GPs Told to “Stand Down” Routine Care to Deliver Vaccine
GPs have been told to prioritise Covid vaccinations at the expense of delivering all but the most urgent of care. The Telegraph has the details.
GPs have been instructed to “stand down” routine care and prioritise providing Covid vaccinations in a bid to ensure the NHS can deliver almost 14 million jabs by next month.
Doctors have been given guidance saying that delivering the vaccine should be their “top priority”, with advice to “postpone other activities”.
It came amid confusion over attempts to recruit an army of volunteers to administer the vaccine, with retired medics told that the programme had closed despite Boris Johnson saying its expansion is vital.
On Wednesday, Mr Johnson said the current lockdown could last until Easter, with vaccines offering “the means of our escape” from confinement. The Prime Minister spoke as the latest figures showed deaths in the UK have exceeded 1,000 per day for the first time since April.
The Telegraph has learned that health officials have issued guidance instructing GPs to “stand down non-essential work” in the coming weeks in order to prioritise the speedy roll-out of the programme. Practices in London have been told to prioritise vaccines, with other duties restricted to urgent cases.
Suspending routine medical care will of course cause yet more avoidable sickness and death from non-Covid causes.
Problems and confusion continue to beset the vaccine programme.
Last week, the Telegraph revealed that retired medics have been prevented from returning to the front line to administer jabs by red tape. On Wednesday, Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, said requirements including fire safety and equality and diversity training, have been scrapped.
However, medics complained that their attempts to volunteer to administer vaccines had been blocked. One retired nurse who wanted to take part was told by health officials that the programme was now closed for applications.
A letter sent to Ross Andrews from NHS Professionals read: “Due to such a fantastic uptake from dedicated NHS workers like yourselves, we were able to recruit for the vaccination programme exceptionally quickly. We are now in the process of finalising the vetting and training of all applicants, and the programme is now closed for further applications.”
After being contacted by the Telegraph, health officials said a mistake had been made and that the scheme remains open.
The Lockdown Spartans
Just 16 MPs voted against the new lockdown in Parliament yesterday (the two tellers were Christopher Chope and Chris Green). Here they are, courtesy of Yahoo! News:
- Sir Graham Brady (Conservative, Altrincham and Sale West)
- Philip Davies (Conservative, Shipley)
- Richard Drax (Conservative, South Dorset)
- Paul Girvan (Democratic Unionist Party, South Antrim)
- Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party, Upper Bann)
- Karl McCartney (Conservative, Lincoln)
- Stephen McPartland (Conservative, Stevenage)
- Esther McVey (Conservative, Tatton)
- Anne Marie Morris (Conservative, Newton Abbot)
- Ian Paisley (Democratic Unionist Party, North Antrim)
- Andrew Rosindell (Conservative, Romford)
- Sir Desmond Swayne (Conservative, New Forest West)
- Sir Robert Syms (Conservative, Poole)
- Sir Charles Walker (Conservative, Broxbourne)
- David Warburton (Conservative, Somerton and Frome)
- Sammy Wilson (Democratic Unionist Party, East Antrim)
Take a bow.
Sir Desmond Swayne tweets:
Sir Charles Walker makes an impassioned plea on behalf of those dismissed as “covidiots”.
“Highly Contagious” New Variant Dipped in November
Software Engineer and Lockdown Sceptics regular Mike Hearn has dug into the data on the “70% more transmissible” new variant and found something curious: its prevalence dipped before it surged. Over to him.
The graphs of the new variant by region presented by the Government make it look like the new variant starts out near zero everywhere on November 22nd and then starts growing. However, this is due to graph truncation and unfortunate choice of Y axis. The ONS dataset released on December 30th has data going back further. Above is a similar plot to what the government presented but with the full data and a more appropriate scaling.
This reveals something problematic: in some regions the decline in prevalence during November was of the same order of magnitude as the increase during December. This contradicts the claim that the new variant is highly infectious. If that were true, all these graphs should be unambiguously up and to the right for the whole time-series.
The ONS spreadsheet says we should ignore data pre-dating mid November:
There are also other reasons why a swab may be positive for only these two genes, including lower viral load in the sample, which is why we have always seen a small percentage of this type of positive result. Our data suggests the dropping of the S-gene became a relatively reliable indicator of the new variation in COVID-19 from mid-November. Prior to that, the data should not be read as being an indicator of the variant.
There are two problems with this statement:
- It’s not an explanation: just an assertion that for “data” reasons the meaning of the S-gene dropouts changed completely during November. The ONS is meant to make data transparent but here that’s not happening. What data suggests this, how is it being interpreted and what was the biological meaning of S-gene dropouts before mid-November, if not this new variant? It can’t be just test noise because the levels at the start of the time series in Yorkshire and the South West were very far from their lowest points.
- At some point “mid November” became November 22nd, although that isn’t actually the middle of November. This vagueness suggests that the decision of where to draw the cutoff isn’t data-based at all, but instead might be driven by an attempt to hide the declines while still having enough data in the series to seem credible given the timing of the second variant announcements.
