separate comment, he said: “People like Olusaga [sic] are victim-making frauds and need to be called out.”
When BBC Bitesize published an interview about white privilege with psychologist and author John Amaechi in August, Finn wrote on Facebook: “This is on a BBC ‘Education’ website. Is it not ‘re-education’, a la Soviet Union or China?”
The same month, actor and director Noel Clarke told BBC Radio 5 Live about what happened when he asked for a more diverse production crew when shooting a TV show. Finn branded Clarke a “fucktard” and said: “You got some white people ‘let go’ to assuage your own agenda”.
There’s more in this vein. Sounds like a case for the Free Speech Union.
Steve Finn, if you’re reading this, contact me on info@freespeechunion.org and I’ll see if there’s anything I can do. I imagine some Red Wall Tory MPs might want to take up your cause.
“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.
Stop Press: The Mexican authorities have started employing wrestlers to enforce outdoor mask wearing. RT has more.
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 GBD 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.
Stop Press: Great Twitter thread by El Gato about the heavy price paid by Covid dissidents – and why it’s worth it anyway.
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
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. Doing these daily updates is hard work (although we have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending us stories and links). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here. (Don’t assume we’ll pick them up in the comments.)
And Finally…
In case you missed it, James Delingpole and I recorded a final episode of London Calling before Christmas earlier this week. Some listeners don’t like it when we fight – “It’s like listening to your parents arguing,” said one – so this may not be to everyone’s taste. We have our usual argument about whether the Covid-fuelled dystopia we’re living in is cock-up or conspiracy, but James is more than usually annoyed with me for refusing to take the Great Reset seriously. Happily, we do discuss some other, less fractious topics, such as what we’ve got our wives for Christmas.
Listen to it here and subscribe to London Calling on iTunes here.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Merry Christmas all
When I were a lad Xmas Eve was a normal working day except that everyone went to the pub at lunchtime so most bosses said don’t bother coming back for the afternoon.
Luxury!
Merry Christmas All, may Father Christmas empty his sack in your living room
I don’t like the sound of that!!
He only comes once a year.
But when he does, he fills your stockings up!
Toby’s headline put me in the mood. Until I read anything below the headline. the German llamasauruses side of our family celebrates Eve primarily. This ll-Rex will be working till going out for a Chinese meal this evening, before the restaurant shuts down.
My family in Germany is very depressed this year. Usually very active retirees, all cultural and sport opportunities have been closed since November.
With Germany shutting down at noon today, 2 BH and Sunday, it gets very boring indeed. There are only so many walks one can go on, and TV is abysmal .
I know, it’s awful.
Netflix
My parents do not have an answer phone, microwave, never had a video recorder or dvd player, no computer or mobile phone.
They just about manage to switch on the tv.
If it was not winter, my 80y old father would rather dig his allotment.
Are they showing those Sissi films again? From what I heard they do it over Christmas.
DJT has a 0730 press call today (just to spoil their day mainly probably).
Lol love the way he plays them!
Those by-the-helicopter press conferences are particularly funny.
When I were a lad my mother worked on Christmas Day because she was a post woman.
WE lived at the bottom of a lake and ate gravel. <sorry>
Soft gravel, you were lucky!!
.. but we had to pick it up with our toes.
Our parents came home every evening and stabbed us to death. Yes life was hard in those days….
And going to kiss all the ladies working in the typing pool, even the directors secretary who the rest of the year frightened the beejezus out of me….
I remember those days. Pubs would remove all chairs and tables to get more people in – no social distancing allowed. Very busy as they weren’t allowed to stay open all afternoon. I think they wee a bit less strict on last orders though.
Merry Christmas, but it looks like mine’s been cancelled. Aside from just finding out that my county is going into Tier 4 on Saturday, MOH has a kidney stone on the move, which can be horrendously painful.
So, we won’t be going to my sister’s house for Xmas day. If MOH is still suffering, I’ll be having beans on toast or something…
Oh, well.
Same s***, different day.
Kidney stones easily tx’d with IV medication to dilate the ureter. Go,to,A&E they aren’t busy right now. Seriously.
Hope they de-stone MOH right away. God bless.
Talk about timing! Your poor OH. My sympathies to her.
