Whitty: Lockdown May Still Be Needed Next Winter
England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said yesterday that as the vaccine is rolled out we might eventually get to a point where we will have “almost no restrictions at all” – until next winter, when we’ll need to look at ramping them up again. The Mail has more.
Office for National Statistics figures show an estimated 1.1 million people in private households in England had COVID-19 between December 27th and January 2nd – equivalent to around 2.06% of the population.
Professor Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, said it was “really quite a large number indeed”, warning people to take the Government’s stay at home message seriously, owing to the new variant as well as winter.
He said the risk level will gradually decrease over time with measures being “lifted by degrees, possibly at different rates in different parts of the country, we’ll have to see”.
“We’ll then get over time to a point where people say this level of risk is something society is prepared to tolerate and lift right down to almost no restrictions at all,” he added.
“We might have to bring in a few in the next winter for example, that’s possible, because winter will benefit the virus.”
Will they ever let us go back to normal?
Oddly, the ZOE app showed only around 1% of the population had Covid on January 2nd. Why the discrepancy with the ONS?
What’s more, according to ZOE data new symptomatic cases have been falling in London since the end of last month.
How can this be when London is dominated by the new variant, said to be 70% more transmissible and said to be uncontainable by lockdown without closing schools by researchers at Imperial College?
It might have something to do with the fact that the new variant has been declining in London and the South East since around Christmas, according to the Government’s own data presented at the press conference yesterday – despite Whitty claiming that the new variant is “taking off” in every part of the country.
Notice that in the South East, North East and Yorkshire existing variants have recently started outpacing the new variant. Again, how is that possible if it is so much more transmissible?
Once again it appears that the Prime Minister and his colleagues have been bamboozled by dodgy data from doomsayers with their unreliable models and mass testing. Now with the prospect of restrictions that continue indefinitely, regardless of how many people have been vaccinated, the need is more urgent than ever for the Government to look at public health policy in the round and listen to a broader range of voices.
We’re still waiting for that cost-benefit analysis of the impact of lockdowns on quality-adjusted life years…
Stop Press: Boris refused to guarantee that schools will be back before September. Allison Pearson asks in the Telegraph: “With schools closed again, have we written off a generation?“
Stop Press 2: Depressingly, a snap poll showed just 9% of the population oppose the lockdown while 79% support it.
CRG Split on New Lockdown
Disappointingly, it looks like many from the Covid Recovery Group (CRG) of sceptical Conservative MPs have decided to focus their efforts on getting restrictions lifted as quickly as possible as the vaccine rolls out instead of opposing the new lockdown – even though it emerged last night that the legal end date for the new restrictions will be March 31st. The Telegraph has more.
The national lockdown is “too heavy-handed” and a clearer exit strategy linked to the vaccine roll-out is needed to help struggling businesses, a senior Tory rebel has said.
Sir Robert Syms, a leading member of the Covid Recovery Group (CRG) of Conservative MPs, on Tuesday confirmed his intention to vote against legislation enshrining the new restrictions when it is brought to the Commons on Wednesday.
A smaller-scale rebellion is expected over the latest measures compared with the revolt against the tougher tiers system last month, which saw 55 Tory MPs vote against the Government.
One former rebel, who plans to abstain on Wednesday, said they felt the emergence of the new, hyper-infectious strain of Covid justified drastic measures.
The MP called on Boris Johnson to focus on accelerating the vaccine programme so the restrictions could be lifted as quickly as possible.
On Tuesday, Mr Johnson vowed to publish a daily total of vaccine doses administered from next week – a key demand made by members of the CRG. He also scheduled an 11th-hour Zoom call with Tory MPs to answer questions about the lockdown, with both moves likely to help further curb the extent of the rebellion.
However, lockdown sceptic Sir Desmond Swayne said he would vote against the measures and warned: “There will be a chorus who will not put up with this, who will turn up and shout ‘no’ against it.”
Sir Desmond suggested some colleagues had been “overawed by the scale of the great consensus out there”, which he characterised as: “This [new strain] is a terrible thing, and you [sceptics] shut up.”
He added: “I’m appalled that we are where we are. I’m deeply suspicious of the science, and the fact is that we’ve been bounced again. The Government lacks the scientific and statistical expertise to ask the right questions and review the data and modelling.”
His intervention came amid reports of growing backbench frustrations over the Prime Minister’s approach to handling Covid.
Two members of the 2019 intake of Tories this week submitted letters of no confidence in Mr Johnson to Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee that governs leadership contests, according to the Financial Times.
Other members of the newest cohort dismissed claims of escalating discontent, however. Richard Holden, the Tory MP for North West Durham, said: “My constituents recognise the PM and Government as a whole are doing, especially with the vaccine, pretty damn well in an impossible situation.”
Sir Robert, who sits on the steering committee of the CRG, said he thought Mr Johnson was in a “difficult position” and added that he backed schools moving to remote learning in the face of soaring Covid infections caused by the new strain.
Worth reading in full.
Not surprising that the latest Covid hysteria has weakened the resolve of a number of sceptical MPs. All hope now seems to rest with the swift vaccination of the vulnerable.
Where’s the Pandemic?
Cases are soaring, with a record 60,916 new cases reported yesterday. Hospital admissions for Covid are going up and up. Deaths are in the hundreds per day and increasing. Only an idiot would doubt we’re in the midst of a serious pandemic, right?
Except all these figures that show there’s a deadly pandemic raging are based on mass testing using PCR and more recently lateral flow tests. Cases are just positive tests. Hospital admissions are just people in hospital who test positive (and all patients are tested). Deaths are just people who die of any cause within 28 days of a positive test.
To get a true picture of what’s going on you have to look at data that are independent of PCR tests. So overall hospital and ICU occupancy, excess deaths, emergency calls for flu-like symptoms and so on. Strikingly, these data all speak in unison and tell a very different story.
Look at the graph below of A&E attendances in England for acute respiratory infections (which include COVID-19). It’s trending well below baseline and, save for a September spike leading into elevated winter levels, been almost flat since the spring.
What about flu-like illness? Flat and well below baseline since spring.
Pneumonia? Also flat and well below baseline.
999 calls for Covid-like symptoms? Largely flat since spring, though up a little in the last few weeks.
Deaths? Nothing out of the ordinary for winter. As PHE state in their most recent report: “In week 52 2020 in England, no statistically significant excess mortality by week of death… was seen overall”.
There are also the reports of Covid-like symptoms that users of the ZOE app send in each day, prior to any PCR tests being carried out. Like the other symptom-based data, these are largely flat since spring.
Much is being made of the current pressure on the NHS, but in reality there is a winter beds crisis in the NHS almost every year, and hospital occupancy rates this winter are similar to previous years. Some areas like London are currently under pressure, but that is mainly due to staff shortages – up to a third are off sick or self-isolating – and additional Covid constraints that have reduced the availability of beds and increased staff workloads.
Lockdown Sceptics regular Dr Clare Craig has gathered all this data together in one place and added a commentary explaining what it means. She says:
One thing that Public Health England has been world beating for before and during this pandemic has been the sharing of data. Data is collected from every aspect of the healthcare system and we now have the full dataset for 2020. The beginning of the graphs therefore give an indication of the levels expected at this time of year.
A selection of this data is presented that tells the story of a Spring pandemic. However, what this data reveals about Autumn and Winter does not fit the hypothesis that there has been a second wave. PCR testing results are an outlier in the data and only data related to PCR test results has led to the impression that there is currently a Covid problem.
Well worth reading and sharing.
talkRADIO’s Youtube Channel Cancelled – Then Reinstated
TalkRADIO’s Youtube channel was abruptly deleted yesterday morning. Guido had the scoop.
Google-owned YouTube in the early hours of this morning removed the TalkRADIO channel from its platform. YouTube had been where TalkRADIO streamed its live video content and kept an archive of old shows. The channel had accumulated tens of millions of views and 250,000 subscribers. YouTube has simply said the account was “terminated for violating YouTube’s community guidelines”.
The fact that termination came shortly after the UK Government announced a third lockdown is raising eyebrows. TalkRADIO has been exceptionally critical of lockdown policy.
TalkRADIO then released a statement:
YouTube has removed talkRADIO’s channel from its platform. talkRADIO broadcasts specific programmes and a live stream from its studio on its YouTube channel. talkRADIO also broadcasts on DAB and is Ofcom regulated.
A spokesperson for talkRADIO said: “We urgently await a detailed response from Google/YouTube about the nature of the breach that has led to our channel being removed from its platform.
“talkRADIO is an Ofcom licensed and regulated broadcaster and has robust editorial controls in place, taking care to balance debate. We regularly interrogate government data and we have controls in place, use verifiable sources and give space to a careful selection of voices and opinions.“
Happily, the channel was reinstated later in the day, as Guido reported.
After 19 hours of being declared “Terminated for violating YouTube’s community guidelines”, the TalkRADIO YouTube channel has been reinstated. A YouTube spokesman said:
“TalkRadio’s YouTube channel was briefly suspended, but upon further review, has now been reinstated. We quickly remove flagged content that violate our Community Guidelines, including COVID-19 content that explicitly contradict expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization. We make exceptions for material posted with an educational, documentary, scientific or artistic purpose, as was deemed in this case.”