My guess is a combination of two things is going wrong here:
- When epidemiologists tried to explain the run-up in cases they were informed of the sequencing of the new variant without being given the precise dataset we are looking at now. They proceeded to make a correlation-implies-causation based conclusion, without realising there was no actual correlation.
- They opted for blaming the new variant rather than the more obvious explanation that respiratory diseases always go up in winter, because one curious feature of epidemiological models is that they don’t seem to incorporate seasonality or in fact, any notion of absolute time at all. If you read the code of these models you’ll see that time is measured as “days since start of epidemic”. This is because their models aren’t able to predict when epidemics start or why, so can only be run once an epidemic has already started. This puts the model into an effectively non-seasonal world in which all days are created equal.
- When the discrepancy was realised it was too late and the train was already in motion, so this explanation that the signal meant something different before November 22nd was created. The lack of detail and apparent contradictions are evidence of the attempt to reconcile the contradictory output of epidemiological models with the lab reported data.
Lockdown Sceptics quoted Sir Desmond Swayne as saying: “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.”
Sir Desmond is correct to be suspicious. Dropping data points that undermine your hypothesis is something high school students are taught violates the scientific method, yet it’s been a recurring feature of epidemiology throughout 2020. What’s presented to us as “science” is in reality pseudo-science – that which has the superficial look and feel of something scientific without actually being so. Occasionally the mask slips. After my code review of Imperial College London’s COVID-19 model was picked up by the press, ICL announced that “the conclusions around lockdown rely not on any mathematical model but on the scientific consensus that COVID-19 is a highly transmissible virus”. In other words although we’re presented with data and modelling, it’s ultimately all just for show: what matters most in this community is not scientific truth but friendly agreement.
Did the Government Forget to Close Schools?
A teacher has emailed us, having spotted a hole in the Government’s regulations.
I’ve been reading the Regulations (SI 2021/8) that were passed yesterday.
The method that the Government has chosen to bring in the new lockdown is to amend the existing Regulations establishing the tiers system (The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) Regulations 2020 (SI 2020/1374)) and the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) (No. 3) Regulations 2020 (SI 2020/750).
Apart from a very few minor amendments that don’t concern schools, all that the new legislation does that is of significance is to place the whole of England into Tier 4, and to extend the application of the Tiers Regulations till March 31st.
It leaves untouched the (non-exhaustive) exceptions to the restrictions on leaving home and on gatherings. Those exceptions include the exception for education detailed in Schedule 3A of the Tiers Regulations – the key provisions creating that exception being paragraphs 1(2)(a), 2(5)(b), 3(3), and 6(3)(aa) of SI 2020/1374.
That is to say, there seems to be no legal requirement on schools to close under the new lockdown legislation that came into force today. The January 4th announcement has the status, if I’m right, of unenforceable guidance as opposed to law.
The Secretary of State does have the power to issue a temporary closure notice to schools, or any particular school, under Schedule 16 of the Coronavirus Act 2020; but as I understand it no such power has been exercised, nor – I think – was that power exercised during the first lockdown.
Can this be right, or am I missing something?
The point – if I’m right – is, in a way, merely academic: and I’m afraid I’m not about to propose to my employer that we just open the school; I would be dismissed as a time-waster at best, and more likely condemned for taking an “irresponsible” attitude to staff and student health.
But it is arguably another disturbing aspect of the country’s collective sleepwalking into totalitarianism if 32,000-plus schools are meekly closing on the say-so of ministers who aren’t even being obliged to exercise the legal powers that they have been granted to bring about this effect if they desire it.
I notice that in R (Dolan) v Secretary of State the argument that lockdown infringed the right to education was rejected for more than one reason: the High Court and Court of Appeal were persuaded that the exceptional circumstances of the pandemic meant that a balance had to be struck between the rights of the individual and the general interests of the community. But they also noted that in fact no order was made requiring schools to close (see paragraphs 113 and 114 of the Court of Appeal judgment).
“Our Hospital Is Not Overstretched” – Senior NHS Surgeon in London
A senior surgeon has told Lockdown Sceptics that his large NHS hospital in London is not “in any way over-stretched” – and sent us a picture of the latest occupancy figures to prove it.
This is just one hospital, of course, and there can be no doubt that a number of hospitals in London and some other regions are under extreme stress at the moment. The situation is exacerbated by the large numbers of staff self-isolating due to Covid testing and the additional workload entailed by Covid constraints.
But the leak is a reminder that there are hospitals even in London where things are not out of the ordinary for January.
Stop Press: A reader based in Kingston (London) has got in touch to say he and his son were tested this week and the nurse had an interesting confession to make:
My son and I were offered a lateral flow test at the weekend. The offer came from his primary school. We turned up, slick operation, had a chat with the nurse helping us. She said they are seeing less than 1% positives for the tests. She expressed amazement that there is apparently a new strain running riot as this wasn’t being seen in their results (they are only testing people with no symptoms).
Stop Press 2: A leak to the Health Service Journal shows that London NHS anticipates running out of beds in just two weeks.
