Lockdown 3.0 – If at First You Don’t Succeed…
Boris Johnson gave a televised address to the nation yesterday in which he announced a new national lockdown, instructing the population yet again to “stay home, protect the NHS, save lives”. The Telegraph has the details:
Boris Johnson has plunged England into a third national lockdown to try to curb the rapid spread of coronavirus, as the country moved to Covid Alert Level 5.
The lockdown means people will only be able to leave their homes for limited reasons, with measures expected to stay in place until mid-February.
In an address to the nation, the Prime Minister said the new coronavirus variant – which is 50 to 70% more transmissible – was spreading in a “frustrating and alarming” manner.
“As I speak to you tonight, our hospitals are under more pressure from Covid than at any time since the start of the pandemic,” he said.
The regulations are expected to be laid before Parliament on Tuesday, January 5th, with MPs retrospectively being given a vote after they are recalled early from the Christmas break on January 6th.
The third national lockdown, the strictest since last spring, begins immediately.
The new rules include:
- Everyone living in England has been told to stay at home, and only to go out for specific reasons. Mr Johnson said: “You may only leave home for limited reasons permitted in law, such as to shop for essentials, to work if you absolutely cannot work from home, to exercise, to seek medical assistance such as getting a Covid test, or to escape domestic abuse.”
- People who are clinically vulnerable and who were previously told to shield should stay at home and only leave for medical appointments and exercise
- Primary and secondary schools will close immediately and move to online learning for all pupils except children of key workers and the most vulnerable. This will apply until at least mid-February and GCSE and A-level exams will be cancelled for the second year in a row.
- University students will not be allowed to return to their institutions and will be expected to study from their current residence.
- Non-essential retailers will be shut in the whole of England, together with gyms, hairdressers, sports facilities, pubs and restaurants. Restaurants and other hospitality venues can continue delivery or takeaway services but will no longer be permitted to serve alcohol.
Eagle-eyed readers will have spotted that nearly all of these restrictions already apply in Tier 4 areas, save for the fact that hospitality venues will no longer be allowed to sell takeaway alcohol. True, schools won’t reopen, but schools weren’t open in Tier 4 areas until yesterday – and in many Tier 4 areas not even then.
But if the existing restrictions haven’t been sufficient to contain the virus in Tier 4 areas like London, why does Boris think extending those restrictions to the rest of the country will “squash the sombrero”?
Needless to say, there were several references to the new mutant variant in Boris’s address:
The Prime Minister said that on December 29th “more than 80,000 people tested positive for Covid across the UK”, the number of deaths is up by 20% over the last week “and will sadly rise further”.
“It’s clear that we need to do more together to bring this new variant under control while our vaccines are rolled out,” he said.
“In England we must therefore go into a national lockdown which is tough enough to contain this variant.”
Given that this is the same old solution, we are entitled to ask the same old questions.
First, infections. Any decline in daily cases will likely be credited to the lockdown, but Professor Tim Spector says that his ZOE app is already showing an interesting trend:
Then there’s the question of whether extending Tier 4 restrictions to the entire country will “protect the NHS”, given that it is supposedly on the point of being overwhelmed in London, which has been in Tier 4 since December 20th.
The Telegraph reports that the Joint Chief Medical Officers have placed the country in COVID-19 alert level 5, meaning that there is a “material risk of health care services being overwhelmed” and the Chief Medical Officers have issued a joint statement:
We are not confident that the NHS can handle a further sustained rise in cases and without further action there is a material risk of the NHS in several areas being overwhelmed over the next 21 days.
Peter Hitchens, however, has a question:
And Dr Clare Craig highlights some key points in a bit of data analysis done by Joel Smalley showing that, in fact, the level of hospital admissions is completely normal for this time of year, as is winter mortality.
Boris set no specific end date for the lockdown, but he said schools wouldn’t return until at least mid-February – by which he means late February, since mid-February is when half-term is. He indicated that it depends on the successful rollout of the vaccines. Though close to being overwhelmed, the NHS hopes to offer a first dose to everyone in the top four priority groups, a total of 13,900,000 people according to vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi. If we manage to vaccinate 1.5 million/week, that will mean the third lockdown will last until mid-March.
Although that’s probably wildly optimistic. Only a few days ago, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van Tam was eager to pour cold water on the notion that a vaccine can set you free, as the MailOnline records.
Professor Jonathan Van-Tam was asked at Wednesday’s Downing Street press conference whether people who have had two doses of a vaccine would still have to follow strict rules such as not seeing their families.
The scientist defined the question as whether “it’s OK to behave with wild abandon and go off to the bingo halls and so forth”.
He said a lot was still unknown about whether jabs stopped people passing the disease to others and urged people to be “patient”.
The official told reporters that the magic phrase was “transmission” and said scientists would know within a couple of months how effective the vaccines are at reducing the chances of “severe illness” from Covid.
Boris said that people should follow the lockdown rules from now, that they would become law in the early hours of Wednesday, and that parliament would meet remotely later that day. Peter Hitchens says that it is time to write to MPs again and offers some suggested wording.
Stop Press: Several readers have got in touch to point out that the reason for the alarming case data Boris cited in his announcement – 80,000 on December 29th alone – is because the UK is testing more people than any other European country. One reader has calculated that we’re currently testing between six and 14 times more people every day than France, Italy and Germany. Another drew our attention to the number of “cases” in the UK for January 4th as recorded on Worldometers, which dwarfed that of France, Italy and Germany, even though the number of deaths is quite similar:
UK – 58,784 Cases/407 deaths
France – 4,022 Case/378 deaths
Italy – 10,800 Cases/348 deaths
Germany – 8,039 Cases/527 deaths
“Strange,” says the reader. “Over 10 times more cases than France with a similar number of deaths. Germany had over 100 more deaths, but 50,000 fewer cases.”
The explanation? Matt Hancock and his obsession with administering as many PCR tests each day as possible.
Stop Press 2: There is perhaps, as Professor Martin Kulldorff points out, a small crumb of comfort in the return to national lockdown. The fact that there’s another one shows that the sceptics were right: they don’t work.
Notifiable Disease Data and the Case for the Epidemic Phase of COVID-19 being a Spring Phenomenon
Regular Lockdown Sceptics contributor Dr Clare Craig, and her colleagues Jonathan Engler and Joel Smalley, have taken a close look at the notifiable disease data together with other sources. Examined on a regional basis, they conclude that the autumn surge may be an artefact of enthusiastic reporting in the South West which would indicate that the epidemic phase of COVID-19 concluded with the end of the first surge in Spring. Their contention is that Covid is now endemic and we’re not in the midst of a genuine “surge” in infections and deaths, which is why the winter mortality data is normal.
When a notifiable disease, such as COVID-19, is recorded the location of the patient involved is also recorded. If notifiable disease data is a reliable measure of symptomatic COVID, then there is a striking South West predominance in the Autumn.
The latest data shows continuing decline in notified cases of COVID-19, with only 50 cases notified to Public Health England in the week ending 20th December and 85 cases in the week ending 27th December. Other datasets including, 111 triage data, 999 triage data, ambulance surveillance data, accident and emergency attendance data and excess death data all indicate a Spring epidemic which ended at the end of May or beginning of June, a regionalised Autumn second ripple, and then a return to baseline. This baseline will be a normal level for winter as COVID is now endemic. The only data that does not fit with the other measures is the data dependent on PCR testing.
The numbers of cases that have been notified are a very small percentage of PCR positive results, despite it being a statutory obligation for the treating doctor to notify even a suspicion of a case.
We have previously discussed why notifiable disease reports for COVID-19 may have been lower than expected…
However, closer inspection suggests that the Autumn “2nd peak” of Notifiable Covid may in fact be an artefact which does not represent the true picture nationally, since nearly all the deaths notified during Autumn were in fact from the South West region, with the peak in that area reaching numbers beyond those seen for other regions in Spring.
Very much worth reading in full.
Critical Care Beds Not Overwhelmed
A Lockdown Sceptics reader has crunched the numbers on NHS critical care bed occupancy and sent us his analysis.
The Sunday Times published the list of critical care beds by NHS trust region, without too much drilling down. I’ve taken the trouble to do that. It’s based on NHS numbers. I looked at it because the article was provocatively titled “Already Full” without data backing it up.
They base the data on 4,518 beds, which would be Adult Critical Care Beds approximating to the 4,119 shown below so the data is quite robust. The occupancy data includes the likes of Christie, a specialist cancer hospital, so I guess there will be some beds that aren’t available for COVID-19 patients.
The Sunday Times report quotes x beds at y% occupancy. I’ve converted each hospital’s data to show the weighted equivalent beds, and then aggregated them regionally. I then use the weighted numbers in use with the total beds per region. I think that is a reasonable approach. National weighted utilisation is about 76% using this method
There are obviously some hospitals with critical situations, but no specific region is at 90% or more, with London the highest at 87%. I’ve looked at the categories of utilisation to see how many of the beds available are critically overloaded. I’ve identified 90-100% utilisation beds in amber and red below
Stop Press: The unavailability of critical care beds, then, is not yet a problem for the NHS, but a Spectator reader has a good idea what might be. He left a comment underneath an update from Katy Balls
We have enough critical care beds but not enough staff with 30 – 40% nurses off self isolating with a (probably false) positive PCR test. Instead of the usual couple of days off sick they now have 10 days minimum. Add to that the measures put in place to separate positive from negative patients and you have a self inflicted recipe for disaster. No one will ever now admit their earlier mistakes and will continue to double down on ineffective measures. The whole mass PCR testing and SAGE advice/affair is an economic catastrophe.
We now have recently vaccinated Drs off with a positive test but no symptoms.
Asymptomatic spread has now been shown to be a myth undermining the whole rationale for any lockdown.
You just have to ask why?
Letter From a Reader to His MP About Lockdown 3.0
Readers forward us so many letters that they’ve written to their MPs that we cannot publish all of them. But from time to time we’re sent a real humdinger. Below is one such, sent to Sir Iain Duncan Smith. If you’re thinking of taking up Peter Hitchens’s advice to write to your MP in advance of Wednesday’s vote, there are some good facts here you might be able to use.
Dear Sir Iain,
I hope you are keeping well. I have a couple of questions in respect of the government’s vaccination program/ongoing lockdown strategy (and its tragic impact) that I would be grateful if you could supply answers to.
Preamble: It has been scientifically established that COVID-19 is a low risk pathogen to most (group A), to such an extent that the majority who are infected suffer no symptoms, and that even for those who do suffer symptoms, they are generally mild/akin to flu.
It has also been scientifically established however that for a minority of primarily very elderly or unwell people (group B), COVID-19 presents a high risk pathogen that often proves fatal.