A whole working day and declared ‘termination’ doesn’t sound like a ‘brief suspension’ to Guido…
Covid Cynicism
We’re publishing today a new piece by regular contributor Dr Sinéad Murphy, Philosophy Lecturer at Newcastle University. This is her contribution to the discussion about the role of reason and emotion in the lockdown debate initiated by Dr David McGrogan’s piece on “the failed strategy of lockdown sceptics” and continued by Guy de la Bédoyère’s reply. She writes:
I was struck by David’s piece. I believe he is correct. Both sides of the lockdown debate make appeal to scientific facts and statistical analyses. But those who argue in favour of lockdowns have done so and continue to do so with a righteous energy and moral fervour, which those of us who argue against them have tended to steer clear of, on the assumption that such energy and fervour would weaken our arguments rather than make them stronger. This assumption comes naturally to our Enlightenment habits of thinking and acting, which have been formed on the premise that reason and feeling are separate faculties and hardly compatible. The assumption is false and has disabled our position from the outset.
A little while ago, I happened into discussion with a new neighbour, on the matter of Covid and lockdown. When I indicated my support for a Great Barrington-like policy of assistance for the vulnerable who wished to have it, allied with normal life for everyone else, my new neighbour demurred, saying: “That’s very able-ist of you.” Just the kind of name-calling moralism that we sceptics of lockdown have come to expect. And what did I do in return? I drilled further down into calm reason, countering that I was quite content to be an ‘able-ist’ and did not at all require that the whole world alter its course so that the particular needs of particular groups be neutralised by being always already catered to. But my reply was a poor one and seemed to produce no effect. What I ought to have done – what David McGrogan urges us rightly to practise doing – was to play my neighbour at his own ad hominem game: accuse him in return of being an ‘able-ist’ and naming to him with the same outrage that he effortlessly conjured up, some of the infinite number of kinds of people whose lives have been damaged or destroyed by Covid policies – my ‘vulnerable’ if you like: the old, those who live alone, those with cancer, children with special needs, single parents… my list is longer than his by far.
In this context, the New Year’s Day post on Lockdown Sceptics by Freddie Attenborough merits special mention, for its clever and moving turning of the tables against the Covid orthodoxy. Its very title – “The Fallen” – a highly effective appropriation of the language of pathos which those who mourn the Covid dead have this year been allowed to claim as an instrument for their use, and their use alone.
This kind of emotional response does not mean that we must depart from our facts, which we have mustered so carefully and which we justifiably treasure; but we ought to feel freer to infuse them with the moral feeling that we have incorrectly judged it best to put aside for the good of our mission.
And this is all the more vital for the stay it might put upon what I regard as the most significant factor in the success this year of the attack on our ways of life: the cynicism that prevails among the educated classes, those whose voices dominate our mainstream press, and whose readiness to be functionaries in the system of our incarceration is one of the most dispiriting things of all.
Worth reading in full.
Government Snubs Pharmacists in Vaccine Rollout
The urgency of the Government’s vaccine programme was thrown into doubt last night as it emerged that offers from thousands of trained pharmacists to assist in the vaccine rollout have been ignored. The Telegraph has the exclusive.
Simon Dukes, the chief executive of the Pharmaceutical Negotiating Services Committee, which represents high street pharmacies during talks with the Government, questioned why the NHS was “scrabbling around” for vaccinators when his industry stood ready to help.
He said there were around 11,400 pharmacies across the country that already administer millions of flu jabs every year, with the capability to vaccinate around 1.3 million people against Covid every week.
At the press conference yesterday the Prime Minister said 1.3 million people in the UK have so far been vaccinated. But since that figure was one million on December 27th, this suggests the current rate of vaccinations is only 30,000 a day. It would need to be 10 times bigger to hit the target of 13.4 million by mid-February.
Vaccination is our ticket out of lockdown with all its destructive consequences for lives, livelihoods and mental and physical health. Why is everything not being thrown at it? It’s not even a supply issue, as the Telegraph reports.
Amid increasing questions over the urgency of the UK’s planned rollout, it emerged that there are five million doses of the Pfizer jab yet to be used, despite it being cleared over a month ago, and 3.5 million doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab held up waiting to pass the regulator’s safety checks.
The pharmacists’ offer of help echoes the situation at the start of the roll-out of testing when private labs were overlooked, leading to months of delays.
Mr Dukes told the Telegraph: “Rather than scrabbling around trying to find retired GPs and nurses and anyone who has possibly dated skills, you’ve got an army of thousands of pharmacists up and down the country who administer the flu jab every winter.
“We’ve been telling the NHS that we’re ready, willing and desperate to help. But we’ve been met by a de facto silence.
“We’ve got 11,400 pharmacies with at least one trained pharmacist. So if we vaccinated 20 people a day, that would be more than 1.3 million every week. You need the big hubs, of course you do, but we can help in a substantial way.”
It was also being reported yesterday that PHE won’t be delivering vaccines on a Sunday.
Boris has been banking on a vaccine to rescue him from this disaster since March. Time to pull the finger out.
Stop Press: Philip Johnston in the Telegraph says “vaccines won’t rid us of Covid but they must put a stop to lockdowns“, adding “we need a much greater sense of urgency about the roll-out, and then must live with an endemic virus”.
This Morning Doctor’s Pro-Vaxxing Misinformation
TV Doctor Sara Kayat appeared on This Morning yesterday to tell viewers about the amazing power of the Oxford vaccine:
After 12 days from the first vaccination of the AstraZeneca vaccine you are 100% effective against hospitalisation and death.
The programme tweeted: “@sara_kayat shares this amazing statistic with us, which you may not have heard yet.”
They won’t have heard it, of course, because it’s not true. (It also doesn’t really make sense – what does “you are 100% effective” mean? But we get what she’s trying to say.)
One Twitter user responded with a nicely worded letter and the link to Ofcom’s complaint form.
The Flu Hypothesis
An academic economist, quite eminent in his field but who wishes to remain anonymous because he doesn’t want to have to contend with lockdown zealots at his university accusing him of “endangering the public”, has written an original piece for Lockdown Sceptics about the the ‘flu hypothesis’. We’ll let him explain what this is.
Most of those sceptical of the Government response to COVID-19 have concluded that the recent uptick in cases is seasonal. COVID-19 appears to recur in winter and seems to have partly replaced the flu this year. We will call this the ‘flu hypothesis’.
If this is correct, then we may be able to make some predictions about what is about to happen in the United Kingdom with respect to Government policy and the public response. Now that the new lockdown is upon us we can use the ‘flu hypothesis’ to imagine two possible outcomes and assess their relative likelihood.
First let us try to get into what passes for the minds of those dealing with the response. The Financial Times, which seems well plugged in to the mindset of the political class, published the following helpful graphic:
Needless to say, our economist isn’t persuaded by these graphs.
What this tries to show is that the lockdown worked. If you glance at the chart and don’t really think about it – you know, like a public official would be inclined to do – it looks like a lockdown was imposed at the beginning of November and cases in the North and the Midlands fell.
Now, lockdown sceptics will say that this was just a coincidence. After all, robust cross-sectional studies – the sort of studies honest scientists use to evaluate these sorts of things – show that there is no correlation between lockdowns and outcomes. And cases in the Northwest clearly peaked around two weeks before the measures were introduced.
Worth reading in full.
Vaccine Wariness
The UK leads the vaccine eagerness polls, but still nearly a third are reticent – and the true figure has to be higher. Forbes reports that in practice over half of front line workers in America have been refusing the vaccine, suggesting the 58% in the poll for the US is likely an upper bound.
With all our eggs in the vaccine basket, this is not encouraging news.
Of course, it doesn’t help when healthy 41 year-olds die two days after receiving a jab – though with millions now being inoculated it remains to be seen whether this is more than coincidence.
Trouble at Tesco
Hero ex-cop Harry Miller, who took Humberside Police to the High Court after they recorded “Non-Crime Hate Incident” against his name and won a stunning victory, had an unpleasant experience in his local branch of Tesco’s yesterday. He was accosted by the store manager for not wearing a mask. Predictably, he didn’t take kindly to this reprimand. We’ll let Harry tell the story.
It’s not everyday that one is given a police escort through the tills at Tesco but that is what happened to me this morning. After sanitising my hands, I entered the store, passing along the vegetable aisle in search of something called “spring greens”. I am a lockdown skeptic, not a covid skeptic, and so was careful to only touch those items which would end up in my trolley.
Pausing to check my shopping list, I was approached by a gentleman who said, without introduction, “Excuse me, Sir. Is there any reason why you are not wearing a mask?”
A badge on his coveralls identified him as being in the service of Tesco.
“Yes, there is a valid reason, as it happens,” I replied, resisting the urge to say, “Lockdown is a scam.” Regardless of whether or not I agree with the law regarding masks (I don’t), I am fully aware of the limitations of enforcement. A firm, but polite, answer did not satisfy.
“What’s your reason?” He pressed. “Because without a valid reason you will either have to put on a mask or leave the shop.”
“I am not required to reveal the details of why I do not wear a mask,” I said, still polite but with a degree of irritation. “I have told you that I have a valid reason and that is enough.”
He pulled rank. “I am the store manager, and unless you have an exemption certificate, you are going to have to leave. Now.”