NHS England London medical director Vin Diwakar set out the stark analysis to the medical directors of London’s hospital trusts on a Zoom call.
The NHS England presentation, seen by HSJ (see slides below story), showed that even if the number of Covid patients grew at the lowest rate considered likely, and measures to manage demand and increase capacity, including open the capital’s Nightingale hospital, were successful, the NHS in London would be short of nearly 2,000 general and acute and intensive care beds by January 19th.
The briefing forecasts demand for both G&A and intensive care beds, for both Covid and non-Covid patients, against capacity. It accounts for the impact of planned measures to mitigate demand and increase capacity.
For both G&A and intensive care, three scenarios are detailed: “Best”, which projects 4% daily growth; “average” which plots 5% daily growth; and “worse” which forecasts 6% daily growth.
The briefing says that growth on January 5th was 3.5% for G&A beds 4.8% for ICU beds.
Fortunately, ZOE app data suggests new infections in London have been falling since the end of December, suggesting the current growth rate in Covid hospital occupancy shouldn’t continue for long.
Update on Sweden
New regulations came into force in Sweden on December 14th and despite all the talk of Sweden changing its strategy the new rules still leave almost everything to personal choice and impose almost no mandatory measures. No shops are shut, no pubs or restaurants are closed, there are no laws governing how many people can meet in private (though eight is the upper limit in public), and there are no mask regulations. Seeing that “cases” ceased rising some weeks ago despite it being the middle of December, at what point does the rest of the world notice that lockdowns aren’t the critical factor in “controlling” this disease?
Not Just Emotional Pleading
A University Professor has written a further contribution to the ongoing debate about the “failed strategy of lockdown sceptics”. We’ve now had so many responses, we’ve created a new section in the right-hand menu to put them all. (See “Why haven’t our Points Landed?”) He begins:
A piece by David McGrogan on January 3rd implies surprise at the alacrity with which the British public has acquiesced to lockdown and suggests that sceptics embrace some of the more emotive strategies of lockdown proponents.
Dr McGrogan is not alone if he was unprepared for this complicity: even one of lockdown’s principal architects, Prof. Neil Ferguson, was surprised that Western Governments could “get away with” national lockdowns. Yet the roots of blind societal compliance in the UK surely have several components, some of which have been hidden in plain sight. The impact of disinformation has been compounded by a woeful lack of scientific literacy among Parliamentarians. This may in part explain the paucity of due process and failure of legislative oversight, for example in appointing members of SAGE, or not having it publicly audited. The ex cathedra pronouncements of SAGE may have produced unchallenged fear that has prevented un-whipped Parliamentary votes at key points in this unfolding saga. Without full and disinterest deliberation, a balanced policy approach seems unlikely, and that has turned out to be the case. The general population may be forgiven for feeling secure, a mood fostered by the comfort of recent decades and Government borrowing to cushion the economic down-side of lockdown. It has been egged on by a lamentably unquestioning and complicit main stream media. The emergent pro-lockdown, pro-vaccine Zeitgeist has produced a morality of convenience and hostility towards those who would rock the boat.
In as much as these are contributory factors, they cannot readily be undone by a single campaign alone. Appealing to emotions to advance the anti-lockdown case may have a place, and those who agree should pursue it. Two cheers! Yet doing so should not be justified simply on the grounds that this is what the ‘other side’ is doing and they are ‘winning’.
Worth reading in full.
But What Would a Sceptic Have Done?
Lockdown Sceptics regular Freddie Attenborough wonders how sceptics would have handled the crisis had we been in charge.
Now that we’ve entered into another lockdown, and all we’ve got to look forward to is baking banana bread and crying, I thought it might help to keep the phone lines at The Samaritans free for those most in need if I forced myself to engage with the following question: What would we sceptics have done differently? As we’re all too grimly aware, of course, lockdown zealots have spent the past year detaching themselves from reality, and now ride ghost-trains nervously around funfairs that they’ve built in their own minds. Scrutinising what, for want of a better word, we must describe as the ‘logic’ of the plan they’ve devised for the rest of us, however, we find ourselves unimpressed. Angry, even. Enforced participation in a socially destructive, deeply dispiriting negative feedback loop consisting of brief stop-offs at eight endlessly recurring and all equally dismal staging posts is, after all, not everyone’s cup of tea. But there it is. That’s state power for you. The whip is cracked, the organ plays, and Lo! Our hamster wheels just keep on turning. Curtailment of civil liberties, anxiety, depression, white elephants masquerading as ‘Nightingales,’ insolvent businesses, undiagnosed tumours, rising unemployment… and so it goes, day after day. Sifting through the rubble of our national self-respect, cataloguing artefact after broken artefact, and wishing all the while that we could forget the roles we’ve been forced to play within this unreal, nightmare-like mode of existence. If nothing else, the following schematic representation of the circuitous route we’re taking around and around the disaster zone does at least have the merit of reminding us that any relics of the Old World you forget to mourn during one lockdown (livelihoods, businesses, free speech, TalkRadio’s YouTube channel, and so on), can always be picked up and honoured with a few tears the next time around.