Question one: In the UK, group B consists of c.2.5M people, to which end why should some 30M or more people be vaccinated once the said 2.5M people have been?
Shelving questions of cost, necessity and disruption, it is important that people who don’t need vaccinations don’t have them as it enables their immune systems to develop a natural resistance to the pathogen in question, a resistance that may save them when its next variant inevitably besets them (such immunity preventing pandemics).
Moreover according to the ONS in the week to December 3rd alone 800,000 people in the UK were infected with COVID-19. Mindful of the fact that 70-90% of those infected with Covid show no symptoms, this would indicate that, even allowing for the well who got tested and whose infection was thus detected, some 4M+ of the UK population was infected in a given week, such that, allowing for the fact that the virus has been alive in our society now for an annum, surely it is only a matter of weeks before 30M people have either established a natural immunity to COVID-19 by dint of infection, or were always immune to it by way of past exposure to coronaviruses (last week 341,946 people were recorded by the ONS as having been infected, meaning, a la the same metric, a further 3M+ people were effectively immunised in just that seven day period).
Question two: In light of the fact that all of group B who wish it will be vaccinated by c. January 14th at the going rate, and that those not in this group have little to fear from COVID-19, and that tens of millions of people must already have had COVID-19 (or are immune to it by virtue of exposure to past corona viruses), why is it necessary to perpetuate lockdown measures beyond this date, measures that are both economically, socially and literally murderous? (Please see ref. below re the lockdown death toll).
This is not an idle question. As you are no doubt aware Bristol University, for one, has forecast that Parliament’s response to COVID-19 (as of early November, 2020) will ultimately kill 560,000 UK citizens, a figure more than twice that of the worst case Covid-death scenario of 250,000.
Similarly the ONS predicted earlier in 2020 year that Lockdowns and anti-Covid measures will kill 200,000 UK citizens of all ages in the medium to long term, due to missed medical diagnoses, missed treatments, loss of jobs, loss of tax revenue etcetera.
In line with these dire estimations, the 2020 death statistics (as tallied by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries) indicate that of the 71,200 excess deaths recorded since the pandemic commenced, 46,721 of these must be attributed to lockdown measures – a rate of over 1000 people a week – which is nearly double the remaining 24,479 people who, according to the Institute, died during the same period due to COVID-19 (NB though 73,512 people died in 2020 with COVID-19, 66% of these would have died of other pathologies in 2020 anyway, as was freely admitted by Professor Neil Fergusson before the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee on March 25th, and thus would not figure in the 71,200 excess death figure for that year).
To conclude, setting aside human rights, civil liberties, Magna Carta and other, now apparently trivial issues (which two million British servicemen laid down their lives for), it can be safely taken that the unjust impositions placed upon the UK public, as well as ruining lives, livelihoods and the economy, are killing a thousand among our number a week at least, and thus must be lifted as a matter of urgency (and certainly not left in force until Easter, like some devilish Lent).
Thank you for your anticipated response.
Scotland Gets in First
The First Minister, as always, made sure she got her lockdown announcement in first, announcing it six hours before Boris announced his. The Scottish Sun has a summary:
The First Minister yesterday announced that the country would enter another full shut down.
There will be a legal stay-at-home order from 12am – just like last March – with £60 minimum fines for breaches.
She addressed Parliament yesterday and explained that the current situation was “extremely serious” – adding that the new variant of the virus was a “massive blow”.
Ms Sturgeon confirmed that vulnerable children and kids of key workers will still be able to go to school to ensure they are cared for.
She added that getting kids across the country back into classrooms will be a “priority” – and said that there will be a review later this month.
Churches and places of worship will be forced to shut, except for funerals and weddings.
A maximum of 20 people will be able to attend funeral services – with only five guests now allowed at weddings and civil partnerships.
She also confirmed that rules on non-essential businesses will be tightened further. Showrooms in retail outlets will be forced to close, while cosmetic and beauty outlets will not be able to operate.
Leisure venues such as ski centres which had been open until now will also have to shut in a bid to suppress the spread of the virus.
The SNP leader said government ministers would consult with businesses who have been hit by the latest wave of restrictions.
Worth reading in full.
As usual the Scottish lockdown is even more severe than the English one, closing both nurseries and churches which Boris has left open.
Stop Press: Police Scotland has unveiled a new online reporting tool so citizens can grass each other up for breaking lockdown rules without having to get up out of their armchairs.
Stop Press 2: Not wanting to be left out, Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster has announced that her stay-at-home message is to be made law. Apparently, too many people were leaving their homes without a reasonable excuse. The nation is in week two of a six week lockdown. Sky News has the story.
Do Children No Longer Matter?
Edinburghlive reports that Rod Grant, the headmaster of Clifton Hall School, has hit out at the decision to close schools, pointing out the impact it has on children who, he says, seem to be bottom of the Scottish Executive’s priorities. His comments are worth reproducing in full.
In 31 years of teaching, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so despondent and so concerned at the same time. Our world is in the grip of a pandemic and governments across the globe have poured billions of pounds into fighting it and in trying to support the lockdown strategy. Makes me wonder why we couldn’t tackle other issues globally and so ferociously in terms of spend. What about the Climate Emergency? The obesity pandemic? The fact that in 2021 we still have people living on the street; that it takes an international footballer, Marcus Rashford, to shame the British Government into feeding children during school holidays. And what does that also tell us about the current levels of poverty in the UK? What about the 1,500 people that die every day in the UK from the big three: heart disease, strokes and cancer-related illnesses. Why haven’t we taken these issues as seriously as we have a virus which is likely to end up with a mortality rate of well below 1%, and which, according to the Office for National Statistics has an average age of death in the UK of 83. Meanwhile, in Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city, men have a life expectancy of 71.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist; I’m not some radical on the fringes of a fringe. I’m just a teacher and this is what I see:
In the last three months, in my school and in schools like it, I am witnessing mental health issues unlike anything I’ve seen in my career. This is not me trying to be dramatic or to overplay what lockdown actually does to children. I am seeing children being diagnosed with clinical depression, increasing rates of self-harm (even in Scotland, where we already had the highest rate of self-harm in 15 year-old girls anywhere in the world, bar one), suicidal ideation and, something I haven’t seen for at least 20 years, a resurgence of eating disorders. Add to this, those students who are displaying worrying levels of stress and anxiety; the same students that describe online learning as stress inducing. Anyone that has been involved in a Zoom meeting knows how stressful it can be and yet the great solution to our educational recovery is online learning. Well, I’m an educator and I think, at best, it’s a horribly poor substitute for in-school learning.
Right throughout this pandemic, the needs of our children seem to be at the bottom of every Government’s priority list. The cynic in me might suggest that it is because they can’t vote. Fortunately, I’m not cynical. To me, it’s actually just as worrying though to suggest that kids don’t really matter that much if they are not dying.
At the moment, there seems to be no alternative voice; no political party willing to stand up for children’s plight, no media criticism; merely, more nodding in agreement that lockdown is the only solution. Well, just remember in our attempts to suppress a virus and ‘to save the NHS’ that the price we pay is the downward spiral in the mental well-being of our children and a legacy of under-achievement as a result. Last summer, individual children were the lowest priority in Government as seen in the examination results fiasco. As of the 2nd January, there is not one single hospital bed available for any young person suffering from mental health issues anywhere in Scotland. The current waiting time for a mental health appointment with CAMHS in the Lothians is six months. Utterly disgraceful.
Children need to be with their friends. They need to play. They need to develop their social and academic skills. How dare we have created an environment where a 5 year-old can say, “I can’t play with Freddy because he’s not part of my bubble”. It is the stuff of nonsense and it is our children who will end up being this lockdown’s “collateral damage”.
Schools need to be open and they need to open now
Stop Press: Us For Them, the group of mums campaigning to keep schools open, have put out an urgent call to action, asking for like-minded members of the public to write to MPs and others about schools closures. Do support them.
Stop Press 2: John Dickens has totted up the number of U-turns the Government has performed in the past week over schools for Schools Week. He makes it five. Can anyone improve on that?
Catastrophe of Postponing Mocks in Scotland
A Scottish teacher has got in touch to point out that the closure of Scottish schools for the whole of January will make it nigh on impossible for schools to assess their pupils.
It may interest you to know that thanks to Sturgeon’s latest panic lockdown, schools in Scotland may find it almost impossible to provide meaningful assessment data to the SQA. (Scotland’s qualification awarding body.) I am a teacher and the exams officer in a Scottish secondary school, and I am amazed that no one reminded Sturgeon that almost all Scottish secondary schools sit their preliminary (mock) exams in January.
We were expecting these exams to provide the bulk of the evidence which would be used in forming assessment grades. Now that we are to return in February, schools will struggle to have prelim exams before February mid term holidays. Of course, it is also very unfair on the candidates. Most of them were getting to the point where they were ready to sit exams. Now that has to be put on hold for another month as teaching and learning continues remotely. However, remote learning is no substitute for classroom work and exam candidates will inevitably drift somewhat between now and February. I doubt they will be at their best for prelims, whenever they eventually happen.
Of course, the SQA has been forced several times to change its plans. The last change was just a few weeks ago. And here we go again: their plans and key dates will have to be altered again.
So, she may have found yesterday’s decision a difficult one to make, but once again she has decided to inflict misery on young learners in order to pursue her reckless policy of eliminating the virus. Perhaps it mutated because of lockdown? Make it harder to catch and it mutated to make the virus easier to spread?!
Anyway, I’d be grateful if you could keep my name out of this as the Scottish Government is not slow to punish those who speak up against it!
What Will Happen to Democracy if We Stop Educating Our Children?
We’re publishing another original piece today by Dr David McGrogan, an Associate Professor at Northumbria Law School. This time his subject is the long-term consequences of our neglect of education – which is the loss of freedom and, ultimately, the failure of our democracy. Here are the opening three paragraphs.
Of all the tragic, unnecessary and shameful consequences of the 2020 lockdowns, school closures may be the worst. A healthy society prioritises its young; we have sacrificed their life chances to ameliorate the terrors of the old. But the educational consequences of our collective reaction to this virus are more far-reaching than ‘just’ the closure of schools. Indeed, it is my fear that the death of liberal education is happening right in front of our eyes.
This is a strong statement and requires some explanation.