At this point, it’s fair to say I got stroppy, reminding him that there was no legal basis for his demand to demand evidence of a hidden disability. His response, typical of the bullying coward who finds himself on a high of unexpected power, was to say, “You are being aggressive. Unless you leave the shop immediately, I will call the police. Step away from the trolley. You’re barred.”
I may have laughed. I may have growled. I asked him what he imagined the police would do, given that I have an exemption certificate. “In that case, you should be wearing it on a lanyard around your neck,” he said. I told him to stop behaving like a bargain shelf Nazi and I would not submit to having my papers checked.
Soon enough, a sergeant and constable arrived, prompting the gathered masked mob to bray insults at the live capture of a granny killer. “Why don’t you just obey the law, fucking idiot?”
Defiant more than embarrassed, I stood my ground.
The sergeant suggested that, were I to go quietly, she might be able to persuade the manager to allow me and my half filled basket through the tills. When she left to negotiate the concession, I quizzed the constable on the law I was required to obey, particularly in relation to masks. Puzzled by the request for facts, he side-stepped the issue, insisting that, as Tesco is a private shop, the staff are at liberty to demand and evict as they please. I called bullshit, a word which, when spoken when angry, is so potentially loaded with virus that it caused the constable to take a dramatic step back and to order me to “stop spitting”. He correctly noted that I was agitated, advised me to calm down, and said I should seek advice from a lawyer about my grocery shopping ban. In return, I advised the constable that the actions of the store manager had caused me alarm, harassment and distress, contrary to Section 5 of the Public Order Act, and that, as the police were in attendance, I expected them to act on it.
The circular logic with which the officer defied my complaint is worth exploring. According to him, Tesco was only a public space up until the point that the store manager issued his eviction notice, after which I was technically trespassing on private property and therefore the Public Order Act no longer applied.
I informed the constable that the last police force which attempted to blow smoke up my arse ended up being likened by a High Court Judge to the Stasi, the Cheka and the Gestapo. I reminded him of an officer’s sworn duty to serve the public “without fear or favour”. His response is worth quoting in full: “Please don’t use fancy words with me.”
Literally. That’s what he said. A member of Lincolnshire’s finest considers the foundation upon which policing and freedom is built to be nothing more than fancy words. As I was finally given a police escort with my depleted trolley though the Till of Shame, I reminded the officers of their Oath of Attestation. That it was made to the Queen, not Tesco. That the police are obliged to uphold law, not policy. And that to serve all men equally, with diligence and fairness, is the precious bedrock upon which our police service is built. Covid tyranny does not change that one bit.
You can find out more about Harry’s efforts to force the police to remember their oath at Fair Cop.
Round-up
- “We’ll never recover from this lockdown fever” – Laura Perrins in Conservative Woman notes the depressing fact that we will “never get back the value that governments in western democracies cannot impose lockdowns” or “inflict inhuman and degrading treatment on their citizens”
- “Catastrophe Is All Around Us” – Excellent article from Jeffrey A. Tucker at AIER in which he observes that life in Florida, Georgia, South Dakota and South Carolina goes on with scarcely a thought anymore about the virus, yet in other parts of America draconian lockdowns continue, and not with better outcomes
- “Can lockdowns work?” – Sir John Redwood MP asks some crucial questions
- “Deficit could hit £450 billion on third lockdown” – Telegraph report on the latest big scary number that everybody is ignoring as though it doesn’t matter
- “Wetherspoon calls on politicians and the public to reconsider the evidence regarding lockdowns” – The latest newsletter from the pub chain continues to push the sceptical line
- “Sweden’s Covid Christmas farce” – Lisa Bjurwald writes in the Spectator that the country’s lockdown line may be changing but the behaviour of its politicians has not
- “COVID-19 Mortality: A Matter of Vulnerability Among Nations Facing Limited Margins of Adaptation” – Peer-reviewed study in Frontiers in Public Health that concludes: “Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate”
- “The flaw with lockdown – Britain’s 10 million key workers still have to get around” – Telegraph report on one of the key reasons lockdowns have no impact
- “Schools have been to blame for three times more Covid outbreaks than hospitals since October, official data shows” – Misleading headline in the Mail contradicted by the article itself in which a spokesman for PHE says a “significant number” of the Covid outbreaks they report turn out not to be outbreaks after they are investigated and that they do not recommend comparing the number of Covid outbreaks by settings because the likelihood of each reporting them varies, with schools more likely to report an outbreak when there isn’t one
- “I hate lockdowns, but I still support the new one” – Sad piece in the Article by Emma Burnell that illustrates the psychology of people who genuinely believe they have to sacrifice their well-being to save the world from the virus
- “Covid pandemic exacerbates inequality, review finds” – The Times reports on the IFS Deaton Review of Inequalities that finds lockdowns are terrible news for the already disadvantaged
- “Lockdown Measures Catastrophic for Recovering Addicts, Mental Health” – Charlotte Cuthbertson in the Epoch Times unearths some disturbing trends
- Communist Party of Great Britain member – and SAGE stalwart – Professor Susan Michie took to Twitter to vent her frustration that the new lockdown wasn’t modelled more closely on those imposed in Wuhan by the CCP
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Five today: “In my hour of darkness” by Gram Parsons, “It’s the same old song” by Four Tops, “Born of Frustration” by James, “I Predict A Riot” by the Kaiser Chiefs, “Nothing Makes Sense” by Judah Kelly.
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.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a one-stop shop down here for people who want to buy (or make) a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and it has the advantage of not explicitly claiming you have a disability. But if you have no qualms about that (or you are disabled), you can buy a lanyard from Amazon saying you do have a disability/medical exemption here (takes a while to arrive). The Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. You can get a “Hidden Disability” tag from ebay here and an “exempt” card with lanyard for just £1.99 from Etsy here. And, finally, if you feel obliged to wear a mask but want to signal your disapproval of having to do so, you can get a “sexy world” mask with the Swedish flag on it here.
Don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face masks in shops here.
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption. Another reader has created an Android app which displays “I am exempt from wearing a face mask” on your phone. Only 99p, and he’s even said he’ll donate half the money to Lockdown Sceptics, so everyone wins.
If you’re a shop owner and you want to let your customers know you will not be insisting on face masks or asking them what their reasons for exemption are, you can download a friendly sign to stick in your window here.
And here’s an excellent piece about the ineffectiveness of masks by a Roger W. Koops, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry. See also the Swiss Doctor’s thorough review of the scientific evidence here.
Stop Press: A reader found an article on the futility of masks from the 2003 SARS outbreak 17 years ago in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Health authorities have warned that surgical masks may not be an effective protection against the virus.
“Those masks are only effective so long as they are dry,” said Professor Yvonne Cossart of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the University of Sydney.
“As soon as they become saturated with the moisture in your breath they stop doing their job and pass on the droplets.”
Professor Cossart said that could take as little as 15 or 20 minutes, after which the mask would need to be changed. But those warnings haven’t stopped people snapping up the masks, with retailers reporting they are having trouble keeping up with demand.
John Bell from the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia, who owns a pharmacy in Woollahra, Sydney, said mask supplies were running low.
“At the moment we don’t have any because we haven’t been able to get any in the last few days,” MrBell said. “In the early stages it was unbelievable; we’d get people coming in all the time.”
Mr Bell agreed with Professor Cossart’s assessment regarding the effectiveness of the masks.
“I think they’re of marginal benefit,” he said. “In a way they give some comfort to people who think they’re doing as much as they can do to prevent the infection.”
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.
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And Finally…
Toby appeared on BBC Newsnight last night to debate YouTube’s talkRADIO ban with journalist Ian Dunt. You can watch it here.
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BORIS JOHNSON is expected to secure an overwhelming majority for his new lockdown after shrinking numbers of Tory rebels.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1380158/lockdown-latest-boris-johnson-commons-vote-lockdown-rules-england
Yes, I thought as much. Blighters panicked by the usual increased mortality in January. Looks like freedom will in future be a rarity if it exists at all
I actually sympathise with Tory rebels.
Anyone who votes against will be vilified, potentially suffer threats and be seen as a rebel by the Tory party. At the same time, the measures will still pass. It’s a very risky stance from a personal perspective and it achieves very little. On the other hand, voting with the government is risk free.
We all like to think we would have the courage of Sophie Scholl – she and her brother were executed for distributing anti Nazi leaflets in 1943. Nobody came to her aid though. Of course, now she is treated as a heroine and everyone revers her. But what would any of us have done at the time? Most of would be Pontus Pilate.
Hard to go against the flow in evil times like these. And I do believe these are evil times. A scared and fearful population, whipped up into a warlike emotional state by government is usually associated with the most evil episodes of our past. This is a worrying moment in history for people who have a sense of perspective.
Students at Munich University applauded when informed of their executions. University students under Weimar had included a fairly large far right contingent, although the Nazi student organisation only grew towards the end of Weimar, and after the Nazis came to power many students enthusiastically took part in book-burning. The “trendy leftie” student of the 1960s type was rare in Weimar Germany and the rare student left-winger was often also from a Jewish background, which contributed to the Communist = Jew trope.
In power the Third Reich was quite anti-intellectual – some Nazi leaders like Streicher or Ley would come to universities and tell students that their professors were basically garbage.