He proceeds to present “12 possible theses on how society could have responded to COVID-19”.
Find it on the right-hand menu under “Have Sceptical Voices Been Suppressed?”. Worth reading in full.
A Village Snitch Story
A reader has written in with a disturbing tale of life in a typical English village in Covid Times.
In my village an example has emerged of what Boris’s Lockdown Culture can do to a community. There’s a recently widowed woman here. Her 60-year-old husband died a few weeks ago after an 18-month battle with leukaemia. The family have been completely shattered by the struggle but by November the game was up, compounded by him being infected at the last minute by someone with Covid being placed in his ward. He came home to die which he did a few days later. The funeral was three weeks ago and I think any right-minded person could forgive the presence of his adult children, who had been there throughout, helping their father die in peace and their bereaved and distressed mother to cope. Not good enough for one villager though. That person has devoted daylight and the evenings to checking up on every car seen in the village over Christmas, noting times and registration numbers to spot for visitors and now making it known this information is available to village organizations. The main target? The widow who is, apparently putting the village spy’s life at risk by having her children there. Threats have been circulated, though fortunately the victim is so far unaware of the mean-minded cruelty afoot. Happily, someone has drawn the spy’s attention to the offences of harassment and intimidation, and that if the spy is so concerned he/she should go to the police. Things seem to have subsided. For the moment. We can look forward to an infinite array of fallout from scenarios like this across the nation once (if ever) the country returns to normal, score settling, and embitterment as a legacy of these dreadful times and an echo of the great evil seen in the middle decades of the twentieth century in Europe which so many Britons have so smugly insisted could never happen here. Yeah, right.
Victims of Lockdown Website Launched
A new website, Victims of Lockdown, has launched for people to share their stories about the toll lockdown has taken on them and those they know. In its own words:
Lockdown is having a catastrophic impact on the people we love and the livelihoods we’ve built. We all feel this pain terribly, but it’s rarely talked about. So, this website is a place to share your story. Join the many others, just like you, who are standing up and speaking out.
Find it here and add your stories and share the page.
Toby’s Newsnight Appearance: A Review
Toby appeared on Newsnight on Tuesday night to talk about whether lockdown sceptics should be outright banned or reluctantly tolerated. You can watch the segment here. A reader has written a review.
Emily Maitlis: “The lockdown worked in March, it brought the R rate down from 3 to .6.”
Toby Young: “It was falling before it was imposed.”
EM: “We will discuss this again I am sure.”
It was an exit cue of course and whilst it may not have quite amounted to an invitation, we must make sure we do discuss it again with Emily, because whether or not lockdowns work is what it is all about.
The exchange came at the end of a nine-minute segment that perfectly illustrated Dr David McGrogan’s piece on “the failed strategy of lockdown sceptics”, with emotive accusations of Covid denial blocking out any light that might have been used to illuminate key areas of contention. The Newsnight segment was on whether YouTube had been right to remove from its platform the recordings of talkRADIO on the basis that its policy is “to take down content that explicitly contradicts expert consensus”. A decision that has since been reversed.
Emily set out her stall. “In a time of public emergency, and in the face of so much irrefutable scientific data, is it responsible to spread the word of the Covid Deniers/the Lockdown Sceptics – is it responsible to air the unorthodox view? Or is it wrong not to acknowledge it?” Emily asked. A deliberate conflation of deniers and sceptics later justified because Toby Young had, in June 2020 when Covid had, for a time, all but disappeared, argued that Covid had “all but disappeared”, that “social distancing was pointless” which it probably was back then, as evidenced by the absence of an increase in deaths following the BLM rallies and that the second spike had “refused to materialise”. It hadn’t then – but there is clearly a problem now. Emily wanted contrition – Toby obliged. Fair enough you might think but did Newsnight pillory the Chief Scientific Officer when, after months of denying the possibility of T cell immunity, conceded he had been wrong all along? A far greater failure with far more significant implications. Last night Emily read out a tweet from children’s author Michael Rosen saying, “If Toby Young had been in charge he would have switched ventilators off and I would have died.” What possible justification did she have? Was she auditioning for a space on the Good Morning Britain sofa? Did reading that tweet really shed any light on the greatest crisis our nation has faced in our lifetimes? Would Patrick Vallance have received the same kind of treatment?
Ian Dunt, the other contributor and editor of politics.co.uk, questioned the morality of publishing a contrary view – “Should you write it or publish it in the first place, is it responsible, is it truthful, does it show moral consideration?” His answer was of course was no – he “wouldn’t be able to sleep at night”. Using phrasing, and in a tone that clearly conveyed her opinion of the lockdown sceptic argument that lockdown damage might outweigh the benefits, Emily then questioned whether “oxygenating views that encourages a change in behaviour that leads to a greater number of deaths that is dangerous”. That is only one small step away from Paul Mason (formerly of Newsnight), who tweeted, “I don’t want Johnson to say ‘Stay home, safe lives’ etc. I want him to call out and ridicule the bullshit anti-maskers, lockdown skeptics (sic) and denialists in his own party – and order social media platforms to suppress/label Covid disinformation. That’s leadership”. It is not, it is censorship, and Mason, Dunt and Maitlis are all patronising the British people.