The latest london calling is worth a listen…as always. I’ve crossed the rubicon some time ago, and am with James on this one.
The Great Reset (aka Ze Grrate Reezet) is a real plan it’s just if the fat Emperor of the Middle Kingdom and Dr Strangelove can pull it off or not.
Elsewhere James said it’s irrelevant whether it’s a co-ordinated plan or an elite consensus. He’s right. He also asserted “but it’s what’s happening right now”. The framing of this as a reset, conspiracy etc is distraction.
you don’t need to send orders from a bunker if lobbying, corruption, erosion of democratic balances, concentration of media ownership (inc big tech) means that elite agendas rule the day. The population is getting dumber and more addicted, atomised.
That was Hitlers speciality, letting it be known verbally the direction he wanted to go and leaving it to his underlings to fight between themselves to produce and put their names to practices that best pleased their master.
The principle was called working towards the fuhrer.The underlings would try to figure out which policy or action would please Hitler.It was encouraged because it negated any challenge to Hitlers position.it also made the governance of Nazi Germany extremely inefficient.The parallel is probably all these academics constantly appearing on tv and the press constantly calling for more harsher lockdowns.
Regarding the new mutant strain I believe that it isn’t part of the plan,yet,it is the sign of a desperate government trying to negate any opposition to the deeply unpopular Christmas decision.
You’ve got to be right there.
i.e. delegation ?
Not putting his name to or signing off on policies he knew to be criminal.
Well One thing Boris has managed to do that Hitler couldn’t and that’s closing the Café de Paris.
other resets are available: CCP
Hence ‘Middle Kingdom’.
Morning from sunny South Africa, where rumor has it that alcohol prohibition will soon be introduced again. Beach closures has done nothing to slow the spread of our particular mutant. Mothballed Nightingale hospitals (tents with oxygen points) are being resurrected and the populace are thankfully ignoring the “mask up when outside your home”.
In the Western Cape we are estimated to reach our peak in about a week’s time. I feel for the healthcare workers – no Xmas for them….
Geseende Kersfees
Dankie, julle ook!
Gezundheit!
As a fellow SA resident (UK citizen), I would be interested in your broader views on the whole COVID situation. 99% of my circle pretty much believe every word and a shit scared. I’m the other way, unsurprisingly. I think it’s gone way beyond the incompetence theory, and am onside with the “conspiracy” explanation i.e. a trojan horse for the great reset. I think the 2nd wave and then new strains are just further elements of the strategy, probably to keep testing the waters and see how far they can go without losing traction (and it seems like the answer is “forever”). I’d be completely unsurprised if there are more waves, more strains etc etc until everyone is completely desensitised to all the restrictions and the way is paved for the great reset
What’s your position, and that of your friends / family / colleagues?
Have a look at Pandata from SA (as was my first wife). Includes the excellent Michael Levitt (NP 2013).
https://pandata.org/
Thanks, will do
Good morning all.
Anyone else able to access the link about Germany and Drosten’s paper? It just gets stuck loading for me.
Gave me no trouble.
Thanks Annie. I’ll try a different device later.
Just saw this, re qr passports https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/12/23/uk-govt-begins-work-on-corona-freedom-passports-denies-system-is-imminent/
imagine the worst…then times it by 10, and see the future.
You have a negative test.
You get a pass.
You step outside.
You pick up the bug.
You go down the pub.
Brilliant.
It’s dumb from any point of view, except as another addition to means of control and social credit scoring etc. This whole thing is so obviously about sociopathic control IMO .
of course we’ve been tracked and traced for ages; gchq/5eyes can barely move for all the data on us. This just Mainstreams it and makes it something we’ve “consented” to.
It’s not about health, but about control. Vaccines are integral to it
As mentioned previously a negative test proves nothing except that the bearer was probably negative at the time they took the test but having an mot certificate for your vehicle will not prove that it is roadworthy the following day.
Or during the MOT test.
…but it entitles you to go on driving it for a year, at whatever risk to yourself and other road users.