MPs standing up for what is right will not be executed, at worst they might lose their job, just like thousands of their constituents already have. If they are unable to stand up for what is right just when we need it most, when are liberties are threatened more than any other time in modern history they don’t deserve the job. I have no sympathy at all.
Totally agree
Job description for those seeking high office isn’t to have an easy life and take the path of least resistance
Nolan Principles state this quite clearly. Worth emailing them to your MP
Here
They might pass up their chance of a ministerial post and the perks, which is a fate worse than death for some of them.
I call BS on this ..They are not a teenage girl handing out leaflets in a country that has been under the Nazis for 10 years at that time and where the gestapo and the SS were operating with impunity. These are man and women who have been elected to a public office by the people and who’s interest they swore to represent. Members s of Fucking parliament not a local council, the highest (used to be) democratic body in the land. There is absolutely no chance that they will be arrested , beaten up and shot behind the shed if the rebel. NONE, ZERO. SO you even comparing the two is fucking insult.! It is their duty to stand up to stand up to the party if the actions harm their electorate. That is if they had a fucking spine , or at last half a spine. But they are all cowards and scumm, the lot of them. Fuck them, I’m never wotting for any of the 2 parties again!
Never voting again for either party is the least of our worries for the moment..
Perhaps we’ll never be voting again.
So you are saying that sceptical Tory MPs should vote with the government and ignore their conscience. We should by now be all aware that going against the the government’s Covid nonsensical mantra won’t be easy, but I hope that we would do it all the same. There never is a valid excuse for doing the wrong thing.
We are now living in a country where freedom is vanishing at an alarming rate. At best we are only months away from having a government every bit as evil, as the one in Nazi Germany. Accordingly we will all get a chance to show our own mettle when the military come knocking on the the doors of those who have declined to be injected with the Gates terminator vaccines.
.
Unfortunately sceptics are being seen as the Nazi’s. Up is down, left is right etc. its all backwards!
If you know you are coward unfit to a position of leadership and responsibility, don’t seek election to Parliament. I have no sympathy. These people have a duty that they are failing to perform. They are not even asking basic questions.
They’re happy enough to take their inflated wages though, aren’t they?
I think on both sides of the Atlantic we have seen in 2020 a revolt of the powerful against democracy. Covid is a big part of that.
I disagree. For an MP challenging the government, raising questions and objections is actually part of their job.
They will not be executed or imprisoned, the absolute worst that could happen is for the whip to be withdrawn from them. MPs are paid to stand up for their constituents. If they just want to go with the herd and have an easy life, they are in the wrong job!
Sir Charles walker for example, did not face imprisonment for his fantastic speech today, he just needed moral courage. That is all we ask.
https://youtu.be/38iTPc7c9SI
Well – tough. If you can’t stand the heat you should stay out of the kitchen. They’re happy enough to take their inflated wage packets, aren’t they?
Sophie of the White Rose movement? the one inspired by John Henry Newman (Lead Kindly Light)? We can all take inspiration from past heroes. Scholl, and those who inspired her are such. I hope that I would try or die trying, or at least feel ashamed if I fell short.
Does anyone have an analysis of the reasons behind these ‘excess’ deaths. We know that lockdowns kill, and some of the excess deaths are going to be due to missed treatments etc.
The biggest problem with all of this though is that they give us an aggregated figure, but I bet that if you looked at the individual cases that made up that big figure you would find some very dodgy decision making as to how to categorise a death.
yes, hence I suppose estimmates of spanish flu deaths rangingf from 25m to 100m, I think. plus ca change
someone should force them all to look at that data in the Clare Craig article. It’s very compelling.
I had actually expected to see some minor signs of COVID, some excess deaths or infection maybe….less than the panic merits, but a little something… but a BIG FAT NOTHING? Pffffffft
HOW can they ignore this?!
They know who to ignore now. Sceptics are packaged into a nice little box and set out to sea. This is pack mentality
I think this is a very valid thing to say. Global Corona Bollocks is running to a script. Protest is figured in to it. It legitimises the scam. By protesting we are acknowledging “IT” as a thing. Lockdown Sceps, Anti-this that and the other people and groups are as much part of the stage play as anything else in the Covid Kabuki. You are right, the old normal is not coming back. In some way ways, good because it was pretty crap however what I see replacing it is looking 1000 times worse. The only way that I see things going is that we old normal-ers will need to form new groups and new ways of living to opt out of the new world order. We also really need to figure out how to USE THEIR NEW SYSTEM for our own benefit. Let’s face it, it is the stupidest most badly thought out idiotic clumsy pile of bollocks fuelled on unicorn piss so it must be easy to abuse for our own gain. Mark Windows talks a lot about this theme and to be honest I don’t quite see how we should proceed or how this approach is going to… Read more »
Your penultimate paragraph is splendid.
Yes, we need to use their tools against them. I’m not sure how but will think on it. And look into Mark Windows.
I listen to Mark Windows every night at bedtime. Each one of us should think hard about how to defuse this stupidity. We are being pushed around my mediocre people. We should let them know that we do not admire or respect their intelligence.
I will never accept anything other than Normal (what some refer to as “Old Normal”). Just sent a Council workman packing just now – as he walked into my garden to talk about some overdue rubbish collection (which had subsequently been collected). I have no idea why he seemed to be hanging around after I’d told him that they had come along belatedly and taken it. But he kept hanging around – talking for no reason about an episode that’s now “past history – resolved” and I told him I don’t accept anyone on my property wearing a mask if I can help it. He didn’t either go away or take his mask off – so I ordered him out of my garden and said that I will not accept any of that stuff in my own home.
Get a big dog.
We want Life for everybody to look better than it did before.
I rather suspect Swayne has a good dialogue open with a very astute professor who is telling him to hold firm. He hasn’t wavered and is getting increasingly irate at the lack of intelligence he sees on the benches. I doubt he spends his hours pouring over the graphs but has enough to listen to the right noises. I would love to know who is in conversation with him, giving him the good sceptic dataset.
That said it’s pretty easy to find holes, but he isn’t giving any ground at all. While others are faltering.
He’s to be respected. Full of integrity.
this new variant is driving the narrative but the same kind of figures are occurring in Israel. There’s very little evidence this is due to the new variant.
I suspect his constituents are telling him what is what.
Yup, our guy Huw Merriman has gone that way after a little chat with Hancock. I had wondered if he was a one-off but apparently not.
Israel is the country to watch.They should have been given the two doses now to many vulnerable people. So far increasing cases and deaths.Very interesting next three weeks for their figures.
The Incredibly Shrinking Tory Rebels.
So what are they doing? Vaccine to stop covid 19, rather than natural immunity, it mutates to get round vaccine, we end up with a new form next winter, have to lock down again, have to get another vaccine – will we ever get out of this?
Very good for pharmaceutical companies though. We really are going to have to fight this
They get their proxies in politics to ban harmless food (apricot kernels) because they eat into their profits from their expensive cancer drugs “cures” (and yet cancer continues to increase) – I tell you, it’s all nuts!
How can even pharmaceutical companies make money if the economy resembles a graveyard?
Oh there was an answer to that, I forget it now. Some way of kicking the can down the road a few more years. My suspicion is that the global economy is going to be pretty much devastated in the next year or two, but I dare say they can find someone to tell them something different, and I wouldn’t put it past them to believe it. In any case, there’s always people who do well out of a crisis, and I suppose they think that there’ll be enough money left for them to do well.
Any economists on here care to give a proper answer?
Summed up in the old phrase of “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good” I’d say re the pharmacists. They’ll just carry on stealing all our money direct from our Government – and it’ll all be perfectly legitimate (apparently…..).
It is an ill wind etc.
Not long after the 2008 economic crash a Turkish shopkeeper in London who spoke little English came to me for help. He had a bailiff at his shop. I can speak Turkish and ended up interpreting. The bailiff mentioned to me that his firm was doing well. Bad luck for lots of people was good luck for him.
The pharmaceuticals must be doing really well from Covid now and I suspect many governments and certainly politicians are in their pocket.
Ive been watching El Chapo. Watch that to get an idea of how people in government can be controlled by their own greed, not fear of a gun, and will do all they can to facilitate crimes that benefit them.
I think all members of sage, like MPs, should have to declare interest in things they are influencing e.g. pharmacy shares, ppe, testing kits
I want all of them to reveal their stock portfolios.
Because drugs to live will be a necessity like food.
They can’t. All the pharma companies make their big bucks on high price specialty drugs, like Oncology drugs, rare disease drugs, and other biological agents used in hospitals, primarily in the US where they are prepared to pay for them. In the US this is mostly funded by Medicare (government) and corporates through employer provided insurance. If the tax take goes down, the US government will start to ration Medicare coverage (looking at various mechanisms to do that at the moment), and if employers go bust, then people also lose coverage. Or if they are made unemployed, obviously, but so far this has mostly been younger people in travel, hospitality etc who don’t need so many drugs so limited impact. So anyway, it’s not good news for pharma companies at all. The impact will be delayed versus other industries but there is no doubt it is coming. And if you think US pricing is something that is not our problem in the U.K., you are wrong. One of the mechanisms they are looking at is referencing European pricing for Medicare spend, bringing prices down to more like European levels. So what do I do if I am a pharma CEO… Read more »
In the short term they will probably make out like bandits. Longer-term this is not sustainable, true.