Thoughtful liberals have always recognised that education is the very foundation of liberalism itself. (And here, it is important to make clear that in using the word ‘liberalism’ I am not referring to the soft-left progressivism which is sometimes meant by that term. Rather, I am referring to classical liberalism – the political philosophy that, in a nutshell, considers it foundational that the power of the State ought to be legally constrained by a system of individual rights, such as those to property, freedom of association, freedom of expression, and so on.) This is because, contrary to how its adherents are often caricatured, they have long recognised that there is nothing inevitable about liberalism. Indeed, liberalism rather goes against the grain of innate human characteristics. It sits uncomfortably alongside democracy in particular, because human beings have the tendency to use democracy for illiberal ends. Occasionally, of course, this has manifested itself in outright fascism, as in the first half of the 20th century, but much more frequently those illiberal ends are ostensibly benevolent rather than racist or hateful. The danger is not that mass democracy will usher in dictatorship. It is that it will usher in what Kant called “the worst form of despotism” – an all-encompassing, paternalistic kindness that utterly smothers freedom.
Like Dr McGrogan’s previous piece, this one is worth reading in full.
Stop Press: A reader sent us a response to Dr McGrogan’s last piece, as well as Guy de la Bédoyère reply.
I believe that the two articles by David McGrogan and Guy de la Bedoyere pretty much nail the issues. My only thought would be that fear is usually a big part of these collective hysterias historically. It’s the starting point for the irrationality; whether that be fear of witches in Salem, fear of other internal groups in Weimar Germany or fear of every other European country in the outbreak of WW1.
Most people are still affected by the images they saw on TV in February and March. We are now in a loop where a critical mass of the population has stayed afraid and, as is usual in history, has moralized their fear into certain religious rituals such as lock downs, masks and so forth that give assurance. Of course, nobody admits to be being afraid for themselves either; it is all about protecting others. It always is. Government is then just responding and is in a state of fear too that it will be blamed. Whether any of these things work or not is irrelevant to the debate. They are rituals that are needed as part of the collective assurance seeking. Just like the pointless offensives in World War One. They were part of trying to “do something”. Third Lockdown equals Third Battle of Ypres. Anyone who questions is then a heretic and an evil person. Owen Jones, Piers Morgan and Neil Ferguson are just updated witch doctors.
My belief is that there is very little that can be done now to alter this. It will have to play out. At some point, historians will look back and wonder why we lost our sanity. But it will take time. The General Melchetts of 1914-8 were actually very popular at the time. They even named the Earl Haig Fund after the prime one. It was only in the 1930s that the reaction set in.
What Ever Happened To The Flu?
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One of the curiosities in the winter surge in Covid cases has been the drop in influenza cases, both in the UK and elsewhere. Often this is chalked up to the beneficial effects of masks and social distancing, but one maverick epidemiologist has an alternative theory as Just the News reports:
Where have all the flu cases gone?
Epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski thinks he can answer the riddle.
“Influenza has been renamed COVID-19 in large part,” said the former Head of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Research Design at Rockefeller University.
“There may be quite a number of influenza cases included in the ‘presumed COVID-19’ category of people who have COVID-19 symptoms (which Influenza symptoms can be mistaken for), but are not tested for SARS RNA,” Wittkowski told Just the News on Thursday.
Those patients, he argued, “also may have some SARS RNA sitting in their nose while being infected with Influenza, in which case the influenza would be ‘confirmed’ to be COVID-19.”
The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly influenza surveillance tracker reports that the cumulative positive influenza test rate from late September into the week of December 19th stands at 0.2% as measured by clinical labs. That’s compared to a cumulative 8.7% from a year before.
Other experts in the field offer a more conventional explanation:
Timothy Sly, an Epidemiology Professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, told Just the News that “the reduced incidence of seasonal influenza is almost certainly due to the protection that a large proportion of the population has been using for many months”. Those measures, he said, are “designed to be effective against any airborne respiratory virus”.
Holden Maecker, a Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University, echoed that assessment… Speculating on why COVID-19 levels have continued to soar if those measures have been so effective at stopping the flu, Maecker said: “I think it’s because (1) there is less pre-existing immunity to SARS-CoV-2 in the population, whereas most of us have had vaccines and/or previous bouts with flu; and (2) the SARS-CoV-2 virus seems to spread more easily than influenza, including more aerosol transmission and ‘super-spreader’ events.”
Wittkowski, though, is not convinced. He’s been a long-standing critic of COVID-19 mitigation measures and there is data to back him up:
“I think that these viruses are more similar than people want to acknowledge,” says Wittkowski. “People know everybody is wearing masks and distancing, and so people want to come up with things that are good about it.”
Public health officials have at times struggled to explain why positive COVID-19 tests have surged upward in places, such as California, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, where policies such as social distancing and mask mandates have been in place for months.
Data indicate that more than nine out of every 10 Americans in most states are wearing masks in public regularly; those numbers have been above 80% since the early fall. Yet average positive COVID-19 tests have multiplied by nearly seven times since the spring peak.
Worth reading in full.
Eternal Lockdown, Wooden Horses and Shiny Things
Jake Woodhouse, a bestselling novelist, has sent us an interesting reflection on the consequences of society’s love for Google, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. The internet has brought us many great things, he says, but it has also brought us this year’s panic-driven, pro-lockdown hysteria.
On February 4th 2004 the technological equivalent of a Trojan Horse was quietly rolled onto the internet. There had been others of course, Google being the obvious example of a new kind of business which provided a service to customers for free, but none which have come to symbolize the new era as much as Facebook. Do we even remember a time before Facebook? Or any of the other companies such as Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube who have come to dominate our society, changed the way we interact, how we do business, how we live our lives?
And could we have predicated how this massive garnering of our attention has turned out? It seems not. At the beginning of 2021 it has now become alarmingly clear that we have given up our freedoms for a few shiny baubles. We have scrolled, clicked and liked our way into a trap so large and so dangerous, that our very liberty is now at stake. And yet, unbelievably, many of us have yet to pull back from the constant stream of notifications on our screens long enough to see it.
The Internet has given us many good things. It has facilitated the dissemination of ideas quicker and more widely than at any other time in history, it has given artists and musicians a platform, and it has allowed so much innovation which has made our day-to-day lives easier. There are bad sides too, terrorism, hate, and the rise of mega-businesses which have been able to quietly crush their small opposition.
All of this we know, but we accept it because times have to change, and when we order something from Amazon and it arrives that very same day part of us can’t suppress the glee that such easy wish fulfilment is possible. How lucky we are.
None of this is news to anyone. But what this last year has shown, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that there is something far, far darker lurking in this new hyper-connected world.
Worth reading in full.
All the Lonely People
We’re publishing an original piece today by Jonny Peppiatt, the author of the poem we published yesterday about suicidal ideation. Today’s contribution is about loneliness and the well-established link between loneliness and depression. Here’s an extract:
Before we go any further, I think it would be a good idea to explain what loneliness is, because it isn’t as simple as not having friends or being alone. It is a process within the brain that has been designed by evolution that gives you a feeling as a result of believing you have limited or no connections that provide a sense of mutual aid and protection with other individuals.
Human beings began as a species on the savannahs of Africa but survived as a species because of cooperation and tribal support. If you were an individual who became separated from your tribe, no one would care for you should you fall sick, you would be unable to hunt effectively, and you would be vulnerable to predators; and it is because of this that the brain developed a way to send an urgent signal to reconnect with your tribe in the form of loneliness and a sense of insecurity.
In today’s world, however, the connection that we need is slightly different: mutuality remains a necessity, and aid and protection are still important, although these come as a by-product of simply caring for one another; but avoiding loneliness is also about sharing something that matters to both sides of the connection, which gives rise to an interesting facet of loneliness: it has varying degrees not just in intensity but also in breadth.
Take, for example, three things I care deeply about: writing; cricket; and the queer community. I have people I discuss literature with, and I have people with whom I swap articles and pieces of work with; I have friends I play cricket with, and I have friends waiting around the corner to go to cricket with; but I have no queer community. Somehow, I have ended up with no friends – who would really truly understand – with whom I can discuss the struggles our community faces internally and externally, or the wondrous strides that have been made, or anything else that can be ‘explained’ but cannot be genuinely understood by someone outside of the community, someone who hasn’t lived it, and, because of this, I often feel intensely lonely in this very important aspect of my life.
This one is worth reading in full, particularly the day after a third lockdown has been announced which, don’t forget, will mean a lot of single people being stranded by themselves.
Stop Press: A reader has spotted that the Government is currently carrying out a very timely consultation.
The Government is currently running a consultation on proposals to ban keeping primates as pets, on the grounds that their welfare often suffers from cramped conditions and limited social contact.
In fairness I should note that the bits about primates kept in “tiny cages” are entirely literal, but even so there are some choice lines about “hugely intelligent and socially complex animals” being “deprived of companions of their own kind”.
My favourite is: “‘Primate’ also includes humans but for the purposes of this consultation we are only concerned about non-human primates.”
Round-up
- “All but four EU countries banning UK arrivals” – The Telegraph reports that only four EU countries are allowing in non-essential travellers from the UK, and those four are imposing a requirement to quarantine
- “Scottish MP Margaret Ferrier arrested and charged over alleged Covid breach” – Prosecution beckons for the SNP MP who broke the Covid rules in Scotland, according to the Telegraph
- “Piers Morgan did not follow the Government’s Tier 3 advice” – GMB’s panicker-in-chief broke the rules, says Media Guido
- “Colchester Hospital: Covid deniers removed from ‘at capacity’ hospital” – Security at the hospital removed COVID-19 “deniers” who were taking pictures of empty corridors, reports the BBC
- “What vaccine trials” – Iain Davis exercises some scepticism about COVID-19 vaccine trials for Off-Guardian
- “Hundreds wrongly charged or convicted in virus cases” – The Times reports that nearly 350 people have been wrongly charged under coronavirus laws, and some have even been wrongly convicted
- “2020: The year that was” – Australian Paul Collits takes a look back at a memorable year for A Sense of Place Magazine.
- “Wuhan orders citizens to hoard emergency supplies after new years eve party” – Breitbart reports that Wuhan residents have been told to stock up on masks, first aid kits and other emergency supplies
- “Is France right to keep its schools open during the pandemic?” – The Local looks at how France has managed to keep its schools open, contrary to the example of other countries
- “Watch: Dr Fauci says national lockdown is ‘not out of the question’” – The Post Millennial reports the comments of Dr Fauci who is on course for the role of Chief Medical Advisor in the incoming Biden administration. Any guesses on how this might turn out?