Not exactly, you are just not allowed to without it even though having it will not save you from prosecution if a thug traffic cop finds a defect the following day.
yes. But it’s not, as we here know, about “controlling the virus”.
with so much of this apparent “madness” I just see highly effective mani-ulation, gaslighting, triangulation, pull-push, ghosting, crumbtrailing, hoovering. The population is being abused and most don’t know how to break free. Stockholm syndrome spreading.
And a DBS check only shows that you had no criminal convictions the day the check was carried out.
Warmest greetings to all sceptics on Christmas Eve. Remember: every positive thought, every positive action, every act of defiance however tiny, is a blow against THEM.
Breathe air, hug people, sing carols, stay sane.
It’s funny, Annie, but I never liked the millennial style of hugging people. I was strictly firm handshake. I now hug every business colleague of mine whenever we meet. We know we are doing it as a defiant gesture….such tiny pleasures.
Elbow bumping is a great way to spot twats indoors without their masks on.
Hey now I like to elbow bump fellow skeptics ironically… before I give them a massive hug!
Watching a few people on tv elbow bump recently, I concluded that one has to stand closer than if you do a handshake. Faces are closer together.
I stick with handshakes.
Aren’t you “supposed” to cough into your elbow?
Just so long as there’s no more ‘Kiss of Peace’ nonsense at CofE.
I’m with you there. The abolition of the the Horrible Holy Handshake is the only good thing that might come out of the bollox.
We’ve heard less of Greta the Doom Goblin too.
Puke making
To be honest I’d be happy with a little bow, never been much of a a hugger or a shaker but It’s nothing to do with Covid for me, just a bit reserved!
I’m not. hugger either, but it’s, like, symbolic!
Hugs are drugs. (h/t the Simpsons)
Shook hands with three work associates yesterday.
Merry Christmas from HMP London and thank you for all your posts be they funny, thoughtful, barnstorming!
With good behaviour you could be free this time next year.
Yesterday two hugs, one handshake
Today a proper 15s hug with one of the huggers from yesterday; Played him the Boris Johnson song too, which he loved
Several friendly chats with (until a few months ago) strangers on my walk today.
Bought above song, so has other half.
On a roll!
Just walked the dog over Burnham on crouch. What pandemic? No masks, people chatting (especially fellow dog walkers) buying hot chocolate. Okay the pubs were shut and the poor shop owners but it was bloody cold but lovely. Of course we had to drive home past the coop with the queue of mask wearers outside. My wife said do NOT shout out! Can I point and laugh? Okay, result. Thank you Poppy, my Cocker spaniel for keeping me sane. Merry Christmas everyone. Keep strong and don’t let the bastards grind you down.
We used to love Burnham on Crouch.The huge skies, the river, the seafood, the pretty buildings, the yachts. Then we’d go to Bradwell-on-Sea and walk down to the Saxon church. Happy days.
Affirmative! Christmas Greetings Annie.
100% spot on Annie. Thank you! There was singing in the car, singing on zoom , but not singing in the church. They can sing in the Church in France but not in UK. We sing anyway. Have a good few days.
John Lee writes: “Of course we should do everything possible to help vulnerable groups shield themselves and vaccinate at the earliest opportunity.” But if the virus is becoming more benign (as he describes) should we be risking these liability free products using completely new technologies, and brought to the market a breakneck speed?
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/11/26/peter-doshi-pfizer-and-modernas-95-effective-vaccines-lets-be-cautious-and-first-see-the-full-data/
Has anyone noticed that Ferguson is funded by the vaccine industry?
https://www.vaccineimpact.org/aboutus/
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/hosted-initiatives-and-groups/vaccine-impact-modelling-consortium/
And the government Johnson, Hancock et al have been disasterously focussed on a vaccine solution
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-ministers-speech-to-un-general-assembly-26-september-2020
which is why we are where we are.
Meanwhile, the WHO have changed the definition of herd immunity to make it dependent on vaccines not tens of millions of years of evolution:
//:0 //:0
How can anyone trust that organisation?
You can’t. Look at Tedros’ background for starters and how he got the job through CCP string pulling.
My question was rhetorical.
Don’t worry I got your drift 🙂
But some people don’t know the whole sordid story of this “doctor’s” career.
Tedros was already part of the Gates entourage in 2007.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/wheres-the-missing-evidence/
Something stinks with that one.