Depends. Some drugs were selling really well during the REAL pandemic (March/April last year) because they actually helped symptoms. You can see it in the US prescription data (which is available to buy). Respiratory drugs mainly. They’re not doing anything unusual right now because, guess what? nobody is actually symptomatic any more than usual. Another non PCR related datapoint for Clare Craig et al. Things like the recently launch Lilly and Regeneron antibodies targeted at people with COVID are doing a lot less well than anticipated. Only 20% of supply available has been used in the US, according to the WSJ. Surprise surprise – very few people with a cold can’t be arsed to go hospital for an IV infusion of an antibody, even if they are “at risk”. Because most of the time they will just get better with some paracetamol. Those selling vaccines will do OK from those, but the profit on them is limited at the price points they have set (for AZ at least) Other drugs, typically primary care ones for minor or self limiting conditions – things like antibiotics for ear or throat infections – or eczema drugs – sold a lot worse during the… Read more »
Thanks for this revealing information.It seems that there are millions of doses for the antibody treatment in the US just waiting to be used. Why is this not used for all high risk patients in one of the most hypochondriac countries in the world,US? And if they had used LFT instead on all attending with symptoms for PCR testing,they could have started treatment with Regeneron within an hour?
The antibodies are not approved, they’re granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). So Pharma will be losing money since you can’t charge for an unapproved treatment.
Oh no, they are getting paid. Through contracts with governments
They can all take their fancy new expensive cancer therapy drugs and #$%@#%@#%!
A dinosaur was recently discovered that supposedly died from Cancer. That was millions of years ago. Most Cancer research organizations spend around 18% of their funds on research. The rest is for administration, campaign funding, conventions, parties, big houses, cars, swimming pools, first class plane tickets, etc.
Life is irrational, nothing makes any sense, the general population have become brainless zombies. The only conclusion is either I am mad or they are.
They are, but go easy on the atropine.
Gates’s mates threatening us with lockdown next winter. May be more interested in their profit than your health (or was there a real reason for those rigged vitamin D trials recently?).
And have the first uptick of the day, bound to learn more on heer than you are from the BBC, or even the DM!
The government and its advisers have been smart at just one thing through this sad episode: that is that their ability to scare the population and keep it scared has been absolutely world leading. At everything else they have been a disaster. This really does feel like a war. The resources of the state have been mobilised to keep the population keen to fight it. We have seen countless times in history that governments have been able to do this even in the cause of unjust wars. This is such a situation. We have also seen that ineffective ways of fighting wars have been perpetuated and been popular in the past. The World War 1 generals whom we all revile today were deeply popular during the conflict. Think of the Earl Haig Fund. The pointless offensives continued. Third Battle of Ypres, Seventh Battle of the Isonzo. They were rationalised as wearing down the enemy. Now we have a Third National Lockdown. Whilst the population stays afraid they will continue to be successful in keeping this war going, and continuing to fight it badly. They have zero incentive to concede defeat or to conclude that their measures do not work and… Read more »
Fantastic post right there! The war angle is great reasoning with current gov’t and media lock step in ‘defeating’ the enemy by winning our hearts and minds with daily propaganda blitzes
Yes things will likely get much worse, if indeed they ever get better. Of course it is war, though the enemy is not Covid, but is our corrupt government, which has sold out us out completely to Big Pharma and the Great Depopulator Bill Gates.
I think they went up to Eleven Battles of the Isonzo.
There have been attempts over the past couple of decades to rehabilitate WW1 generals, but too many of them were stupid, unimaginative butchers rather better at killing their own men than the enemy’s.
None of it would have been possible though without an entirely complicit and tub-thumping media.
Walked to my local supermarket this afternoon, combining shopping (essential) with exercise (highly recommended for a healthier life), thus saving several lives in the process. (Sarc end).
Noticed two daily redtop papers said “1 in 50 HAS COVID” covering the whole of the front page. We really stand no chance with lies like that being rammed down peoples’ throats.
Absolutely. It may also be the case that the human reaction to Spanish flu caused nearly as many deaths as the flu itself, through overdose of aspirin.
How do we persuade people? Some have woken to the idea that repeated lockdowns are not working. Some see the logic that lockdowns cause death and provoke worse mutations. But they are still panicked.
Do we try to provoke fear of future economic armageddon, or try to calm fear with logic that current cases are not that bad?
https://www.faircop.org.uk/case-studies/harry-miller/
Hopelessly out of date, unless I’m missing something.
Not the Tesco incident though, which was a disgrace. Is “shops are a private space where they can do what they want” really a defence?
I can’t speak for the law in the UK, but in Canada the “this is private property” line doesn’t fly. All businesses that are open to the public have been licensed by the province to operate and, therefore, must abide by the human rights code of the province in which they operate. The police removing a customer for “trespassing” is also nonsense and only applies if the customer is committing a criminal act in the store. However, most businesses have been ignoring the masking exemptions written into the law and getting away with it. Our only options are to initiate a human rights code complaint or sue the business in small claims court. There are lawsuits in the works on a larger scale, but until they are heard we don’t have many options. Some stores are respectful, but not many, so remaining options are delivery or curb side pickup. Whether the courts will “save” us from this tyranny is anyone’s guess.
Or you actually wear a Star of David. If they want exemptions then we give them one. And film it all.
Same dichotomy in France where a law says masks must be worn in all “enclosed public spaces” and which includes shops – that are “public” in the sense that the public can wander in.
But, there is then the right of the shop owner to refuse service.
A bit like a bank I suppose, anyone can walk in, but the bank manager reserves the right to decline opening an account.
By the way, I ignore the mask rule and thankfully the few shops around me that I need to go to, do not really care much.
Surely only as much as the Gov creating this stupid law saying that you have to wear a mask on private property then?! The coppers know full well that it’s treated in law as public because (i) it’s open and (ii) any member of the public can enter. They’re confusing the shop’s right to refuse to serve you (which it does have) with it being a civil offence.
Since “exemption certificates” don’t exist I wonder how many they’ve seen?! Don’t they get any training on how to treat customers with special needs other than asking them to wear a badge?!
Morning all. I found today’s edition to be depressing . . . until I got to the Harry Miller Tesco story. Well done, Harry. I hope you pursue the supermarket through the courts for their lockdown Nazism.
Oh, and I wish opinion polls were not referenced. They are, as we discovered with the Us election (whatever the outcome in DC) that they were being manipulated and weaponised to get people to behave in a certain way. I am certain that the number of those who oppose the lockdowns is far higher than the 9% quoted in today’s edition.
Opinion polls are about as believable as the new strain.
They give you the answer you want.
There’s an odd little French play, written in 1923 by Jules Romains, called Knock, ou le triomphe de la médecine. Knock is a doctor – of philosophy, with no medical qualifications, but entitled (as I am) to style himself ‘Doctor’. He buys a practice in a remote village, and proceeds to. use psychological terror tactics to convince the entire population – apart from a few useful assistants – that they are permanently ill and in need if expensive care. Those who can’t afford it are treated for free, to keep them on board.
Knock’s motto is ‘Tous les hommes bien portants sont des malades qui s’ignorent’.
‘All bealthy people are ill, they just don’t know it yet.’
Like 1984, this has turned out to be fact. Knock has graduated from ruling a village to ruling the world.
And here’s part of an article on the play that appeared in the bmj in 2002: ” Knock treats the people of Saint Maurice coldly, like an anthropologist. He simplifies what he says, then he repeats himself. Isn’t it that people ask to be deceived? All right, he will deceive them. Order requires domination, and domination requires a lie or two. So he gives their lives a medical meaning. That is: he extends the bounds of the biological, of whose oracles he is the interpreter, so as to make illness not just a bodily phenomenon but an organising principle for the effective administration of society itself. His argument is life, for that is what a doctor defends. His tools are ideals, seduction, fright, and, if necessary, the threat of violence. His power is his command of language; in that respect nothing has changed since Molière’s day: Knock is every bit as much a storyteller, raconteur, bluffer, salesman and “habile homme” as Sganarelle, who was a subversive valet and sham doctor. But who’s talking sham? Knock gives everyone the fever. He inoculates his patients with the one idea: self preservation, at all costs. And even more disturbingly, as Nietzsche’s insight suggests,… Read more »
People don’t change much do they?
Didn’t political demagogues used to try and persuade psychologists to pronounce people who disagreed with them as suffering from a mental condition? These days, I suppose they can just censor them….
One of France’s worst serial killers, Marcel Petiot, was also a medical doctor, who used the relative prestige of his profession.
Very cool post.
Reading this, sounds very prophetic because we’re precisely in this situation.
The government has perpetuated large scale Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy on the populace. How to convince the sheep that they’ve been had is what I’ve been wondering.
Like everything in the media its about what is trending. Following the herd is how they make a living. So while people believe this crap the assault will continue. However if they get a sniff that this is no longer trending they will all turn and feed on those they have been fed by. This is why this moronic government has gone into overkill with the tested CASES, and mutant virus they could feel the msm and their own backbenchers wavering. And there you go, you really can fool all the people…..
That’s a good point. Once the MSM starts to turn that can only lead to a domino effect.