- “Lockdown 3 is wrong, cruel and highly destructive” – It’s a cure that is worse than the disease writes Michael Curzon in Bournbrook
- “To lockdown hawks, battered babies are a price worth paying” – Laura Perrins in the Conservative Woman, responding to Dominic Lawson’s recent broadside linking lockdown sceptics to the ghost of Harold Shipman
- “Children are our future. Why aren’t we putting them first” – Jane Naumkin calls for an end to the assault on children’s education and wellbeing in the Conservative Woman
- “Freedom revisited: perhaps we need a new revelation” – Archbishop Cranmer considers the implications of sacrificing liberty in order to be free of a virus
- “Pandemic response is our Vietnam” – The similarities between the response to Vietnam and to coronavirus are striking, say Robert M. Sauer and Donald Siegel on the AIER blog. They are both public policy disasters
- “On living in harmony with nature” – Donald J. Boudreaux on the AIER blog says that human beings have never lived as inharmoniously with nature than during COVID-19 lockdowns
- “Covid debate: Martin Kulldorff and Eric Topal” – The two professors of medicine discuss the optimal public health response to the challenges posed by COVID-19 on the Tom Woods Show. Neither think that lockdowns are necessary
- Watch Sir Desmond Swayne being interviewed by Julia Hartley Brewer on talkRADIO
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Six Today: “Here We Go Again” by John Lennon, “When Will I See You Again” by Three Degrees, “Jailhouse Rock” by the Blues Brothers, “I Want to Break Free” by Queen, “Good Times Gone” by Nickelback and “Let Me Live Again” by Charley Pride.
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 as well as post comments below the line, 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, the news that the UK Government stands accused of pursuing a white nationalist agenda. The Guardian has the story:
The head of a race equality think tank has accused the Government of pursuing a divisive “white nationalist” agenda, prioritising the white working class at the expense of ethnic minorities in an attempt to win votes.
In her first interview since being appointed director of the Runnymede Trust, Halima Begum said ministers had failed to respond meaningfully to the “seismic shifts” represented by Black Lives Matters (BLM) protests and the disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on black and minority ethnic (BAME) Britons.
She said that while companies such as Penguin, Goldman Sachs and Apple had been approaching Runnymede to find out what they could do to tackle structural racism, and the public and even civil servants were engaging on the topic, the Government was denying its existence.
“I think the Government’s long-term plan is to work up white nationalism for the next elections,” said Begum. “What we should be saying is that working-class black and white communities have been left behind because they’ve seen industries demolished in the north of this country. We haven’t seen the economies built back, we haven’t seen investment in our education system for years so that our black, white and Asian working-class children will thrive.”
“What I see instead is the Conservatives pushing through [a narrative of] a white working-class that’s been left behind, which by the way is where Trump was at about six years ago.”
Worth reading in full if you have a taste for the absurd.
Over at Spiked, Rakib Ehsan has written a strong rebuttal. Concepts “such as ‘white culture’, ‘white oppression’ and ‘white privilege’, have set back race relations by years”, he says.
Begum’s intervention further confirms how the ‘anti-racism’ industry is being colonised by ideologues intent on keeping non-white people locked into a perpetual state of grievance and victimhood. The reality of the matter is that some of the most severely disadvantaged communities in the UK are predominantly white. These communities can be found in Britain’s long-abandoned post-industrial and coastal towns, which have suffered from long-term economic decline, and political and cultural exclusion, thanks to decades of free-market globalism and liberal cosmopolitanism. To suggest that devoting greater political attention to these neglected communities is a form of white nationalism is exactly the kind of hysterical identitarianism that undermines the broader anti-racist cause.
Begum is right that the BLM movement has caused seismic shifts in British society. But these shifts do not represent progress. A recent poll by Opinium found that a majority of people, 55%, believed that BLM has actually increased racial tensions. This view is also shared by a plurality of ethnic-minority Brits (44%). Labour voters were also notably more likely to agree than disagree with the view that BLM has heightened racial tensions in British society. These survey results show how BLM has undermined social cohesion and sown division and antagonism.
Yes, it is true that the pandemic has exposed very real socioeconomic disparities between the UK’s ethnic groups. But to ignore the myriad factors at play here – from geography and housing to occupation and lifestyle and blame such disparities on ‘structural racism’ is an especially crude and dangerous form of victimhood politics.
He is especially damning about the Begum’s accusation of white nationalism:
To be racially nationalist, as Begum claims the Government is, is to want to preserve the ‘racial purity’ of a nation by facilitating the repatriation of existing racial minorities and halting flows of inward migration of other races. In the British context, white nationalists attempt to root ‘Britishness’ in racial identity, so that one can only be considered British if one is white. This reflects one of the key pillars of white nationalism internationally, namely, the commitment to the idea of the ‘white ethno-state’.
The Government can be accused of many things, but it hardly makes sense to suggest it is committed to forging a white ethno-state. After all, this is an administration with an Indian-origin home secretary, who recently created an immigration route for millions of Hong Kong residents wishing to flee from Chinese state oppression and start a new life in the UK.
Yet despite this, the Guardian insists on carrying an interview claiming the Government is white nationalist. Too often, it seems, politically divisive and socially corrosive narratives surrounding race are presented as fact by an influential clique of culturally liberal activists. Let’s hope their racialist ideas are repudiated with vigour over the course of this year.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The BBC, in its wisdom, issued a health warning before broadcasting the film of Dad’s Army because of its use of “discriminatory language that some may found offensive”. MailOnline has the story.
Stop Press 2: Following the proposal by Democrats to eliminate gendered language from the House of Representatives, the 117th Congress has opened with a spectacularly woke prayer.
“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, 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 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. Sign up to the newsletter here.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many legal cases being brought against the Government and its ministers we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
The Simon Dolan case has now reached the end of the road. But the cause has been taken up by PCR Claims. Check out their website here.
The current lead case is the Robin Tilbrook case which challenges whether the Lockdown Regulations are constitutional. 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 and Runnymede Trust’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.
And last but not least there was the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. A High Court judge refused permission for the FSU’s judicial review on December 9th 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.
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…
Take a moment to watch this powerful and somewhat eerie performance staged by a number of Swiss artists against Covid restrictions. In the words of one of the commentators below, it “beats NHS tick tock dances”.
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Dr John Lee on Talk Radio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUNkmA42NLI
Covid Science Debate: Vaccine Risk and Safety
The Great Reset: Bannon Interviews Archbishop Vigano – ‘Biden An Irreparable, China-Complicit Disaster’
https://thenationalpulse.com/exclusive/the-great-reset-bannon-vigano-biden/
The exclusive transcript of an interview conducted by War Room show host and former White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon with His Excellency Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop. The National Pulse is publishing the interview – which primarily concerns the Catholic Church, the deep state, and the key actors involved – without edits.
Lee is often very good but he is being deliberately obtuse about the vaccines, and if he said much different he could find himself before the GMC, but here is the latest devastating review of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines:
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/04/peter-doshi-pfizer-and-modernas-95-effective-vaccines-we-need-more-details-and-the-raw-data/
which really makes the MHRA look like farcical stooges. This is what we are being held to ransom over.
That is a damning report. He highlights several very important questions and inconsistencies. Remember this is likely to be the toned down version of what he wanted to write.
What is the vaccine “to be welcomed”? If it doesn’t work, it’s another waste of billions. If it does work it will wipe out another existing pathogen, so making room for yet another novel pathogen to emerge – possibly one far more dangerous. Why are we pursuing this crazy policy?
Sadly Talk Radio has had its account terminated with YouTube.
Sailing too close to the Truth, obviously.
Seems like the former bête noire Rupert Murdoch is out of favour with the cabal..
Talk Radio, Sky News Australia, and US Fox News all being owned by Murdoch companies.
The best sources for info. regarding what is going on.
Youtube has been in the business of corrupting and influencing with malicious intent for around a decade now. They also happen to be owned by Google.
They deployed an army of Millennials to monitor and shut down politically incorrect videos/conversation and have continued to ratchet up their censorship to the point of which it is now unrecognisable from the days when it was a fun platform.
Bronze for me 😁
Wrote to my useless MP quoting back at her a November missive in which she assured me that “schools must remain open if at all possible. The previous lockdown did untold damage to the chances of the most disadvantaged children and we cannot risk these children falling yet further behind in their education”. Indeed.
In the last week before Christmas, the DfE was seeking legal action against the schools that moved to remote learning prematurely. On Friday 1st Jan the DfE informed my school of the imminent mass-testing rollout. On Sunday 3rd Jan Boris was wheeled out to tell everyone that schools are safe… on Monday 4th, wheeled out once more to shut them down.
I can only conclude that they want to bamboozle, demoralize and wear people down, that this is something like deliberate psychological manipulation through their constantly shifting the already largely arbitrary goalposts.
There’s a lot wrong with schools – I see it first-hand – but if there were an Ofsted for governments, ours and the vast majority of the Commons would be several grades below Special Measures, surely.
Agree totally and great to see another sceptic teacher. I witnessed at first hand the terrible results of the last lockdown on secondary and sixth form education. They have made almost no progress since march especially the ones from disadvantaged backgrounds. We are going to end up with very poorly educated adults in the future if this carries on. I agree there is much wrong with schools but this is not the answer. Utterly appalled.
You don’t need serfs to be educated still less an intelligence to be a successful techno dictator.
A degradation of educational standards started (as I usually point out) back in the 90’s particularly when Tony Blair swept through our institutions. Meanwhile, every form of entertainment, particularly movies, perpetuate the dumbing down of our senses. I believe this has (amongst so many other things) contributed massively to the inability of people to think critically for themselves – they always need a voice on the television to tell them what to do. I’m often aghast at the behaviour of parents today, remarking that they’re more immature than the children.
And as you both have pointed out here, the next generation is going to take this to another level of obedience. Dumb people need guiding, intelligent people are leaders.
This is happening by design.
“the next generation is going to take this to another level of obedience.”
Other than a small number of heavily controlled key workers and a small army of robotised serfs, the next generation is not scheduled for existence. Likewise, those of us in the current generation are now living very much on borrowed time.
Can’t disagree unfortunately.
I know I certainly often wonder just what subsequent generations to my own are supposed to do for jobs. All well and good automating everything etc etc – but where do they earn their income from? It’s no wonder the “jury is out” imo as to whether there is/isn’t a Plan to stick them all on Basic Income and tell them to consider themselves happy.
Yes, perhaps they won’t see themselves as being self-sufficient people. No point striving…..
How very Brave New World.
Another sceptic teacher?! I’m not the only one!! This has made me very happy. Thank you. I agree; it is the same in my school.
Always pleased to make someone happy!
It appears the government don’t even look at their own statistics (or if they do they don’t believe them) – see figures for London weekly change in cases below:
Oh no they know they have past the peak. No point having a lockdown if you haven’t even stupid people would notice that they don’t work.
Ridicule them for their ineptitude.
The government does not give a hoot for statistics, they are on The Road to Nowhere.
As always, good pertinent articles in your newletter.
Like the graphs, the statistical analysis, the Institute of Actuaries assessment and the letter by a reader to his MP.