Much as Trump got a lot of things wrong he’s right that the WHO should be defunded.
Trump got the WHO right. But then, typically, he blew the money on GAVI instead.
Absolutely crazy!
They have already changed the definition of a pandemic.Those who see no conspiracy should look closely.If you control the WHO then you control the response to this crisis.look at the funding and make up of the WHO and see who they serve.
There were huge warnings with swine flu episode:
https://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b3471
https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l1259/rr
But they were never held to account so they just went and did it again on a vastly larger scale.
Computing forever did a good piece on this.He came to the conclusion that they failed because the media were prepared to question a lot more and it was before the ubiquitousness of social media
Meanwhile, the WHO have changed the definition of herd immunity to make it dependent on vaccines not tens of millions of years of evolution:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ep1HXZVXIAUaXcP?format=jpg&name=4096×4096
John Lee is endorsing the vaccinations?
I despair
Yes, I don’t get it. Admittedly I have been a critic of the vaccine lobby for a long time but I do not understand how anyone can rationally witness what they’ve done this year and be confident that it is wise. Also, it seems to me to be ethically questionable to give a general endorsement. This is surely outside anyone’s competence – OK most politicians and journalist’s don’t know any better but it is not their business to advocate medical treatments. Should never be.
He must be controlled opposition. Perhaps Karol Sikora is too. I find controlled opposition to be the biggest traitors of this scenario
And notice how quickly HCQ+Zinc was buried by the legacy media.
And look how patients were overdosed in the UK “trial” of this treatment.
https://www.francesoir.fr/politique-monde/oxford-recovery-et-solidarity-overdosage-two-clinical-trials-acts-considered
https://theworldnews.net/fr-news/oxford-recovery-hospital-test-overdose-a-pill-hard-to-swallow
If this had been deliberately set up to fail they could not have done “better”.
Yes, the HCQ scandal seemed to get completely buried in this country, meanwhile the return of usual suspects few questions asked (none about Horby).
And also how a hydroxycholoquine factory in Taiwan exploded. Pharma is a mafia
Seems Johnson was reassuring big pharma that they would still call the shots after the UK-EU free trade deal was announced – “vaccines are the only way out” (or words to that effect), no mention of vitamin D or nutritional medicine. I wonder why?
From Toby’s piece
You don’t have to go abroad to see this. Round my way if they do roadworks in particular streets they place roadblocks and multiple division signs three sides around the block even though the road is one-way and you are being directed to go the way you have to anyway.
This is not an accidental mind slip it is ubiquitous.
As in the article about part time cycling restrictions, we have a number of roads that are clearly signed
‘Buses only 07.30-09.15’
But in an ongoing display of sheepleness 95% of the traffic sticks to the busy main lane all day long giving me the occasional irritated toot as I whizz down beside them.
The 2 or more lane on the Bristol bypass is a great example. It’s only active at certain times but most people avoid driving in it in the morning when the lane isn’t active. So a dual carriageway becomes a single lane.
Many years ago my brother was driving in such a bus lane in Dublin (operational from 0700-1000 and 1200-1900).
He was stopped by a Garda (police officer) and asked to explain why he was driving in a bus lane. He asked the Garda what time it was. 1130. He then asked him to check the operational hours. Needless to say he was not ticketed. Also needless to say, no apology received because these thicks don’t apologise.
Toby, Merry Christmas to you and yours, and all the team at LS
Sincere thanks to you for confronting this evil
Merry Christmas also to those who have contributed articles and comments
From the forthright biker, to annie, to ‘k’s daily battle daily battle to run a cafe in the face of mind numbing ignorance
We fought the good fight
On this device i come up as ceci, not Cecil B,
I had not realised that you were one and the same. Merry Christmas Cecil.
You have been showing as that for a few days Cecil – I knew it was you though! 🙂
We will go on.
Cecil, we need more of your brilliant newsflashes from the Gulag, they make my day!
God bless us every one.
kh, you have been an inspiration to us all, I admire you more than I can say.
I second that. Thank you & God bless kh.
Toby asks “is Hancock going to conjure up a new strain every time he wants to tighten the lockdown ratchet ?”