One thing that Ian Dunt did get right was that “there was no threat of Toby or his allies convincing very many people – a YouGov poll says 85% of the public support the new lockdown measures”. So why is that? I’ve never been a fan of our Prime Minister, he is the perfect illustration of why you should never make a salesman into a CEO (although without him we might have ended up with Jeremy Corbyn). But I did like the look of both Professors Whitty and Vallance. Chris Whitty in particular comes across as unassuming and honest, a family member was taught by him when she was a medical student and was full of praise. A close friend went through medical school with Vallance and spoke highly of him too (less so now). I wanted to believe, I wanted to go along with the narrative. Professor Ferguson grew up just over the border in mid-Wales and his mother is an Anglican priest, as was my father – I wanted to believe him too. And that is the instinct of the vast majority of the people in this country – it is just too overwhelming, and when the MSM are not doing their job, time consuming not to.
It was David Blunkett referencing Matthew Syed’s brilliant book on “group think” – Rebel Ideas – on BBC Radio 4’s The World at One on April 28th that gave me the confidence to look elsewhere. Drawing on Rebel Ideas, Blunkett argued that the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) has a problem, “major mistakes in the recent past have been made by people of similar ilk, similar ideas, similar background, similar thinking being considered the only experts that you could draw down on”.
I set off on a path that will be familiar to many sceptics which took me to UnHerd, Spiked, Tim Spector and the Covid ZOE App, Lockdown Sceptics and then to Twitter and Ivor Cummins, David Paton, Joel Smalley, GBD, Peter Hitchens, Pearson and more. The evidence that lockdowns do not work seems extremely compelling to me but there are also many unanswered questions – how is it that Japan a highly urbanised country of 125 million, whose response to Covid has been shambolic – little testing, no track and trace, intermittent lockdowns – have had so few deaths? What can we learn from Taiwan and Vietnam? And why is it that Sweden, which has performed so much better than most European countries that have had lockdowns, have suffered more deaths than their Nordic neighbours? Is the “dry tinder” explanation enough?
The sceptic case is supported by a huge number of scientists, physicians, academics and well-meaning people who also want to save lives and find the best outcome for our country. They do not deserve to be vilified. This whole Covid thing is not over yet and these rebel ideas justify opening up the debate not shutting it down. The ideas and the data that underpin them warrant serious, detailed scrutiny by the MSM and the BBC in particular, to whom we look in times of crisis.
Emily Maitlis must, as she mooted, make time to discuss this again – soon. She needs to produce the data to justify her assertions that the scientific evidence is “irrefutable” and that the lockdown in March 2020 reduced the R rate from 3 to .6. The programme content should be about data and not sentiment, her guests should be data scientists and not journalists and the segment should be an hour long Newsnight special and not 8mins 44 seconds. I wait in hope.
Round-up
- “The censorious war on lockdown sceptics” – Brendan O’Neill comes to the defence of Covid heretics in the Spectator
- “The West Is Responsible for Its Self-Destruction” – Jordan Schachtel in AIER on the gulf between China and the West in the wake of COVID-19
- “Police to stop people in the street and ask them why they are out during the third Covid lockdown” – Telegraph report on the further descent of once free Britain into a police state where merely being outside is a cause for police action
- “Masked cops handcuff protesters and arrest OAP, 94, in new Covid crackdown” – More on the same depressing theme, from the Sun
- “Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” vaccines – we need more details and the raw data” – Peter Doshi in the BMJ has some further questions about the vaccine trials
- “Necessary Medicine For the Covid Pandemic” – Omar S. Khan offers his thoughts on the running debate about the “failed strategy of lockdown sceptics”
- “Government is now God and we are the legions of the damned” – Laura Perrins in Conservative Woman rues the perverse moral power lockdowns have acquired due to their supposed ability to save lives
- “Sweden’s non-lockdown didn’t work – why not?” – Interesting take by Nima Khorrami in EU Observer on why Sweden did badly compared to its neighbours – and it’s not because it failed to lock down
- “Should the US Have Been More like Pacific Countries?” – Phillip W. Magness in AIER debunks the myths around the Covid “success stories”
- “The NHS is not at risk of being overwhelmed—it already is” – Daniel Sokol in the BMJ says with the cancellation of elective surgery the NHS is effectively already overwhelmed for non-Covid patients, who deserve better
- “The Lab-Leak Hypothesis” – New York Magazine explores one of the main theories of the virus origin, long dismissed as misinformation but which actually has much to recommend it. The author of the piece is the once famous novelist Nicholson Baker
- “China says delay in WHO investigation of virus ‘not just a visa issue’” – China appears to be oddly reticent to allow outside investigators in to check out the origins question, even from the WHO, reports the Telegraph
- “First results of a Germany-wide registry on mouth and nose covering (mask) in children” – Pre-print study on masks for children that finds (in a non-representative sample) reports of irritability (60%), headache (53%), difficulty concentrating (50%), less happiness (49%), reluctance to go to school/nursery (44%), malaise (42%) impaired learning (38%) and drowsiness or fatigue (37%)
- “The Coronavirus Pandemic: India in Global Perspective” – Lockdown Sceptics contributor Prof Ramesh Thakur and Deepak Nayyar, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, compare the mismanagement of the global pandemic in different countries, including India
- “Is furlough immoral? A Catholic’s perspective” – Yes, says Sean Walsh in the Article, because it’s wrong to bribe people out of the habit of work
- “ONS, Ministers and one-sided data… COVID-19 latest” – Statistician Simon Briscoe on the curious case of the early shock ONS report
- “Single-shot Covid vaccine could be approved ‘in weeks’ and help protect millions in UK” – The Telegraph brings news of another vaccine headed for approval
- “Study on PCR Test Used to Detect CCP Virus Based on Flawed Design: Scientists” – The Epoch Times reports on the expert challenge to the notoriously unreliable test
- “Pupils without laptops can still go to school in England lockdown” – The Department for Education says children with no access to laptops are designated as “vulnerable”, reports the Guardian
- “Julia Hartley-Brewer interviewing Dr John Lee, former professor of pathology” – The sceptical pathologist spoke to JHB yesterday
- Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher tells his Twitter followers what he thinks of the new lockdown rules
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Two today: “You Caused It All By Telling Lies” by Hank Williams and “Learning To Live With Myself” by Merle Haggard.