Unfortunately, nothing seems to work with this bone headed government, it’s advisers and our largely useless ploiticians.
Perhaps your reaader’s letter could be offered as a Word or email template to readers and indeed any wider audience for people to write to their MPs and at least give them some real sense of the anti lockdown case?
I’ll keep looking at your excellent newsletter every day.
Thank you for your work.
“nothing seems to work with this bone headed government”
This isn’t simply a case of a dense government. This is obviously a wilful project to bend evidence to fit the narrative.
Happy New Year
Anyone still think this is about health ?
ps, not sure what the new login to comment thing is supposed to achieve, another attempt to track and trace dissenters ? Open comment is surely better with as few obstacles as possible.
the virus is just a pretext for the Great Reset. Medical tyranny- controlled economic destruction will result in everyone being made a ward of the state. Global communism. This lockdown is permanent. Digital currency and UBI will be offered after banking collapse. The schools will never re-open- all “education” like everything else will go permanently online where the population can be monitored and controlled.
I agree with almost all you have said there but not sure that ‘global communism’ is the correct description even though its cheered on by the useful idiots of the Left. I think Rick H makes a very fair point that it is elements of the Right that are just as much behind this. Its not red bloodied militants shop stewards like ‘Red Robbo’ from the 1970s that are instigating this it is global billionaires and huge multinational capital.
I think its more of a technocratic fascism where the richest elements rule the world…once they do the useful idiots of the Left will find their lives are just as miserable as ours. Some of them may then finally ditch the wokery and virtue signalling and join the people.
State corporatism CCP style.
Yes thats a good label too. I wrote my MA dissertation on ‘corporatism’ back in the 1980s. In those days though it was more national than global.
Technocratic fascism describes it well. It’s no longer a left or right thing and I think arguing about that is a distraction. It’s global dictatorship.
I totally agree….it has long transcended left/right and those who try to drag it back to those polarities are indeed a distraction.
The control method will be authoritarian socialism/communism, those in charge will be the capitalist elite. Same as it ever was.
The so called moneyed elite were the ones behind the Bolshevik Revolution. Trotsky et al were just useful idiots..
Certainly wouldn’t say Trotsky was a useful idiot – rather that he found himself more isolated than he expected and came a cropper. Otherwise, yes I agree, we’re facing a death-spiral of communism at the bottom with a weird tight mix of capitalism at the very top. You could almost describe it looking like a pyramid…
If you are to view the Covidians as the “nationalist group” defending itself from outsiders, then – yes – I think Technocratic Facism might be the better definition.
No, it doesn’t. Right and left preceded Marxist ideas about ownership of capital and go much wider than just that issue.
All you are pointing out is that people who are powerful by virtue of capital accumulation and people who are powerful by virtue of political accumulation often have similar interests. Big shock.
That’s only a surprise to those who are stuck in the pre-1970s model of politics being all about ownership,of capital, state versus “private”. That argument became moot in the 1970s when the state ownership model collapsed into evident disaster. It’s just that many on the left are too dogmatic in their Marxist world-view to emerge into the real world, and so are still refighting their defeat in 1979, obsessing about “neoliberals” and Margaret Thatcher, and completely misunderstanding most modern political developments as a result.
That’s why the Blairite left keeps making such complete mincemeat out of them, politically.
I had to reset my password many times last night before I could log in again, maybe sinister things are afoot…
Yes I think a lot of us have found this. I also have found the site says non available gateway sometimes the last couple of days and I was starting to wonder if the whole site was due for removal.
I’ve had no problem staying logged in but have had the ‘bad gateway’ message in the early hours.
I generally find a path by searching ‘toby young’.
Maybe it’s a scheduled maintenance issue by the platform.
My updates keep disappearing, I have to resubscribe at least twice a week.
Mine keep being sent to spam.
I haven’t encountered this but I have noted browsers and other apps can be set to not open or succeed in linked pages via a number of reasons that can seem to be all kinds of things. So perhaps also try with alternate browsers, or via vpn, or houseclean cookies and restart the browser. There is no way I know to be certain as to who is really ‘protecting your privacy’ or serving the community, and Tolkien’s prescience rings true. The capacity to choke life support from corporations openly threatened by Green Deal Carney is openly threatened. What goes on behind closed doors? Confessions of an Economic Hit-Man gave an outline, and Govs are themselves ‘Gated’ or effectively bought or rendered impotent except as the ‘tool’ of their Private ‘partners’ (sic). Perhaps the self-destructive self-reinforcing loop can be called sinistral. I sense the awakening responsibility at the very root of our being is not the same as clinging on to self-illusions that are past their sell by dates, and so being reeled in by the false foundation of which they are founded. The ‘lie and the father of it’ is an active wish that would substitute for truth – believed… Read more »
Well this is about your wholeness, because your are whole even if your mind and world contest the fact. But our ideas of health and sickness or good and evil have locked us into a mind-trap.
Open comment is also open to disinformation attacks. There are costs and benefits to any choice. While it can be said we are identifiable and traceable in online activity – from any time future. We can also give all power away to fear that ‘They’ are watching us and etc.
The ability to project our own hates and fear onto ‘others’ is part of the breakdown of communication. As is the ability and proclivity to act out fantasy upon the lives of others and on the living world as if the right to power for self-gratification.
The means of corrupting and controlling the leverages of influence is not new but the technology is. Man becomes the tool of his own thinking.
Well…. if you count LIFE as health, then yes, I suppose it is about health. Exterminating it.
It is significant that the initial announced duration of full national lockdown has increased each time: March 2020 = 3 weeks / November 2020 = 4 weeks / January 2021 = 6 weeks. This represents a clear progression in the psychological warfare being waged on the UK population.
With the rollout of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine now in motion, my belief is that this lockdown is the “big one”. That is to say, it will not be lifted until you have been vaccinated. Which for me means in perpetuity.
We will find ways to make sure we get back our access to things – provide alternatives if the Covidians open things up again, but bar us freedom lovers. For instance, a new airline meant for us is already en route (think it’s Dolores Cahill that has started it up). I gave up flying some years back and so won’t use any airline anyway – but this does provide a template for us to use if we have to if we find the Covidians are being allowed their access to facilities again, but we get discriminated against.
Yes, even if refuseniks end up being only 10% of the population, that’s still 7 million people. This I think is a fair estimate given that the government is clearly willing to completely crash the economy in order to terrorise the majority into compliance. Not easy to brush such a large number under the carpet.
I am still hoping it will be a good deal more than 10%.
The way is for us to establish our own society. Best way forward is that we become self employed. If we are discriminated against, we have our own services, transport, schools, etc. More importantly, we refuse en masse to participate in the old society, which includes NOT PAYING TAX.
The smokers asked for smoking only pubs with smoking staff; not allowed, not even private members only clubs.
Maybe they made the mistake of asking. We need to do it.
Smoking is proven to be harmful to health – I think the Covidians would find it hard to prove we are harmful to health (ie and they aren’t).
They’d find it hard to prove we are harmful to health? Have you not been watching the last 9 months. They don’t have to prove anything, they just say it and the sheep and law follow
I think the point of cashless society and compulsory internet banking is that they take your money whether you like it or not.
Hence we need to keep cash going (albeit it’s easier in an area like West Wales I know) – but must be perfectly possible elsewhere. There’s also bartering and the gift economy. Humans can be ingenious if we need to be.
Gold and silver coins
You can start buying one a month and keep them under the floorboards
it works
This is exactly what the Muslims do in the no-go areas that don’t exist
Tried and tested and it works
Just find an area and gravitate towards it
Surely you realise by now that there is a two tier law in the UK – exemplified by the difference of law-enforcement between the BLM riots and the Anti-lockdown protests? Surely you’ve seen the “positive discrimination” government/BBC job adverts that exclude white heterosexual British males from applying? Surely you’ve seen… well you get the point (I could go on and on and would probably incriminate myself for committing thought crime).
No. We absolutely would not be afforded the same “no-go-zones” as muslims. The key wording there is ‘afforded’.
Now I need an Amish to help me with the oak frame of my house. Perhaps we could do swaps.
And if I can find an essential reason for being in your neck of the woods I’ll visit. If you want to legally challenge the daft wazzocks in charge I’ll contribute to crowdfund you. I’m so fed up with this nonsense.
Already hard at work on this!
I’m growing the beard.
I agree that seems to be their deluded plan. It may work for a while. Then the vaccinated masses will start to become ill with the South African or some other variant, which like all other previous coronaviruses, successfully mutated themselves to defy a vaccine. Then we will be back in this dreaded cycle of lockdowns forever.
The ADE reaction is a real possibility with the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. Nature could save us here, I can foresee a new strain of an existing wild coronavirus, which would ordinarily be no worse than a common cold, causing real problems.
The vaccinated masses may become terminally within a year or so after taking the jab, because it is ‘highly likely’ this is what the vaccines are intended to do.
They won’t want anyone to escape their needle, as it would soon become evident that the vaccines were the real cause of the masses dropping like swatted flies.
So the pressure to get vaccinated will be intense and the greater this pressure the more we can be assured, that the vaccines will be intentionally harmful and most probably are genocidal.
We must resist getting this vaccine.
Indeed it must be resisted by all manner of means. There can be no valid reason to voluntarily accept being injected with one of these toxic concoctions. Work, holidays, travel, leisure activities and etc are never going to compensate for the near certainty, that the Covid vaccines are intentionally genocidal.
I have wondered that too Richard.
They can force us by denying medical and dental care, schooling, jobs, travel, money. My own much needed surgery (private since the NHS have put it off indefinitely) which was supposed to be in 2 weeks is off unless I have a PCR test. I have had previous nasal surgery and have scar tissue but ‘no PCR, no surgery’. I can see a time when we are refused a GP or dentist if unvaccinated. We might even be under house arrest. I am now at the end of my tether and can’t face much more. The pitchfork brigade are getting nastier and more vocal by the day. I feel, at 68, that I am one accident away from a DNAR.
I agree. You will be let out of your hutch if you accept the v or doors will be welded.
This is a lockdown debate from October between Dr Neil Rau and Dr Nili Kaplan-Myrth. https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1798547011967
I don’t know what his comments have to do with her being a woman. He said that she ‘wasn’t talking but was shouting’ which she took as being feminist slander to which he rolled his eyes. I’m a feminist lefty whatever but I rolled my eyes with him. She somehow turned it into an issue about feminism which the Washington Post amongst others covered. Her weak arguments aren’t discussed but rather that he ‘mainsplained’ to her.
https://twitter.com/nilikm/status/1311795870724239360
That’s an avoidance tactic – like calling somebody a conspiracy theorist.