Joe Stalin was good at this but at least there was a purpose. For decades he would conjure up one conspiracy after another long after he had rid himself of real enemies.
These imaginary conspiracies allowed him to arrest millions to feed the Gulag and so achieve the 5 Year Plan to build heavy industry with slave Labour.
Yep. It’s important to understand that to most people here these scare tactics are just risible in the same way that Stalin’s show trials were ridiculous to any independent minded person.
But they are good enough to frighten large numbers of low-information people who get their “facts” from the BBC and the rest of the legacy media.
Until these folk start rejecting the narrative in large numbers, this madness will just keep rolling.
Right but I just wonder are enough people who comment here rejecting the narrative?
I personally disagree with the measures, but I am still following them – leading to guilt. Until people like me step up, it’ll continue.
Refusing to comply is the first step. That leads to setting a sane example. The more you do, the easier it gets.
A record 6 people were without masks in Aldi yesterday. Only me in the garden centre today
Achieved a year early 2+2 = 5.
o/t but you have to feel for the redundant air flight crew who retrained as long distance lorry drivers.
FFS!
Look out, it’s raining squash!
Merry Christmas everyone, it’s true Toby, all of you have kept me sane, a refuge from the mainstream media and hysteria of governments here. Mask madness is everywhere. Today I went to the cemetery to put flowers on my grandmother’s grave. There was a fellow sat on a bench amongst the graves with a mask on reading a book. I was so tempted to go over and say, ‘mate, these people have no chance of recovery’, my husband was so relieved I didn’t. God Bless you all, keep the faith, we will regroup for better days very soon.💖
Reminds me of a sitcom decades ago with Arthur Lowe as an Irish Catholic priest. He is sitting in a cemetery with his young curate. The curate comments on how peaceful and quiet it is. His response – “You can hardly expect a riot.”
I never saw that, but Arthur Lowe is a legend. Absolutely brilliant in Dad’s Army. Was it him in The Plank as well?
Thanks again to Toby, Wills et al for helping keep me (and all of us I’m sure) sane this past nine months. I have not wavered since day one and just want the madness to end.
Merry Christmas everyone.
Mixed emotions yesterday in Stourbridge: In a mask “recommended” area, a “prole” proudly tucking in to a cholesterol loaded bacon or sausage sandwich which looked about 2,000 calories, but then during the afternoon when my wife went to have her hair “done”, one of the hairdressers, a sociable girl in her twenties proudly announced that she was going to spend Christmas day on her own.
I’ll stick with the memory of the bloke with his “piece”, and his expression of “F××k you lot of sheep “.
Hope the silly little butch has a miserable time.
What in hell are these cretins afraid of?
LIFE.
If I was the mum of that hairdresser I’d take offence at being treated like a leper. By my own daughter.
It is customary at the end of the year to look at summaries and I was considering the amount of legislation that has been thrown at this virus? looking at the Hansard Coronavirus legislation dashboard;
https://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/publications/data/coronavirus-statutory-instruments-dashboard
It states;
How many Coronavirus-related Statutory Instruments has the government laid before the UK Parliament?
The government has laid 327 Coronavirus-related Statutory Instruments (SIs) before the UK Parliament.
The first two Coronavirus-related SIs were laid on 28 January and 10 February 2020, respectively. The rest have been laid since 6 March, at an average rate since then of eight per completed week.
To my mind this level of legislation indicates deranged, megalomaniac, control freak Government of the most ineffective,damaging and tyrannical kind. And to make matters worse this pesky virus does not seem to have read any of this legislation and just carries on regardless. Setting the legislative framework for the country is a prime duty of Parliament and so to my mind how so many MPs can give their agreement to this maelstrom af hellish legislation just beggars belief.
Say what you like about Sweden (everyone has an opinion) but they took a longitudinal approach from the outset. The bedwetters cream their knickers when new guidelines come in there whilst we lurch from lockdown to Tiers to Eat Out to lockdown again. I think they are now addicted to the ‘drama’ of it all.
Hancock said the was “out of control”.
It isn’t. But the government is.
Have we seen this petition before? Mike Yeadon tweeted it
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/563806
Do not start mass testing in schools or require asymptomatic students to isolateThe Government should not roll out mass testing in places of education and end mandatory isolation if children do not have symptoms.