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.
Stop Press: The BBC has helpfully done an update on “Sex and Covid: What are the rules in lockdown?“
The Terrence Higgins Trust published advice in August suggesting people avoid kissing, wear a face covering and choose positions that aren’t face-to-face during sex.
“Your best sexual partner during the COVID-19 pandemic is yourself or someone within your household and you should follow the Government guidelines about social distancing, hand washing and face coverings.
“However, it’s unrealistic to ask everyone to abstain from sex indefinitely,” the trust says.
Masturbation, sex toys or having phone or online sex are recommended as the safest options.
If you are having sex with people outside of your household, it’s important to limit the number of partners, it adds.
Like with all parts of life at the moment, be aware of any COVID-19 symptoms you or your partner might have – and isolate if you have them.
If you are meeting someone new, the charity says to ask if they or anyone in their household have had symptoms or tested positive.
Is this the BBC publishing something that tacitly endorses breaking lockdown rules?
Sharing Stories
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Social Media Accounts
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“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a one-stop shop down here for people who want to buy (or make) a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and it has the advantage of not explicitly claiming you have a disability. But if you have no qualms about that (or you are disabled), you can buy a lanyard from Amazon saying you do have a disability/medical exemption here (takes a while to arrive). The Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. You can get a “Hidden Disability” tag from ebay here and an “exempt” card with lanyard for just £1.99 from Etsy here. And, finally, if you feel obliged to wear a mask but want to signal your disapproval of having to do so, you can get a “sexy world” mask with the Swedish flag on it here.
Don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face masks in shops here.
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption. Another reader has created an Android app which displays “I am exempt from wearing a face mask” on your phone. Only 99p, and he’s even said he’ll donate half the money to Lockdown Sceptics, so everyone wins.
If you’re a shop owner and you want to let your customers know you will not be insisting on face masks or asking them what their reasons for exemption are, you can download a friendly sign to stick in your window here.
And here’s an excellent piece about the ineffectiveness of masks by a Roger W. Koops, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry. See also the Swiss Doctor’s thorough review of the scientific evidence here.
The Great Barrington Declaration
The Great Barrington Declaration, a petition started by Professor Martin Kulldorff, Professor Sunetra Gupta and Professor Jay Bhattacharya calling for a strategy of “Focused Protection” (protect the elderly and the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with life), was launched in October and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it ever since. If you googled it a week after launch, the top hits were three smear pieces from the Guardian, including: “Herd immunity letter signed by fake experts including ‘Dr Johnny Bananas’.” (Freddie Sayers at UnHerd warned us about this the day before it appeared.) On the bright side, Google UK has stopped shadow banning it, so the actual Declaration now tops the search results – and Toby’s Spectator piece about the attempt to suppress it is among the top hits – although discussion of it has been censored by Reddit. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job.)
You can find it here. Please sign it. Now over three quarters of a million signatures.
Update: The authors of the GBD have expanded the FAQs to deal with some of the arguments and smears that have been made against their proposal. Worth reading in full.
Update 2: Many of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration are involved with new UK anti-lockdown campaign Recovery. Find out more and join here.
Update 3: You can watch Sunetra Gupta set out the case for “Focused Protection” here and Jay Bhattacharya make it here.
Update 4: The three GBD authors plus Prof Carl Heneghan of CEBM have launched a new website collateralglobal.org, “a global repository for research into the collateral effects of the COVID-19 lockdown measures”. Follow Collateral Global on Twitter here. Sign up to the newsletter here.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many legal cases being brought against the Government and its ministers we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
The Simon Dolan case has now reached the end of the road. But the cause has been taken up by PCR Claims. Check out their website here.