Is there an English trans? If not, maybe you could do one. Get it on at the National Theatre…
Thanks.Great post.On spot.Here is the funny film with the great Louis Jouvet in French
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-NtO0uKhyo
and English subtitles here
https://www.opensubtitles.org/en/subtitles/4161532/knock-en
IT’S PAST TIME TO GET BOLSHY! If anyone and I do mean ANYONE thinks that this is not a conspiracy are the daft ones to be first on the chopping block. https://theconversation.com/boris-johnson-is-planning-radical-changes-to-the-uk-constitution-here-are-the-ones-you-need-to-know-about-128956?fbclid=IwAR03WWMOSW_Y1R4_vBVry6-A_PKSiXmvAiBzY7fbPwO-mC4TKmSJjsA2mDg The ‘conservatives’ want to attack free speech and before anyone thinks its a Tory thing please refer to the SNPs infamous Hate Crime Bill that lost…this time. Both could be used to suppress ‘sceptic’ voices on any number of subjects and in the process decimate any notion we are a free democracy. Do not let anyone away with following the govt on this and C19 lockdowns. It is a co-ordinated attack on all of us. Countries only get money for locking down, why? Where is the money from? Who do we pay it back to? Where did they get it? Why should we pay back something that’s created out of thin air. UN Agenda 21/2030 is in play and China is the country we will all become; history forbidden, 1984-state, one child policy etc etc. All this is a precursor to that. The vaccine is a joke and not a vaccine in the traditional sense, which at least makes some sense. But to vaccinate for a coronavirus is… Read more »
I thought Schwab’ s robe shot was his audition for the new Davros in Dr Who.
Methinks we need to check the cunt’s head for numbers.
I sympathise with the Tesco story.
I was asked in Greggs to wear a mask. When stating I was exempt they asked for my ‘badge’ I said its not required nor official. They said it would make things easier.
When I compared it to Jews having to wear the star of David the conversation quickly stopped and they left me alone.
Its a shame they did for I could have also pointed out how all three were handling their masks (one pulled it down to speak to me) and then touching the food/drinks etc rendering the whole thing completely pointless.
That’s because they are blank.
The argument I hear is “how do I know about ( the subject you are talking about) I wasn’t born then.”
Anybody who says that on Pointless receives the barely disguised ire and disdain from Richard Osman.
I’ve not had a single problem in either Greggs or Tesco, same goes for the Co-OP.
Only on day one of in-store maskurbating did the owner of my local convenience trouble me, politely, so I explained the new law to him, politely and sent the the Lawnotfiction pdf on the subject to his phone.
Have not had a problem like that for months now. I seem to notice that these incidents seem to occur a lot outside London. From my very limited experience, it seemed like places outside the capital or big cities seem to be more zealous when it comes to enforcing the “rules”
Definitely. I’ve had very little resistance other than when I was in Cornwall.
Had no issues at Windsor but Colchester was pretty ,much lockdown zealot central.
I sometimes wear a badge when I can’t be bothered to have to speak to anybody. I was literally praised for it by a shopkeeper once saying how much easier it made it for her (this was after she had literally abandoned her till and sprinted to the back of the store to accost me). I softly told her that it didn’t make life any easier for me as it wasn’t nice to have to wear a badge advertising that I have a disability. She couldn’t even look me in the eye and I thought that the ground was going to swallow her up.
This little gem appeared in Bromsgrove Community Support. Someone had replied pointing out that what she wants is against the law (Discrimination) and suggesting that the obese are at high risk and so maybe they should stay at home but she said that ‘it was a disgusting comment to make’ (and hers wasn’t?)deleted it all and then reposted her nastiness. I will add that she sells ‘handmade muzzles’.
– and a kick up the arse.
She needs a good shrink.
“Will they ever let us get back to normal?”
The very fact that this is a question proves we are the abused partner in the relationship.
Normal is what We make it. Freedoms are won not granted.
Strap on your armour and FIGHT!
Agree completely!
Strap on your armour, mount your steed and fight!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGU1P6lBW6Q
Richard Wagner, Ride of the Valkyries
Who actually believes these polls showing support. I know of not one person who supports this and I’m in the epicentre of lefty idiocy.
I think we must be neighbours!
Danny, I think it was you earlier, looking for ideas for posters for bus stops etc? I lost your original post, and someone else may already have mentioned this, but have you looked at the Back to Normal website? They do postcards for door to door, with short, sharp messages . Might be worth a look if you haven’t done so.
There are 6 flats in this building and all of them are receiving guests during this tier 4 nonsense except for me but I visit an elderly neighbour to sort out his shopping.
Spend some time on Mumsnet.
Actually don’t, it’s depressing. And scary that people this blinkered have bred.
They’re the worst. Even more bad than Arsebook.
No the worst is GRANSNET. They went straight from mumsnet to gransnet and are proficient in they’re attacks on anyone who tries to join their ranks.
Although it’s thanks to a brave soul on gransnet that I discovered lockdown skeptics as he/she kindly put in the link.
Never heard of that site, is it worth checking out?
No NO, don’t do it unless you want to get depressed.
Gransnet is full of people moaning about not ‘being able’ to hug their grandchildren, asking if it’s OK to go and see relatives for just half an hour, and snitching on neighbours.
Lots of stay safe messages, chin up mustn’t grumble, we’ll get through this.
Months ago I posted that covid was a flu virus etc etc, the sceptical arguments, and was screamed at – its much much worse than flu!!!
Pass then. I gave up on Mumsnet ages ago and am barely on Arsebook so shan’t start with with this.
Cheers for the heads up.
Sounds like you’ll need a strong stomach – unless you use it for sport.
I was banned from mumsnet about 3 months ago. I posted some facts and graphs on a lockdown discussion and was accused of trying to kill their children. It then told the admin to go fuck herself (my exact words) and I got banned. My wife has also cancelled her account, could not deal with the paranoia anymore.
Good work. I got banned for posting a link to the swiss doctor site.
All my family and extended family support it. I’m regarded as some kind of tin-hat conspiracy loon because I so regularly identify government agenda contrary to what the criminal MSM will have us believe.
So we have the schools being shut down, as well as just about everything else in life being cancelled, and you say there is no good reason. Well, what about: i) Excess deaths are marginally above last year for the last published figures, by around 502 people for week 51(England and Wales) on a population and age adjusted basis. In a population of around 59 million, that’s 0.00085% of the population, one in 117,000, and that means around 1 in 500,000 of the under 75s were massacred in just one week ii) Hospitalisation rates are around normal levels for this time of year – and every year the NHS struggles, so why not destroy the education and life chances of all our children to save the very old, very sick in society – that sounds honourable, moral and decent iii) There’s this nasty horrible ‘mutant virus’. OK, so it’s going away in London and the South East and other regions will follow but let’s lock down just in case. iv) Lockdowns have been proved not to work, but what the hell, Boris knows best and he’s the PM so let him screw the country for no reason v) Up to week 51, around 4,600 people under 60… Read more »
WHY can’t other people see this? It’s all so obvious!
there are none so blind, etc
I find this whole aspect so infuriating sophie.
One doesn’t have to dig very deeply, or be a maths/stats genius, to work out that the figures presented by the government are clearly massaged for maximum fear factor!
I despair at the lack of scepticism in people. Am I the only one (amongst others in here of course) who rarely believe things they are told, without first doing a bit of research?
The one plus I find is that you are not living in fear because of your knowledge. They are. Genuinely. And they just want the government to make it go away with a nice chart. Mad stuff.
And remember 2019 was a mild year for flu deaths, the same as early 2020 so what does it look like against a bad year of flu?
Watch Ivor Cummins latest offering on YouTube, he does a comparison from 2017-18 onwards.
In Norway two nursing home residents died shortly after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. The authorities are investigating, as due to the advanced age, it might be coincidence.
I am sure this is possible, just as I am sure that it is possible that when an old, vulnerable person dies who has tested positive for Covid, it might be coincidental. Yet that possibility never seems to occur to the authorities.
Is it not strange how scepticism is applied so selectively?
Excellent point. But for as long as everyone puts messianic hope into the vaccines, critical thinking falls by the wayside. Following the latest trend on Lockdown Sceptics, the editorial team doesn’t want to apply the critical thinking either because they are too worried to be called anti-vaxxers because that is too loaded a term.
I’d agree. You make your own call.
But if these are deaths linked to the vaccine, we should know about it. People literally believe these will end this, and provide lifelong immunity from all variants of SARS-CV-2. Without some sort of central transparent register, how can we make an informed decision?
The answer is they don’t want us to.
The Coronavirus law includes acts which can prevent autopsies and enforce cremation rather than burial – did the government think to include these to cover up vaccine deaths?
It’s relative. Fewer people die with vaccines than with the disease itself.
As we keep pointing out, life isn’t risk free. You take the risk that makes you feel better.
It isn’t for you. It is for those who are more scared of the virus – and then means they then have no basis for imposing restrictions on the rest of us, since they can protect themselves by rolling up their own sleeve. Why is that a problem?
Because Tony Blair said on GMB that the vaccine will be your passport to freedom. He is only saying what a lot of us have known for months, which is without the jab you will not be able to travel, eat out, watch sport etc. The choice will be stark, take a risk with a dodgy vaccine or have no life.
You just know something sinister is going on when the creep Bliar crawls out from the woodwork.