Covid 19: ‘Get out of jail free’ for governments, particularly those with badly performing health services. Let us not forget, at the height of the raging mutant shape shifter that is ‘Kent Covid’, 15500 lorry drivers tested in Kent, only 36 positive tests, by Lateral Flow Test (LFT) Two youngsters sharing a flat, both with mild colds, one took the PCR test, result positive, the other took the LFT: result negative Hmmmm Lockdown is clearly not what is required Reform of the NHS and its associated shaman self licking lollipop societies is what is required: ‘…hospital planning need not be a government function at all’ https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/CC_What%20are%20we%20afraid%20of_web_3.pdf ‘Like the NHS, SHI (social health insurance) systems also achieve universal access to healthcare, albeit in a different way, namely through a combination of means-tested insurance premium subsidies, community rating and risk structure compensation. Unlike in the US, there is therefore no uninsured population (even homeless people have health insurance), and there is no such thing as a ‘medical bankruptcy’. When it comes to providing high-quality healthcare to the poor, these systems are second to none: in this respect, there is nothing the NHS has achieved which the SHI systems have not also achieved. In terms of outcomes, quality and efficiency, social… Read more »
Mentioning the IEA – they would say that, wouldn’t they – repels the ~50% who count themselves as left-wing (on the economy) and detest the IEA.
Let’s keep to the unlawful loss of our civil liberties.
I’ve just turned off R4 again which is in propaganda/’vaccinate the world’ mode. If anyone wants to go on You & Yours live at 12.15 h, tel 03700 100 444, I assume you lie about your views and then become honest when you’re on air. But do be polite and coherent in the R4 way …
You might like to look at the lovely graph in this report in the DM, showing how ‘the virus’ behaved in Wales:
Gah – more coffee needed! I pressed the enter button too quickly …
Here’s the link, and marvel at the cleverness of ‘the virus’. No, don’t ask if just perhaps not many people were tested during the Christmas holidays …
I know someone who helped to test the marooned lorry drivers. His group tested 3000 tests, had 3 positives.
Wonderful how the numbers crash down when it’s in the Fascists’ interests that they should do so.
Exactly the same phenomena when LFT tests used in Liverpool, Merthyr, Cambridge Uni. High levels with PCR, 25% of that with LFT.
Which is why schools are closed rather than mass testing it would have revealed the truth
And also why the LF test is being discredited because it doesn’t produce the results ‘they’ need it to
Fir Christians – and others – the series of podcasts by the Irfeverends are always worth hearing.
Don’t confuse the C of E Irreverends with the prayer group from Georgetown, USA, who hog the search engines. Our Irreverends are two covid-sceptical English clergymen who debate the lockdown tyranny from a Christian viewpoint, but talking sense in a general way as well. They issue regular podcasts and it’s worth saving the link, because as aforesaid, they are hard to find through search engines. (Now why could that be, I wonder?)
In the latest podcast, made just before the newest outrage, Jamie Franklin raises a devastatingly simple, but absolutely crucial point.
The speculations and predictions that are used to terrify the sheeples are NOT REAL.
NOT REAL.
The loneliness of old people, the agonies of cancer sufferers, the suicidal despair of people whose lives have been wrecked, the children whose life chances have been thrown away, all the vile consequences of lockdown, these are REAL. But the mesmerised victims can no longer see what’s real. Reality has been hi-jacked.
We need to draw people’s attention to what is REAL.
https://podcasts.apple.com/ru/podcast/irreverend-faith-and-current-affairs/id1528967755
Great to hear that there are still some remnants of true Christianity in the C of E. You can’t fool all the people all of the time.
That is such an important observation. All the data that led to lockdowns 1, 2 and 3 has been based on theoretical modelling (that for lockdowns 1 and 2 was shown to be wildly inaccurate within a matter of weeks).
The NHS is our new state religion, the face-mask its crucifix. The fixed penalty notice is the modern version of the Spanish Inquisition. As far as I could see the essence of Uberfuhrer Johnson’s dismal apology of an address to the nation was to base the need for this lock-down on saving the NHS in time for him to claim victory and do well in the May elections.
The NHS in its present form should go and be replace by a very different model but I doubt any UK politician would really tackle this issue,
If they hold the elections this year. 50-50 chance of that IMO.
Yes social media is the new confession box, forgive me Google for i have sinned. Ironic the pig dictator preaching from a pulpit. Was anyone else swearing at the TV when the glorious leader said we have all suffered. How have you suffered you fat bustard, you are on full pay, can go where you like and you cannot see the death and destruction you are causing.
Dance dance wherever you may be
Lords and ladies of the Tiktok are we
I like this lockdown sceptical pastor. This tweet made me smile though I’m far from religious. https://twitter.com/ReganBlntonKing/status/1346150903385116672
The vaccine as ‘an injectable Messiah’ is absolutely spot on. Come to save us, Hallelujah.
Spot on Annie
fear = false evidence appearing real
The covidians are all starring roles (not actors) in the worst disaster movie ever and cannot see anything or anyone that isn’t in their scenes
The plan is simple: Destroy the economy, cripple the education, bankrupt the country! Any further questions?
Yes.
Why?
Take the vaccine or else. It’s just a little prick.
It?
You mean who?
As the para said when asked why he was bashing his head against a brick wall:
‘It’s nice when I stop’
All this will stop as the May elections approach….and then we will be expected to be grateful…….
As the bystander said to the para:
‘Good luck with that’
So they can build back better
Communism- destroy small businesses and put everyone into debt. They want total control over the population by forcing everyone to become a ward of the state, which is basically enslavement. This time it will be impossible to escape once they have health passports and digital currency. We are heading rapidly towards a Chinese-style social credit system.
There is a reason why Roosevelt warned his people that the only thing they had to fear was fear itself. It is self consuming.
Fear is running wild in Britain and the world and it is consuming the population.
I’m not so sure if it is fear for most people, other than those that believe that they are at genuine risk. Deep down I think most people know that they’re not at risk – primarily because they don’t behave in ways that evidence this. If this was a genuine pandemic we would KNOW 100% without a doubt because we’d all wear proper N95 masks and genuinely only venture outside for necessity. We’ve have real shortages of everything, power cuts, martial law. There wouldn’t be silly exceptions for takeaways/premier league football/disabled sport/international travel. Most key workers wouldn’t be risking their lives eg dinner ladies, mechanics, bus drivers, they’d stay at home bar a few medics like those that work for MSF. We wouldn’t need ANY of the 300 odd ridiculous new statutory instruments because people would do these things voluntarily, instinctively even. Survival of the fittest. The Gov slogan would be Keep Calm and Carry On and the media propaganda would be POSITIVE. We’d be making all our own vaccines here in the UK as overseas they’d be hijacked, and people would be clambering to get one on the black market. Anyway, what people are after is to reassert CONTROL.… Read more »
In wartime the media typically work to reduce anxiety, even suppressing true news that is bad for morale. The Japanese public, for example, were not told they had lost the Battle of Midway in 1942, and survivors of the battle were mostly sequestered, information quarantined if you will, when they got back to Japan so they would not tell people what had happened. Japan was a dictatorship, but in WW1 news of the “Spanish Flu” was widely suppressed in the warring nations, democratic or not, because it was bad for morale. It was 1919, peacetime, when it began to be widely reported.
Whereas here the media have encouraged panic.
Because people who are scared do stupid things. Like not questioning “cases” or covid death numbers. Just speak comforts to me Boris. We had a zoom call with our best mates. I said why worry about a mild seasonal virus that is only deadly to the very old. My mate chirped up with i would not call 500 deaths a day minor virus. I said I would not call 500 deaths a day in winter much at all considering about 1,800 people normally die a day in winter. I then got the kick under the desk from my wife to say I had to stop speaking. As Alistair MacLean wrote, fear is the key.
Absolutely. Isn’t that why it was called Spanish flu – because it was around for a couple of years already until it spread to Spain which was the first place without wartime censorship?
There was one thing which was massive red flag for me and that was the government having to resort to draconian legislation telling people what they can’t or can do. As SweetBabyCheese said people would voluntarily take precauations if there was clear evidence of a dangerous and contagious disease around. Having to resort to draconian legislation indicates there was no visible threat that would make people take precautions. If you didn’t read the papers,watch TV or read anything about covid in the internet, there are no signs we are in a pandemic. We don’t see people dying in droves or surviving but becoming ill and nobody knows anyone with covid. There is nothing to make you think *there is a dangerous disease about. I must be careful.” The draconian legislation enacted by the government was a psychological trick to make people think there is a dangerous and contagious disease about.
You don’t need draconian laws to make people avoid danger. Common sense dicates it is not a good idea to jump into a burning building. You wouldn’t need a law making it illegal to do this.
Hell yes! It’s almost like people don’t want to die and are pretty good at working it out for themselves.
SBC
Interesting figures from analysing Worldometer, which demonstrates the total death figure per jurisdiction is driven strongly by the total number of tests, far more than even the population of the country – now clearly tests aren’t killing people, but this means that COVID isn’t either in a large number of cases – it is a clear indication that a huge number of the deaths within 28 days of a positive test are not deaths from COVID. The correlation still holds (see scatter graph below) if you square root both figures to mitigate the overwhelming impact of the very large countries (e.g. USA, China, India).
Correlations by jurisdiction (all countries over 40 million population):
Total deaths to total tests: 0.7211
Total deaths to population: 0.236
Deaths/ million to tests/ million: 0.681
Would I be correct in thinking that before this hoo-haa the only death figures we used were the ONS figures of registered deaths? It is strange that we now have these 2 contrasting official sources of death data ONS and NHS. At least the ONS figures put the total alongside the 5 year average so that you get some context.
Yes, but the problem with the 5 year average is that the population over 70 (which covers around 80% of deaths) has grown by around 8% in the last three years, so you need to adjust for this otherwise the excess death figure is hugely overestimated. If you look at the ONS figures they also show an Age Adjusted Mortality Rate each month which is very helpful, and the Institute of Actuaries have published their estimate of excess deaths for the year, which I think is overestimated, but not by too much.
The reason why we are not cutting the mustard is because we do not focus here on the way the strategy is linked to the vaccine roll out – this has been the purpose of the whole exercise. Prof Ferguson heads the Vaccine Impact Modelling Consortium which is funded by GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation from which it is said to have received $185m between 2006 and 2018.It remains that the business predicting of epidemics should be so closely bound up to vaccine industry interests, and that this should be cited by government and mainstream journalism as independent advice. Imperial College is expected to bring out its own mRNA vaccine in partnership with CEPI, another Bill Gates front organization some time next year. According to an Imperial report from December 2018 they were already working at the time on combating a COVID look-alike virus called Disease X.