Signed and shared- testing asymptomatic children is such an important issue and I’m sure in the New Year were going to see children becoming the next target. What are the effects of suggesting to children that they may be spreading an illness around, when they don’t feel ill? It beggars belief that educators will support this.
They already are – I had the email 2 days ago. Starting when they go back (IF they go back)
Ding!
I owe the UK an apology. I have to assume that I have the virus and am therefore a spreader. I hope you will find it in your hearts to forgive me and all the other 67 million spreaders. I was going to hide in shame in South Africa, but that’s now not on the cards.
Lettuce is the antidote, but the Mutant Ninja virus eat them all last week. Pray God that sprouts work!
Off to Sainsbury’s soon, to spread good cheer. And the virus…..obviously.
<Sigh>
The EU isn’t working, so the solution is more EU.
Lockdowns aren’t working, so the solution is more lockdowns.
If I could posts images, I’d post this one:
?itemid=16555922
Oh, wow! I never expected that to work! 😀
The only thing working in the UK at the moment
Santa might bring you one, he’s probably got them on backorder lol
It’s the textbook case of insanity isn’t it? Do the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different result.
I want one for my desk.
Is that the Prime Minister?
Btw, I am a 76 year old biddie with a chronic respiratory illness. I do not want the vaccine.
This is a PS to my earlier post below!
Stand up to them, my heroine!
Neither do my 83 year old parents! They didn’t catch Corona when I had it over last Christmas at their home, so it’s pretty obvious they are immune from some previous infection.
Why would they now want to take something with zero benefits and serious possible health risks? “To save granny” perhaps? Really?
All they want is their freedom back and the country back to normal. The OLD normal – not one with QR health codes, vaccine passports, stupid face nappies and Stasi-type snooping.
This year’s madness will soon have wasted a precious year of their remaining active lives. That’s frankly criminal.
The Stasi Snoopers were always around. Now there’s more of them.
Enjoy your break Tony. BTW, isn’t SAGE supposed to advise the government, not lobby it via the Press? Time for some political sackings, methinks.
SAGE members seem to have been engaged in briefing/leaking to the press/media since the very first days of this epidemic without any sanction whatsoever applied against them.
If one of my employees did that to me then they would be dismissed.
A sign of weakness by the Prime Muppet – a spineless man.
Before I sit down to read today’s update and comments, I would like to wish Toby and the rest of the Lockdown Sceptics team a very Merry Christmas. Your hard work bringing us what many in the mainstream media and the government refuse to engage in has been a huge source of facts that I’ve been using to debate with lockdownistas.
And of course Merry Christmas too to the lovely readers and commenters here, you have been a beacon of common sense, rationality, knowledge and humour all throughout this shit show. There are times I’ve felt down but you have rallied around be it to like my comments, reply, give words of comfort and offer advice. I can’t thank all of you enough.
Mr Bart and I will be sitting down to enjoy our Christmas together but our thoughts will be with people we know who will be alone especially Mr Bart’s dad who we have been unable to visit due to the insanity not only of the rules here but also in the Democratic People’s Republic of Scotland.
Let’s all stay strong and keep our heads held high.
Merry Christmas and God bless us every one!
And to you and Mr Bart! Regards from Tunbridge Wells.
Festive greetings from HMP London!!!
God bless you both! From a free soul in Gulag Wales.
Thanks and best wishes from the inmates in HMP London.
Back atcha Bart. From a soon-to-be tier 4 Andean outpost. 🦙
Merry Christmas and a happier new year to everyone.
The article above, on what is happening in Germany, gives me hope. I’ve sent it to my MP-he needs to understand why I’m so angry.
You’re welcome. And same to you as well, all the best and still have the trip to your cafe on my list now moved to next year.
I’ve been to Audley End House in the past but not to Saffron Walden itself. Was planning to make a trip until Lockdown 2 put a kibosh to my plans.
Merry Christmas to the Simpsons, from the Panic household
Merry Christmas!
And to you, your family and your boyfriend!