That’s what is happening now. But with masks and lockdown in place.
Which would you prefer?
I agree with you, if that’s the way they approach it. It would be logical.
But logic has stopped applying, and they want permanent restrictions for all, AND mandatory vaccination. Fuck knows why.
We already have permanent restrictions. Do you want them to end or not?
I understood that over-reactions based on feeling not reason were the preserve of the other side. Am I wrong?
It’s a problem because they have been scared into taking the vaccine and haven’t been given the information to undertstand the danger they put themselves in.
They have as much information as you do. Why should they be prevented from making a choice? They are not donkeys to be herded.
A nurse in Portugal, 41, died after the vaccination too. No underlying conditions. Doctor in Mexico in ICU
https://www.laprensalatina.com/mexican-doctor-in-intensive-care-after-getting-covid-19-vaccine/
I think it was on here yesterday that 4 people in Finland? Died after taking the shot. Nothing to see here, just old folk dying!! Problem was they had only lost I think 26 to covid for the whole year, nothing to see here, do NOT add two and two together!
Interesting.In Iceland after 1 weeks vaccination with Pfizer 3 deaths in similar circumstances might be coincidence.And Iceland have had only 29 C-19 deaths.In Norway only 459 C-19 deaths.
In one of Ivor Cummins podcasts, he is discussing Vitamin D with some doctors.
They mention that if you are going to take the vaccine you must ensure your Vit D levels are sky high first to give your immume system the best chance.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BD_96ybTMNE
https://video.wakkeren.nl/videos/watch/9bd9f602-e5e9-47e0-b35d-8f1bfd78f0f4
That’s a brilliant video.
Posted this late last night so apologies for repeating but really think it has mileage.
My idea is for children to each write their names on pieces of paper along with “why I like school”. Those pieces of paper then get attached to locked school gates.
It would be such a media friendly, emotive and visual signifier of what has been stolen, yet also totally legal and free to do.
Even Covid bedwetter parents could be persuaded to join, along the lines of doing it to at least show the enormity and the human cost of closures.
I really do think this could be powerful, but it needs a concerted effort as one person sticking a name on a fence is just litter!
Great idea.
That’s a good idea and I suspect will gain mileage. Agree with kh, use Twatter, possibly more effective and you’ll get more sceptics there than Arsebook.
talk with usforthem – right up their street !
Why I MISS school would, I think, have a more powerful emotional impact
So YouTube is deleting anything that goes against the mainstream? Imagine my shock.
Nazis burned books, ISIS smash statues, Stalin created the snitching culture now all that happens is deleting a channel.
Buy books now, share them and inform everyone.
Don’t give up
If you are still reading this, please do reconsider.
I feel exactly the same and fluctuate between ranting on sites like this and shutting myself away. But I do seriously believe that having a space to rant is healthy. Yes it might lead to nothing but we have been robbed psychologically of feeling that we are “normal” when out in the world, and it’s is sites like this that prove that we are just that, normal. If a million people vote for lunacy, it is still lunacy. Plus, when the kickback and the change does come, it will be from places like this and people like you. Hope you reconsider.
I second that, please reconsider for all of the above reasons. Your posts are informative and give support to many of us too.
Thirded. A voice from outside the UK lunatic asylum is particularly welcome.
Yep, I too flipflop between rant and sod them all monkishness. Go for it.
The original post that Danny (and myself etc below) were responding to appears to have been deleted?
We’re living in a world that doesn’t want people to argue and challenge the status quo .. I think we have to find strategies just like a domestic abuse victim has to do to become ‘acceptable’ to our abusers.. They want and expect violent dissent so we need to be smarter and more subtle in our responses. This is not going to end soon unless the brave people taking legal action get them to put a temporary halt to it – but when the day comes that we have to stand up to them we need more than blind rage – we need focus.
You’re in Brighton, danny ? There is an active/effective KBF group there.
Other groups are also available. 🙂
Stay at home to avoid the outside
Then open the windows so you are exposed to the outside
Brilliant
Makes as much sense as the rest of it.
Stay at home to guarantee that any infection lurking in the family has every chance of being passed on.
Even more brilliant.
Haven’t you seen the latest TV ad? There is swirling, thick green yet invisible green smoke pouring from our mouths. Opening the window lets it escape safely out into the street. In the ad there is a postman passing by outside, so presumably he is the next victim, but they don’t seem to mention that bit.
Are these government ads? I do not watch terrestrial TV so seriously have no idea. If people are being bombarded by images of how innately infectious and deadly we all are to each other then I can believe the opinion polls.
This stuff is so dangerous. The government knows not what it does. At some point they will need to seek repentance for this sheer evil.
If only that where true…
Don’t forget the other ad, where green slime is on a hand.
I don’t know if that’s an NHS one though.
Wasn’t that a Party Political Broadcast?
The brainwashing and false advertising continues doesn’t it? Even after the NHS was ordered by the ASA to remove their advert featuring Santa in hospital.
It does
Good grief!!!
If we think that’s bad, this is worse:
https://twitter.com/emmakennytv/status/1346159514173775875
Seriously?!!! What evil.
It’s awful isn’t it? And the message is very, very damaging
I think it calls for a can of spraypaint and the two words “the human”
Utter bastards who did this poster. Beyond CONTEMPT.
I’ve going to start asking people who wear masks in the street if they wear them inside their home and go to bed in them. If they answer No. I shall say .. have you got special filters on your doors and windows to stop the outside virus laden air getting in?
I actually walked past a house yesterday and saw a woman inside watching telly while wearing a mask.
I kid thee not.
Thick as fuck.
I believe you. I saw a man before Christmas WFH on his computer in a mask.
Ditto – please don’t stop contributing.
My wife will soon drive 20 miles to her 95 year old mother who is blind to stop with her overnight,do her shopping, pay her bills and do her housework (you know, the totally unnecessary things).
Fully expected to be stopped and questioned by our friendly neighbourhood Gestapo.
Will keep LS updated.
I am so glad that she is doing so. Back in March, I was the only one of my 4 sisters who was prepared to drive for 2 hours to see my 96 year old mother. And even then, I spent much of the journey trembling with fear, expecting the police at any time.
However, looking back it was a useful experience, as it gave me plenty of time to realise how stupid and unnecessarily draconian the stay at home mantra was.
Btw, my mother died in July, of a heart attack brought on by the stress of lockdown. In many respects, I am thankful that she did not have to endure this winter.
Update: My wife said that Stourbridge was as quiet as the grave but at least there was no sign of the Gestapo.
I need your comments as I need the comments from all on this site, the opposition in East Germany had to be patient and steadily persistent but eventually the wall came down. For me to have the strength, the will and the arguments to carry on I need the people on this site and the comments they make. My escape from this is the wildlife conservation work that I do and I am trying to convince the local wildlife trust that is is both legal and safe for this work to carry on, it takes the comments here to give me the confidence to do this. Small stuff I know but step by step we make some progress.
I couldn’t agree more. It’s vital to have this space to learn, comment, update and share views and the most important point is to know we’re not alone. I know I certainly would have gone mad and worse if I hadn’t found this site and you like minded Truth-seekers and Truth-tellers. Scepticism brought me here and clinging to the truth keeps me here and sane (just).
The government has never, EVER, “saved lives.” At best, it may have ever so slightly prolonged the expiry date of those who are already in Death’s waiting room – people who are sadly a nasty bug away from a short stint in hospital and a predictable demise, as experienced every winter for centuries. What the government HAS done however is perpetrate the greatest theft of quality life years since time immemorial, with healthy, Covid-resistant young men and women committing suicide in their droves, their deaths meaning absolutely nothing to the privileged, I-can-work-from-home set who are glorifying in being paid to sit around in their pyjamas. If I were to make an educated guess, the government restrictions that started last March and the swirling mass hysteria that has sustained them will claim one million innocent lives at some point this year. Many of that million will be individuals in their prime, with young families reliant upon them or with parents who care deeply for them. Their short lives extinguished by abject poverty, depression and addiction. These deaths will never be the subject of a headline BBC report or a Guardian front page – they do not fit the narrative and are… Read more »
Yes so true. Its like waking up in Oz. Everything is in colour, but, I have a one party state where a wicked witch is in charge. The flying pig monkeys arrest you for wrongthink, the scarecrows spout the Barrington declaration and wisdom but they are tied to a post in the middle of a field and nobody can hear him. The courage has deserted the lion and he is currently hiding under his bed. The tin man never found his heart after he was cancelled on twitter. I tried following the yellow brick Road but was stopped leaving the munchkins as I was in tier5. And the Ruby slippers I bought on amazon are fucking useless. There is no place…..
Can they get away with writing lies in their emails? Here is the first section of an email response to the petition calling for publication of the false positive rates for PCR tests (sure many of you have received it anyway):- “Government responded: The PCR test is reliable and effective. Like any diagnostic test however, there is always the small possibility of a false negative or a false positive result.The PCR test is reliable and effective. Lighthouse laboratories that will undertake the processing of the majority of the tests have been reviewed by experts as part of their set up and each has a clinical virology lead. Like any diagnostic test however, there is always the small possibility of a false negative or a false positive result.We do not have a method for collecting data for false positive or false negative results arising from testing within the national testing programme, however ONS data on the current tests show they are very specific and the risk of false positives is extremely low.Published academic evidence from the UK and internationally demonstrates that self-administered test kits can be just as effective as clinician-administered tests in securing a good sample. 2 lies in the… Read more »
“We do not have a method for collecting data for false positive or false negative results arising from testing within the national testing programme”
So you can’t verify it then. You are implementing a procedure that directly affects public lives without it being verified and subject to audit.