Look also at Prime Minister Johnson’s speech last to the UN where you Gates and GAVI who bankroll Ferguson at the forefront of his obsessions.
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-ministers-speech-to-un-general-assembly-26-september-2020
I could not agree more, for me the entire Covid shitshow has been about nothing else other than creating the conditions for mass voluntary uptake of the vaccine, and setting the precedent for multiple vaccines every year thereafter. Tragically the only thing that can stop this now is a high number of severe adverse reactions finally stirring enough people out of their slumber.
That’s it in a nutshell. It was always about the vaccine..
Disease X sounds like 1970s disaster B movie.
I have a book somewhere called, “Virus X.” I think I bought it after somebody gave me another one called “The Hot Zone.” The latter is about Ebola.
Something from fireball XL5 or Thunderbirds.
All very good an often repeated facts. Also worth going back to Boris’s UN speech from Sept 2019 , strange subject matter almost as though he knew what was in the pipeline and was pleading for a little leniency.
Yes, I wrote about this in a letter to BMJ last August: arguably he was preparing the ground within a month of first taking office: https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3099/rr-5 Regarding the Use of the Term “Anti-Vaxxer” Dear Editor Thank you Karyse Day [1] for drawing attention to the problem of the bias and intimidation inherent in the term “anti-vaxxer”. The term has been around perhaps since the 19th century but has evolved a new context. Three years ago I drew attention to the remarks of Seth Berkley, director of the vaccine lobby organisation GAVI, in the Spectator proposing that “anti-vaxxers” be excluded from social media, which meant in effect not only that certain people should not be allowed on social media but that criticism of vaccines should not be allowed on a generic basis – an extremely serious matter[2]. Unfortunately, this has also been a hobby-horse of the present Prime Minister. In August last year Reuter’s recorded Boris Johnson as saying [3]: “I’m afraid people have just been listening to that superstitious mumbo-jumbo on the internet, all that anti-vax stuff…” On 24 September 2020 he told the UN [4]: “There are today people who are still actually anti-science, a whole movement called ‘the… Read more »
Fabulous information – thanks!
The same tactics are being used strong arming the populace into mask wearing and lockdowns – no debate regarding negative effects tolerated.
I now have, in one family – a case of dry eye, a case of facial eczema and one with worsening asthma. All caused by prolonged mask wearing. None of these adverse health effects are ever mentioned as it’s all to stop the non-existent asymptomatic spread.
And I’m afraid to also worsen the health of the population. If the health authorities cared they’d advise of the risks in mask wearing.
The government told us this was their strategy way back in May when they unveiled the Covid alert scale.Level 1 had a sub heading,only achievable with a vaccine.
As usual no one was listening.They have revealed their plans all along but they have been dismissed as conspiracy theories.
A new lockdown is no surprise as you only need to follow the money.
When the chancellor extended furlough until March then April it was obvious.
Our government seem blessed with clairvoyance as they knew a mutant strain would come along.
This is our new system,the government will have the right to lock us up on the pretext of a made up threat.This is terrifying.
Then just ignore it. “They” can only lock us all up if we go along with it.
Not so easy if your business is closed. Apparently there is a plan to open all hospitality across Germany next week in protest. If this doesn’t happen- and even if it does economic collapse may be inevitable. This is when they “offer” debt forgiveness, UBI and digital currency- but only in exchange for all your private property and freedoms. So not so easy to just ignore….
I do wonder if there’s anything in this idea promulgated that “They” plan to do debt forgiveness in return for stealing our property. That’s one recipe for a 3 tier society (ie instead of a 2 tier one as at present). Instead of Rich and Rest-of-us we could find Rich, (rather depleted) Rest-of-us and those that were driven into debt by Lockdown (ie rather than their own money management skills or lack of). So there would still be the Rest-of-us category in the middle (ie those of us that can’t be driven into debt – because our income is secure one way or another – eg because it’s pension, rather than salary). Only too thankful personally that my income is pension and I can therefore “cover” any debt I have and it will soon be gone.
World Economic Forum 2030 Predictions – Part Of The Great Reset“You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=046Rsn2wkSM
Absolutely! Go along with also means stopping condemning the rest of us whenever we actually manage to get something resembling a Life. There’s a local Facebook page specifically meant for putting up beautiful nature photos of the county etc and the admins have clearly had a lot of problems with Covidian trolls popping up going “You SHOULDNT have been OUT!!!” any time someone posts of a nice walk or something they went on. Some posters pre-empt them by adding a “This is a walk I went for pre-Lockdown” comment to take the venom out of the trolls’ mouths before they spit it out. It’s things like that on the one hand.
On the other hand – I’ve found even people who know me will occasionally try and act like Lockdown police and a recent supermarket encounter, for instance, was woman-I-know going “How do you GET AWAY WITH not wearing a mask?” thrown at me. I had the right response to that and she scuttled off tail between her legs LOL – but it’s another example of the masses “going along with” Lockdown. So the Covidians at least need to learn to “live and let live” before this will stop.
I’ve ignored every petty restriction but I can’t do my normal job and partake in my normal social activities
Yes all meeting on Brighton beach and chatting was not helping the vaccine rhetoric. So lockdown, close pubs, no meeting. Then ze cherry on ze top! Mutant strain. (Heroes in a half shell). Now all I hear is blah blah blah, normal, blah blah blah, after the vaccine. Do you think we will have to say 2021 AV?
The reason we are not “cutting the mustard” is that the pro lockdown side has outspent sceptics by a million to one and they have the media, opposition and institutions on their side, almost everywhere in the world Regarding the vaccine rollout being the purpose of the whole exercise, I am very doubtful – I can see how it benefits Big Pharma who are no doubt powerful but not big enough to bring this off – though I am sure Big Pharma are trying to influence things in their direction and succeeding. I still think mass hysteria and political cowardice and love of the easy power that governing by fear gives you are the least implausible explanations, but if you want a more exotic one I think it’s more to do with the WEF, the CCP, the Great Reset, technocratic globalism and control freakery. People are afraid for themselves and afraid of killing granny so they are going to be pro-vaccine because of that. I still think the first step is to convince people that they have no good reason to be so afraid – once people are thinking rationally again, they will be receptive to further arguments about any… Read more »
Big Pharma and front organisations like WEF, WHO,GAVI,CEPI are all part of the same global complex.
the vaccine is a key part but the ultimate goal is total digital surveillance- the vaccine with health passports, along with digital currency, 5G and the internet of things.
You’re right and that’s why to defeat them it will be easy. All that needs doing is talking out their communication systems, towers, masts etc.
No you’ve missed an important point. Big Pharma doesn’t like cures – they’d rather come up with some ongoing medication that will help people live with the condition. (One of the reasons why they’ve had to redefine the purpose of the vaccine is that they’d rather like the opportunity to sell us all annual or biannual Covid jabs.)
Forgive me for not spotting the nuance. In the same vein, I remember having a conversation with one of my old university buddies about asthma. Being young and naive, I suggested the growth in childhood cases of asthma was connected to the relative cleanliness of our children’s lives. My chum, who worked for Ciba Geigy, explained that the growth in asthma cases was entirely because CG had introduced a drug to manage its symptoms. Prior to that, there was no point in a doctor diagnosing childhood asthma because he had no available treatment. However, with the availability of the new drug, all that had changed, and so the number of reported cases of childhood asthma rocketed, along with CG’s share price!
They tried it before with CJD and H1N1. This time a weak and stupid PM with too much power and not enough brains let the enemy in the back door.
Most recent mortality figures across Europe puts France, Germany and the UK on roughly the 400 mark. France lower, Germany 500. UK 400.
They are roughly comparable.
But then look at the “positive” cases. France 4000, Germany 8000…. the UK? 58,000!!!
The UK tests more then most other counties combined, then uses the results of those tests to become hysterical.
Lifting the floorboards every day to count spiders does not mean they do not exist in the house that does not. What matters is the end result, namely fatalities. I get so sick of hearing everyone from Boris to the man in the street talk about “how bad it is here now” and then testing themselves when they have a cold. Stop fucking testing.
Two demonstrations (if any were needed) of the effects of Lockdown i.e none at all other than where it is done very early and merely delays the deaths by a few months (e.g Germany, Poland, Lithuania etc)
And in Europe
‘If four or more people that you trust independently tell you the same thing, that is like God talking…..’
‘There are therefore three datasets all showing a second wave that begins in September, peaks two weeks later and returns to baseline by the end of September:
1. PHE Notifiable Infectious Disease
2. Community symptom tracking
3. NHS triage classification of patients
There are two other diagnostic tests for COVID:
1. Lateral flow tests which test for viral proteins that form part of the viral particles themselves
2. Antibody testing which confirm infection two to five weeks afterwards
Again two sources of data, lateral flow testing and antibody testing concur and contradict results from PCR testing.
Could it be that reports of Notifiable Infectious Diseases – being filtered by the need for symptoms to gain the attention of GPs – are actually a more representative measure, at least in terms of trends, of “real” COVID-19 than PCR testing?’
https://www.pandata.org/wp-content/uploads/PANDAArticles-The-PHE-data-that-goes-against-the-narrative.pdf
Yes it could……..
The remedy to all this mallarkey is simple: NHS reform
‘hospital planning need not be a government function at all……’
https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/CC_What%20are%20we%20afraid%20of_web_3.pdf
I would agree that reform of the NHS is now urgent and necessary but I suspect that any politician who tries to challenge the sacred and blessed NHS will be committing electoral suicide
Complete and total reform of the health service is part of the agenda, please research the NHS management websites and associated quango websites. Here’s a taste from our busy friends over at the WEF
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Governance_of_Chatbots_in_Healthcare_2020.pdf
social service reform on all fronts is also planned
Reform in the sense of making it worse (Hutber’s Law) I assume. NHS/Moloch is immortal and will always “be back”. Too many jobs depend on it, those of the NHS apparatchiks and politicians.
Having just experienced a total sh*tshow of NHS tomfoolery with a family member i have decided that Amazon or Tesco could take over running of the NHS.
The frontline doctors and nurses do their jobs well, excellently mostly in my experience. But the back office box tickers are appalling and are like huge bits of grit in the cogs of the machine. Frankly all none front line staff should go.
RIP Democracy. Long live Communism.
It isn’t communism, it’s terrorism.
Technocracy.
Coronunism
It’s a brand new chimera of the worst of all sides
15th January 2021
Pig dictator announces level 6 from midnight
‘ It breaks my heart to tell you selfish bastards that you have failed level five. Level 6 will require the total eradication of the population by the 1st February
I know I can count on your support
You will finally achieve my goal saving the NHS
On the plus side the virus will be eradicated and the pubs and schools will be allowed to reopen
We topped Matt a few hours ago as there was no further need for him. He was grinning at the end and agreed it was for the best
So it’s goodnight from me and goodnight for you’
Film Doomsday where they barricaded virused up Scotland and blockaded it by sea so they could eat each other to save fascist government England.