KH, I’m a bit late to the party, but I’m apalled that someone ‘had a go’. Even more so that it was on here. Don’t know what happened, but if you said something stupid, I would expect folk on here to robustly correct you, however I very much doubt that was the case. Stay strong, stay *you* and try to enjoy the upcoming strange celebration. I can’t bring myself to say the words ‘Merry Christmas’. Oh, damn. 🙂
Londons figures yesterday. Hancock continues with the lies.
Does anyone in this country believe a word he says now?
Someone told me yesterday that her partner who I’ve taken to be an equable quiet retired ex miner wanted to punch him in the facewhen he last saw him on TV.
Judging from comments on here,he’d have to join an awfully long queue.
I am rather hoping to find his head on a stick under my tree tomorrow – that would be the best present ever.
They can continue to lie because the Commons and the media are not doing their job in holding the Government to account.
The public is at fault too.
The PTB have gone from crying “Wolf!” to crying “Fire-breathing dragons!!!” and the sheeple still swallow the bollox whole.
I mentioned similarities between today’s medico/political weird out and the McCarthyism of the U.S.A. in the early 1950s One immediate and telling response on here was that ‘McCarthy was right’ McCarthyism disintegrated in four years but clearly still has a long shadow. It was also one manifestation of a much wider political battle. ‘The political terror of the early 1950s, in which McCarthy was to play the role of a bush league Robespierre, was set off by wider forces and conflicts than a quarrel over whether or not the Roosevelt and Truman administrations had been penetrated by foreign agents.’ ‘In the eyes of celebrity liberalism, those up in arms about the government’s acceptance of communist ambition were the unappetizing people of the dull world of the lower middle class. They were the piano-legged babushkas of American politics, stolid Slavs and such, thick of finger and numb of mind. In the ongoing kulturkampf dividing the society, the elites of Hollywood, Cambridge and liberal think-tankery had little sympathy for bow-legged men with their American Legion caps…’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1996/04/14/was-mccarthy-right-about-the-left/a0dc6726-e2fd-4a31-bcdd-5f352acbf5de/ So not much changes. But the point is, lockdown scepticism is a long game and, frustratingly slow though it may be, the arguments made by… Read more »
Wankok and McCarthy must be related.
Of all the names for Wankok, Wankok makes me laugh the most.
Mutant Matt Wancock
These historical parallels are most interesting and informative.
From my vague recollections of Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions, which I read a very long time ago, and the history of financial bubbles, I imagined back in March that the covid hysteria may last a few months, perhaps even six months.
But here we are, into ten months and no sign of a let-up yet. I wonder if there is indeed anything to be gleaned about the duration of the sort of mass mania we are going through from historical examples. I haven’t got the time at the moment to go back through the text books, but the four year example of McCarthyism doesn’t sound encouraging.
No matter. Carry on.
I don’t call it “McCarthyism”, more the “Red Scare”. McCarthy came to prominence in 1950. But they started going after “Reds” in Hollywood in 1947 – the “Hollywood Ten”. McCarthy was a Senator but the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) was connected to the House of Representatives. McCarthy coincided with the Korean War, which lasted three years. Significantly he fell from grace after the war was over.
I need to read up on that. I’ve read The Crucible, which is a take on it, and much of what is going on now has parallels with 17th-century witch hunting.
The Red Scare ran approximately from 1947 to the late 1950s – some of the bureaucratic traces outlived his influence. McCarthy lost influence in 1954 when hearings he conducted into Communist influence in the US Army made him look bad (they were televised and McCarthy was not photogenic). His associate, Roy Cohn, remained in the public eye and was a mentor of the young Donald Trump.
As late as 1958, US authorities deported William Heikkila, a Finnish-born man, on the grounds that he had been a Communist in the 1930s. Heikkila was picked up from his workplace in California and stuck on a plane to Helsinki, still wearing lightweight clothing unsuited to the Finnish climate. After legal pressure Heikkila was brought back to the USA and died there a few years later, still fighting deportation attempts.