Try that with food safety and see what happens.
The government has just admitted they are doing something that is illegal.
thank you – that’s my 2nd MP email of the morning done then
DING! That should cheers up the face-nappy Tory princess on a Wednesday.
Don’t expect a reply she STLL hasn’t responded to my last emails.
I think she was too offended shocked appalled dismayed upset horrified and traumatised by what I wrote to even bother to get her rupert of a private secretary to write a boiler plate reply to me.
Because we let them. Because our desire for this nightmare to be over without having to do anything is greater than our desire to fight for our freedom or even for the well-being of our children. That’s why everyone complies with the third lockdown. Because they hope “it will all be over in March”… meanwhile Whitty is preparing the grounds for new lockdowns next winter. The public is in a fear paralysis and the government is turning the screws tighter and tighter and tighter… and we close our eyes hoping “it won’t happen”. Look how lame the LS news updates have become…”our hopes for ending lockdown rest on the vaccine uptake”. Are you people kidding me? Is this a news update sponsored by Big Pharma..? Lockdown Sceptics has willingly put the welfare of the elderly generation on the trading ticket for freedom. Who cares we are coercing the 70+ populace into an experimental medical intervention in form of the mRNA vaccine, if only we can have our pubs back by March. Shame on LS. The truth is that our freedom should have never been on the trading ticket in the first place. But that was their goal all along and… Read more »
I agree with you. However I find above the line is just facts. Some opinion but mostly only a counterpoint to the msm style drivel. The Guy Fawkes stuff is under the line, down here with the rebels.
I find the worst thing is that the majority are willing executioners and are urging the Pig Dictatorship to make even more stringent rules.
It is extraordinary. Completely — and deliberately — non-transparent. They need to provide data on the Ct rate.
I got that from letter as a FOI response.
Ripped them to shreds – no reply.
Please don’t go
Well! If you ever wondered what World Government would look like, here it is.
Or, rather, government by the ‘World Council’, from ‘Thunderbirds Are Go!’
The comment above from Sir Desmond Swayne is a crucial one;
He added: “I’m appalled that we are where we are. I’m deeply suspicious of the science, and the fact is that we’ve been bounced again. The Government lacks the scientific and statistical expertise to ask the right questions and review the data and modelling.”
Unfortunately it is not just the Government that lacks this ability it seems to be the whole of Parliament and the Media. It is a huge failure of management, any good manager can manage work with a complex technical input even if they have no technical knowledge, the trick is to ask the right questions, set the right criteria, parameters and targets. It is not difficult (after all I used to do it) it just requires a degree of application, a systematic approach and the confidence not to be blown off course by high minded experts. It is amazing that there does not seem to be anyone in charge of this nonsense who is capable of doing this.
Sir Des is our only voice of reason. If you have scientists giving you facts, do you have enough knowledge to understand them? The Pig Dictator does not and rather than rock the boat and get a second opinion he just goes along with it. I think he thinks when the shit hits the fan he can just blame them. But of course these are just advisors and will melt into the background and just leave him to carry the can. Its your name on all these amendments you twat Doris!!
Morning! Just want to add my reflections before homeschooling We are clearly in a classic PCR driven casedemic We had a spike in March/April and now the governing classes are on a hair trigger But covid-19 seems to be now just a seasonal virus – just one of the 200 that go round and knock elderly people over the edge Ignoring PCR and looking at ZOE app data, March/April peak was 2.2 million infected (symptomatic). Currently its 700,000. Current new infections are levelling off. The R value peaked on 18th Dec and is trending down. I expect a peak in new daily infections in the second week of Jan. The number of infectious in society will peak 10 days later. This all agrees with peak overall mortality being 5th Jan and peak week mortality usually being second week of Jan. Through Jan and Feb infections will go down, false positives will go down, ‘pressure’ on the NHS will go down. As we come out of panic mode people will look at the data more objectively. There is no way that in the Summer after we look back and see nothing more than a normal winter season that predictions of next… Read more »
I really hope you’re right!
If infections come down, as sure as night follows day it will be explained as being due to the lockdown, and used as justification for yet more lockdowns. This doesn’t end until enough of the sheep wake up and say no.
It’s interesting that Toby goes on Newsnight to admit he was wrong about a second wave of Covid while this newsletter shows almost on a daily basis, including today, how hospitalisations and death are within normal levels.
Who is he being honest with?
It’s endemic. It will continue to peak every winter from now until forever.
yes. every winter we will have a wave of covid and all the other viruses. some more, some less. At some point we’ve either got to stop searching for it or stop panicking about what we find
I suspect being aggressively interviewed in Newsnight is not easy, I would not like to do it, it must be quite different to sitting at your computer calmly considering what you type. I imagine he was taking a tactical approach and trying to move the argument to where he wanted it to go rather than end up is a ding-dong battle over past events.
Sometimes on TV & Radio when they are interviewing someone who is lacking experience and confidence they will go out of their way to help them get their point across but no such consideration was given to Sunetra Gupta when interviewed on radio 4 , although not a natural presenter, because she represented an alternative view to the lockdown zealots she was treated quite aggressively.
What is appalling and a disgrace is that the interviewers clearly have no ability to leave aside their personal views and adopt the impartial, carefully considered approach that will lead to a fully informed debate.
Agree on everything except the idea that Toby can’t stand his ground on Newsnight. I and most would almost certaintly trip over my words and look like a fool. But he’s a seasoned journalist with plenty. of experience of interviews.
“What is appalling and a disgrace is that the interviewers clearly have no ability to leave aside their personal views and adopt the impartial, carefully considered approach that will lead to a fully informed debate.“
The idea that the BBC should be impartial and respectful towards genuine dissenters from the establishment’s permitted range of opinions was abandoned decades ago, in favour of activist “challenging” of wrongthink.
The Mateless thing could hardly get her words out for sneering.
Sars2 is nothing more than Coronavirus #5 (prob more in the wild tbh)
They are counting all the corona colds as one test
Exactly. Euromomo shows that nothing is going on so far beyond what happens more or less every winter.
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
You were poor on defending your points Toby. I expect you to use facts to knock that cunt Dunt out the park.
He’s been off the boil all week. The last few updates have been depressing as fuck.
The Spectator has also gone limp over the past 2 or 3 weeks.
Yes this new strain of virus unveiling has certainly worked well for the government and it’s plan to get through the winter without further blame for virus fatality . I understand the caution from Toby and the sceptic MP’s, go too gung-ho early and the leftists will label you as a crank bad person forever. They are very good at that but Ferguson and co can be as wrong as possible to be and still get treated like the second coming. Life isn’t fair but Toby will be proved right in time.
Yes, I’m considering cancelling my subscription. I’m starting to wonder about who is funding the magazine now.
Cancelled mine about a month ago. Reading them I sensed a parting of the ways between them and me on this point. Too much normalising of what is essentially a government war on it’s people. They are too intelligent not to know it’s disproportionate and destructive. Very very disappointing. Same with the Telegraph, cancelled them so they are now limping along without my £4 per month (which they actually offered to drop to £2 if I stay, completely ignoring the reason I gave for cancelling – lack of editorial conscience).
Thanks, Andrea. I’ll give the Spectator a bit longer, but my patience is running out. I did discover a new magazine called The Critic and it’s a lot more ‘critical’ about everything, with quite a variety of articles, though it has the advantage of being a monthly, rather than a weekly.
Saying he was mistaken about the second wave was a seriously low point.
The strategy of just plugging everybody with a vaccine so we can all pretend to be immune and move on is going to fail badly. The fundamental premise of that strategy is that people are terrified and need to be feel safe. And the vaccine will make them feel safe. This won’t work for two big reasons: (1) The vaccines don’t do much – the manufacturers themselves say so – so PCR tests will continue to find “cases”, the media will continue to harvest whatever information they can find that suggests there is a problem and manufacture the next hysteria or crisis. The idea that the government will reduce testing to prove that the vaccine has worked and claim victory is mistaken. They could have done that at anytime and haven’t. The government isn’t control of anything at this point. It’s just reacting late and badly to everything. (2) That rationale for imposing masks in closed spaces was that it would make people feel safe and get out and about. In fact, they have the opposite effect, masks have actually made people more fearful and more hysterical about Covid, not less. I’m back to where I was back in April… Read more »
It will go away in the Spring and society has 6 months to consider our previous responses and our future ones. Maybe best to clear out SAGE and fill it with new people a) who have more balanced opinions and b) who haven’t been responsible for the disastrous decisions of the past
Perhaps recruit actual scientists, rather than social anthropology-type woke marxists who hate our country and want to destroy it? I would arrest those currently in SAGE and charge them with fraud (at a minimum).
I hope you’re right about the shitshow ending in the spring. If it doesn’t, we’re even more screwed than we are now.
Nothing gets better until the testing is reduced. People will still contract the virus and some of those will go on to die within 28 days of having the test. There is no route out of this mess currently.