After that it’s just a silly cross between Mad Max and The Warriors.
Ok, you go first then Al.
The only solution will be to nuke the planet from space. Final scene will be a spaceship carrying Ferguson, Whitty et al of to a distant planet. After taking their vaccine.
Its like one of the hitchhikers guide books, where they sent all their middle managers, security guards and phone sanitizers on board a spaceship to save the planet. Er why is the ship programmed to crash land? I Don’t remember, you are a useless bunch of that’s. Yes! that was the reason!
JHB is very pro-vaccine, but in all other areas has been extremely solid, particularly in recent months. A valuable remnant from the old school of journalism.
Yes, what I’ve found over the months is that not all Lockdown Sceptic are aligned on every facet of this shitshow facical government-led catastrophe …. for example, I believe Lord Sumpton thinks masks are fine, and Mark Dolan (Talk Radio) thinks we should all follow the law, even if it is non-sensible … two views I disagree with. But to be honest, I’d take *any* publically facing support rallying against the madness at the moment, and simply hope that those of us who disagree on some of the not-so-minor points still respect the opinions of others. Something severely lacking with zero-risk lockdown myopic zealots.
Even Homer nods, she’s also a TDS sufferer but basically pretty sound.
She said she wouldn’t let her daughter have it – so there’s that
How do you know you have either CV 19, or the super mutant Ninja virus?
If you exhale a green gas, you have it. If there is a green slime on your hand you have it.
NHS adverts confirm this.
This is the ultimate test of the public’s compliance. They locked us down over Whitty & Vallance’s infamous scary charts in November, well the roads & parks were as busy as ever. Nobody took any notice. Now, we have the mutant strain to terrify the masses into submission. If we soon start to hear of police forces creaking under the sheer weight of people flouting the “stay at home” message, then we’ll know the game is up. It will be a huge embarrassment to the government – Project Fear has lost its power, “protect the NHS” has lost its charm, lockdowns will be completely unenforceable.
Don’t be surprised then if the tyranny is dialed up even further over the coming weeks – curfews, demands to see your papers, TSG thugs patrolling city centres itching for a fight. They can never escape the enormous hole they’ve dug for themselves – it’s only a matter of time before it caves in and buries them all.
Hope so, I’ll kick some dirt into the hole.
Oh I’ll dance on their graves LOL. Have had precisely a few minutes of dancing (ie illicitly right in the High Street – in front of a crowd) since this whole thing started. So lot’s of pent-up dance energy to release.
Mass vaccination is their escape tunnel (by claiming that we’ve all been saved) they hope.
About to make a long non essential drive down the motorway so will let you know his the roads are looking.
Leave your house. End lives.
When did you guys figure this all out? For me it was the from the first article that I read back in February about the grey suited man who had died in Wuhan.
In March
1 – the data back from Italy showing it was the super old dying
2 – the Bristol paper showing lockdowns worse than covid
3 – Ferguson’s paper 9 which was a disgrace
everything I’ve read since has just reaffirmed my views
Yes, the risk of the ‘rona being the same as the risk of life (slightly better in fact!) and the dial hasn’t moved since.
Which is the Bristol paper? I read just about everything though ignored the ridiculous predictions of overflowing hospitals and dizzyingly high deaths. The IFR was estimated to be about .5 back in March.
this one I think
http://www.jvalue.co.uk/papers/J-value-assessment-of-combating-Covid-19.pdf
basically even if ferguson is correct and we save 500,000 lives through lockdown, qaly deaths will be higher if recession is worse than 2008
I was sceptical of the sensationalist coverage, particularly in the BBC, of the “initial” outbreak in China in January. Remember those maps of China covered in varying shades of red for what was an absolutely minuscule proportion of the Chinese population?
As soon as the MSM started opposing the government’s initial herd immunity policy, and clamouring for the first lockdown (some time in mid-March as I recall), I knew something was terribly wrong, and that this was going all the way.
I thought it was all rubbish from the beginning then when I watched London turn into an apocalyptic film set I began to think there maybe something in it,but while at home I realised that I wasn’t watching news but propaganda.Then I found sources to back up my feeling that I was being lied to.
When I spotted Corona.film trailer. Bit windy about infecting my neighbours at first until a little research showed it was all balls.
In March when average age of death in Ireland was consistently at 82.
Data from the Diamond Princess, early March.
not everyone caught it, and very few died. So not the new Black Death then.
The defining moment most ignored. Very telling!
Oh the proponents of lockdowns used the Diamond Princess as an example that lockdowns work because people were confined to their rooms. Never mind that they had been mingling beforehand in close quarters and breathing the same recycled air.
Basic attitude of mine: the more lurid
the headline or article, the bigger the lie.
That’s whether from MSM, government, somebody with a placard screeching in Hyde Park, or even some posters on websites and comment sections.
Never failed me yet.
I have a similar thing where i just reverse what they are saying and it’s always what they really mean. They think they can say what they think we want to hear but those of us with a smidgin of brain matter still working can see right through them. I reckon when the death squads come round the streets they’ll be looking for me and others on this site, not the lefty ones though, they know them people are complying muppets and are no threat to anyone. No it’s those who live life from their own efforts and don’t believe we are our brothers keeper that will be removed from society first. I won’t go down without a fight though
The fact that worldwide lockdowns have never, ever been tried before in the history of humanity for a disease. Covid-19 would have to be pretty severe for worldwide lockdowns to be justifiable, and even then they would have to be strictly time-limited. There is no data to show that Covid-19 is a world-ending pandemic.
Plus, the fact that no cost-benefit analysis was ever done, even way back in February/March (and still has not been done at any point) was what made me realise that this is a total scam.
More or less from the beginning, I was a little concerned for the first couple of weeks or so of the first lockdown and was only reading and watching MSM. Seemed clear it was only elderly and very ill being impacted but nothing particularly worse than any other year. Found this site fortunately after looking around for something that was reporting real facts.
Never went out and clapped like a seal as well!
It has taken me months to get to here. I still to this day am surprised about the gullibity of intelligent people.
I wish I could say I figured it out earlier but I can honestly say I never stopped looking for the truth.
I respect that you were able to change your mind and glad that you’re here.
I’m a terrible hypochondriac by nature so was pretty nervous at the start, decided to find out if my worries were justified. The more I looked, the more it appeared they were not.
Also read arguments by Hitchens and others on the value of liberty and tend to think that even if Ferguson’s 500,000 prediction had been accurate, lockdowns were not justified
Very early on, March I believe, when I read about what a coronavirus was. A chest cold for which there is no direct cure and for which there is no vaccine and which spreads just like any other cold. My husband is a data wonk, he crunched some early numbers here in Aus and said WTF? Since then we’ve just watched in disbelief, wondering how people can be so fearful and stupid.
I’m from Aus as well. I didn’t use models but back in March I estimated the death toll for Aus and was right. They were predicting 10s of 1,000s of deaths with lockdown.
I had read up about coronaviruses and was googling each new symptom to see if the flu also would lead to that.
Two to three weeks into lockdown 1, out and about as key worker talking to medics among others.
Seeing ambulances charging around empty roads with sirens blaring for no good reason except to engender fear in the locked in home population.
Yes – what was that all about? Why would ambulance drivers do that and yet none of them have explained this since – any drivers on here? We need to know wtf was going on..
A bit of research into the massively high pollution levels in Lombardy where many people had died of pneumonia just a few months earlier followed by a huge spike of very high pm2.5 pollution in Southern England so bad that (locked down in a small flat in London) I was scared for my life – yet it wasn’t mentioned anywhere.. And the April peak still remains the highest point of this whole ‘pandemic’ (it was just a couple of days after Cummings escaped London) – so the fact that the facts were ignored flagged up this whole massive lie for me..
Yes as soon as I read that the age of people affected was over average life expectancy, I was done with the rona narrative.
Nothing really to figure out for me. You simply do not take away peoples basic rights and freedoms as a means of disease control in free societies. Apart from the liberty aspect, it’s unnecessary as people will automatically adjust their behaviour to match the risk. The fact that the government has to use heavy-handed policing, huge fines and censorship to try and enforce these measures indicates the relatively low threat of the virus. If this was the Black Death or Ebola all of these things would be unnecessary.
Because of the measures, locking down the fit and healthy? Made me suspicious, then not protecting the old. Then not seeing or hearing about anyone getting ill. Then I saw Delores Cahill on computing forever with Dave Cullen. And here we are nearly a year later doing exactly the same shit and still the muggles believe!!
I think we’ve done all we can do I’ve been on the marches, written to my MP every week and tried to inform those who are capable of independent thought.
We are locked down until lots are vaccinated/the virus is suppressed by the season. They will then claim victory.
I wonder if something happened to us when we were young? young children always seem to ask why? what? how? and the people on this site still seem to have this trait which seems to have been lost by so many. Now when someone feels a bit flu like they say oh I must get a test and I say why?’you don’t need a weather-man to know which way the wind blows’ and they look blank, it has not crossed their minds to ask why. Gruppenfuhrer Hancock says get a test and I get a test.
How come we are all so awkward and keep asking questions and challenging everything?
I turned into a scientist at the age of 7 and have been one ever since!
It puzzles me, too, that people are so incurious. They just seem to trust what the Govt tells them and what they see on TV. I’ve thought about why that might be, what distinguishes the sceptic from the go-along-with-it types, but I can’t come to any useful conclusion.
Maybe many people are philosophical zombies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
Well, my mum says I was an irritating little sod when young as I would never stop asking ‘Why?’
She is over in Timberscombe, by the way — have not been able to get there this year…
I was like that as well. Had a couple of books in the “Tell Me Why” series when I was about 6 years old!
No, sorry that is what the MSM and PHE want us to believe. There are going to be multiple strains of the virus; the vaccines don’t last long in preventing some symptoms and so there is no way this ends ‘when lots are vaccinated’ …..
Recovery’s prediction sounds spot on. There may be a dip in summer but next winter it all starts again …… and repeat in 2022
2021? No. 1984.
Stay at home. Get fat. Get Netfilth.
A-women
No sniggering at the back!
360 days of 2021 left – but it’ll be hard to beat that one for stupidity.
It ought to be but I think it’s just raised the bar a bit. All those women with strange hairdos hard at work at this very moment.
S-n-ig-g-g-rr …. sorry.
I don’t know whats worse your stupidity of trying to virtue signal twats like AOC, or your stupidly of not knowing what amen means!