The current lead case is the Robin Tilbrook case which challenges whether the Lockdown Regulations are constitutional. You can read about that and contribute here.
Then there’s John’s Campaign which is focused specifically on care homes. Find out more about that here.
There’s the GoodLawProject and Runnymede Trust’s Judicial Review of the Government’s award of lucrative PPE contracts to various private companies. You can find out more about that here and contribute to the crowdfunder here.
And last but not least there was the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. A High Court judge refused permission for the FSU’s judicial review on December 9th and the FSU has decided not to appeal the decision because Ofcom has conceded most of the points it was making. Check here for details.
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. Samaritans is available round the clock, every single day of the year, providing a safe place for anyone struggling to cope, whoever they are, however they feel, whatever life has done to them.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. Doing these daily updates is hard work (although we have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending us stories and links). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here. (Don’t assume we’ll pick them up in the comments.)
And Finally…
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What ?
Even Adam Ant said
Stand and Deliver !
It is time my friends.
What would you put on a nationwide leaflet?
‘The Government is Killing People’
plus a copy of the letter sent by Scotty87 to his MP posted here about midnight yesterday.
Visit the Victims of Lockdown website and open your eyes to that which lies beyond your own neuroses.
Fred, I sent a private message to you concerning your moving and eloquent article (well, Toby made it an article, thank God) saying thank you. I used it at our church’s ‘day of Prayer for the Pandemic and Brexit’ and it caused all of them to come to the verge of tears.
Do you have a link for this website? It didn’t appear when I did a search.
Do you have a link?
It took me about 10 seconds with duck duck and my own ‘go’ of scanning results to see a link to this site and on that page to: https://www.victimsoflockdown.com The commenters who want spoon feeding might reflect they are giving power and responsibility away. Not everyone is a predatory opportunist. No amount of provided ‘information’ can substitute for conscious responsibility. And if there is no ‘question’ in the mind of the deceived there is no willingness or capacity to receive answer – BUT true gifts given shall in their time and timing be received and so we may seed for changes in ways we are unaware – while attempts to force change may associate truths with a coercive agenda, such as to increase defences against listening. Lockdown into a private-keep out – that seeks social reinforcements and justifications is not something we have never done to others or receive from others. You are (integral to) the Second Coming. Be the witnessing to a love that you do not mask in or manufacture and grow the spark of its recognition in others. Or if you prefer see Others as those who must be changed OR ELSE! This pattern is an energetic… Read more »
Thank you for the link, but this was a very rude way of putting it. We are here to help each other.
I recognise your sentiment but help each other what exactly? There were no pejoratives and my intent is not to crush a sense of ability but to blow the spark! I am sharing in awakening and growing responsibility AS freedom. Some are wanting to feel better about themselves without accepting responsibility for their own part – as in ‘just give me something to make the fear go away’ Doc, (or Hancock or Gates etc). If you want to take offence you will. But aside from feeling picked on, is there a place for a a ‘rude awakening’ or is ‘help’ only helpful if it conforms to rules of correctness? The results of lockdown and ‘restructuring society’ are likely to be inconceivably challenging. If you love life, go to the foundations of your being. Use everything as an opportunity to learn. The PATTERN that I addressed extends far far past the example I saw and responded to. It is the recognition of PATTERN that enables a shift to recognition from a new perspective. The focus on PERSON and personae operates to mask out the possibility of addressing the pattern in ourselves. The persona is a mask and operates as such. To… Read more »
Put this on the back
What would you put on a nationwide leaflet?
Waken up.
Smell the coffee.
Time. To move on…
There are myriad ways in which, each and every day, a living organism draws closer to death. Not all of them involve hiding under your bed and watching on from afar as life passes you by.
Splendid, but you need to put it in very simple words. for the benefit of the brain-dead.
One day you’re going to die. Hiding under the bed won’t stop that. Why not.live first?
You’re, like, so dead… But, omg, not yet?! LMFAO!!!
99.7% statistics, plus the age of mortality in the UK. Plus the usual bed occupancy etc
If it was about facts, then facts would have leaked out and it would be over.
There is a deeper need or demand being addressed that has more to do with hypnosis than trying to communicate from a world they cannot yet see or hear.
However those who are starting to ask questions can soon find sources of information that make so much more sense than the Hypnotist – but are in their own way more disturbing but closer to a sense of actually joining with truth than managed bubbledom.
i don’t see a one size fits all ‘message’ at the moment. there are some mutually contradictory purposes coming to the fore. To me it represents The Time of Choice. But to many fear frames the choices to deny any real choice.
I imagine a ‘Simon Says’ sticker on any and every ‘government edict’.
This doesn’t tell anyone what to think or feel. But invites a question as to the true authority – or lack of any. This is possibly breaking the law – defacing property – I don’t know, but at the moment, so might delivering leaflets be, or any number of natural freedoms once unquestionably lived and shared.
Is it possible to work up a straight comparison?