Hold on, McCarthy wasn’t right was he? Or was he? Please excuse my ignorance, the Cold War not a period in history I know a huge amount about! I read this book a while ago but let me know if anyone has any good recommendations
best, very much counter prevailing ‘wisdom, book on McCarthy is ‘Blacklisted by History’ by M. Stanton Evans. Evans enjoyed access to newly available official documents of the era. Found McCarthy was indeed far more right than wrong. But his face, background, and manners did not fit (sound familiar?!). His reputation is still being trashed on a permanent loop; truth will not be allowed out. Under the smoke of this hue and cry, The Left has quietly taken over the commanding heights of all US institutions: academia, judiciary, media, politics, technology. Sorry, meant ‘all Western institutions’.
Actually even anti-Communists thought McCarthy was going too far. Whittaker Chambers for example thought he was going to make some huge mistake eventually and discredit the cause of anti-Communism. His campaign against Communists in the US Army failed to gain traction – tens of thousands of US soldiers had been killed fighting in Korea, while McCarthy’s associate Roy Cohn had evaded military service in both WW2 and the Korean War. McCarthy came across badly on television, and the sight of him and the equally unphotogenic Cohn talking tactics together with a hand muffling the microphone made them both look unappetising. Newspaper reporting tended to favour McCarthy – even hostile reporting drew attention to him, but TV coverage diminished him. It is notable that J. Edgar Hoover had fed FBI information to him and they were photographed together but after the Army hearings he decided McCarthy was damaged goods and ceased backing him. He also lost backing in the Republican Party – his claims that the Truman government had been treasonable did not damage his standing but when he started to say the treason continued under the Republican Eisenhower he undercut himself. The Cohn factor has also to be taken into… Read more »
McCarthy history was big when I was at school in 60s, Crucible (Miller), protest songs etc. The boot is on the other foot now of course with the Woke out McCarthying McCarthy.
It’s when we learned about ‘Pleading the 5th’ which many did before HUAC.
I’ve just opened my Christmas Card from the pig dictator and the idiot half child and it reads
Lockdown One didn’t work Your fault
Track and Trace didn’t work Your fault
Second lockdown didn’t work Your fault
Firebreaks didn’t work Your fault
Closing pubs didn’t work Your fault
Masks failed Your fault
Mutant virus Your fault
Mass testing failed Your fault
Hospitals failing Your fault
Social distancing failed Your fault
Tiers failed Your fault
3rd lockdown fail Your fault
Economic crash Your fault
Refusing to believe lies. Your fault.
So he’s not blaming us for the Exponential rise in suicides then ?
Pig dictator narc blame shifting.
‘Idiot half child’ 😂
Good list. These are reasons why people can wake up once the failures are pointed out to them. The list sows tge seed of doubt in some. A reflection for a period of time and perhaps one or two more failures added during that reflection period.
Perhaps giving that list in a christmas card isn’t such a bad idea.
Vaccine triumph (because we say so) Our heroic rescue.
Our health minister bandies the word ‘complacency’ around, pointed at we citizens of NSW. He names people when it suits him, but then admonishes people on social media for the same behaviour. Then it is not a ‘blame game’. Folks we have 2 people in hospital in NSW not in ICU. Australia wide 21 in hospital not in ICU. Around 20 odd million in this country. Go figure.
There has never been, nor ever will be any progress in human endeavours without scepticism.
David Hume was good at it.
Figures for the Overberg region of Western Cape approx 80 miles from Cape Town. Total population 267,000. Cases 481, that’s 0.167% of the population. Wankcock muddies the waters yet again.
Figures for the Overberg region of Western Cape approx 80 miles from Cape Town. Total population 267,000. Cases 481, that’s 0.167% of the population. Wankcock muddies the waters yet again.
It looks like from BBC story the entire ‘dangerous new South African variant’ story seems to be based on tweets by one individual who seems to be their equivalent of Whitty or Vallance. Has anyone checked his background to see what connections he has to big pharma or Gates?
Much better to check with Pandata which is SA based and doing great work.
https://pandata.org/
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to Toby and crew and all readers of Lockdown Sceptics.
Sinister nod to the new normal here
https://twitter.com/JustinWelby/status/1342017251654963200?s=20
He should concentrate on the flock and not petty politics
Anyone missing Kay Burley? Thought not.
There is not exactly a long line of sceptics ready to take her place. Apologies to be negative but there is nobody in MSM to ‘hang our hat on’. I’m enjoying Piers Morgan’s lad coming out as a strong LS However.