“For every life lost to COVID19* [in 2020?],
x (shout it in big font) people will ultimately die because of the effects of lockdown restrictions? Is that a price worth paying?
List causes…
Not seen such a stark figure and clearly there are time period and of/with/ misattributions, cases issues etc but the numbers are there. Anyone able to do a robust ratio calc?
*explain lower down how the figures are flawed, deaths with, deaths from, RT-PCR FPR bullets.
I was writing something like this but you said it so much better. Is the price worth paying… make it about how lockdown affects them personally
The consequences predictably arising from a choking back of the Economy as we continue to suffer are not so different than being defeated and pillaged by war – with less potential for building back unless signing your life – literally your body and your will – away to a corporate ownership of human cattle. If you betray yourself and others you may think to have a higher berth in a scuppered ship. I still feel the prospect is to fearful to use – excepting among those who recognise it already. Fear is not the basis for identity in action. That is the nature of the problem; a fear driven identity. I cant tell anyone they are accepting a false basis for their life and thus signing up for a fake and hollow existence – though if you are ‘good’ and survive you may be allowed an ‘avatar’ in a virtual adjustment reality by which to mitigate hell. But they can recognise they are making a choice that goes against the very essence of their being, and I don’t think anyone is really unaware of the choices they are making – but rather managing their ‘reality’ under all kinds of narrative… Read more »
I’d put.
If you’ve been given this leaflet it means you’ve been selected to survive the Great Reset. Only a select few have been chosen to be allowed to live in the new world and it’s you. The cost of this is you must kill your neighbours. In order to claim your place you have to take someone out. So if you, your partner and two kids are to live you must kill four others. Livestream yourself doing it on the Halvethepopulation.Gov.com so we know you’ve done it and await the golden ticket to our brave new live forever shinny new scientific techno-organic no free will everything has been decided for you masonic planet earth. Prizes will be awarded for those who kill in funny and unusual ways. Top prize is an electric horse and cart and free straw for a year.
All rights reserved. Subject to status. The government reserve the right to change the terms conditions.
Brilliant as always, thanks for making me giggle!
I will use total fear! In big blood stain letters written in NAZI German font (if there is such a thing) and say
They want to Kill 6 Billion people by 2030 using the vaccine and poverty. You will die, so will your parents, so will your kids, so will all your friends.. If you are not part of the elite you will die or be their slave.
Good one brother
That sums it up nicely and the Georgia Guidestones now beckon. We are already in very strange times, but still with very much worse to come. The blame lies with Johnson and Co, who have sold us all out to Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab. Only an uprising will stop them, but for now we have to resist the genocidal vaccines at all costs.
Yes The Terror is the chosen weapon of the Morally Self Righteous.
Hate MUST find a target!
Time to get on with life.
MASKS ‘NO’ – HUMANITY ‘YES’
*CITIZENS ARREST ALL POLITICIANS*
An argument in favour of wearing facemasks
Yes I know but please read on
I rarely go into shops anymore, and have done the not wearing a mask bit
However I have come to the conclusion that not wearing a mask is the equivalent of announcing in public in 1930/1940’s Germany that you were a Jew
Some comment that wearing a mask is the same as wearing the yellow star of David. It has dawned on me that the opposite is true
I am sure that the Jews of 1930’s Germany would have welcomed the opportunity to remove the stars from their clothing. To do so would have meant deportation
It is not yet crime to be sceptic and wear a mask
You have seen the hate in the Covidians eyes. They mean it
Better we go underground if we are going to carry on the fight. In my opinion setting ones self up as a target for the mob is not an effective tactic
This is going to get very nasty. Be careful, we need you
We will win
In Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe, Jews weren’t given the choice.The yellow star proclaimed them Jews and exposed them to discrimination, mob hatred and eventual annihilation. Going along with it willingly made no difference whatsoever.
The hate. symbol worked in most countries, but in Denmark, the King said that if the star was imposed he would be the first to wear it. And in that spirit, the Danish people worked to save most of their Jews.
In France, some brave students sported stars with the ironic tag Bon á rien, a pun on ‘bon Arien’.
Collaborating with the monsters who want to destroy you just adds cowardice to persecution, and makes the monsters’ task easier. Resistance is harder, but at the very least it saves you from total, abject shame.
Hear hear. 2021 is the year in which we ‘re all going to have to ask ourselves whether we want to stand up and fight, or run away and hide amongst the crowd. I choose any fate other than moral cowardice.
Not cowardice. Resistance fighters in France did not announce to the Gestapo that they were resistance fighters
They lied and used deception as this was part of the armoury of fighting back
The mask diktat is a means of identifying the dissenters
There are many ways to skin cats
Cecil, apologies: I wasn’t for one moment suggesting that as a gloss on your position, but rather, that of the lockdown zealots
No need to apologise
In line with what you are saying Cecil, I am investigating the purchase of a full hazmat suit with hood and goggles. With 97% humidity I am taking one for the team😂. I can buy online and I am thinking an asbestos respirator as well. You never know as an elderly women, it may come in handy. I may find need to pull a fibro house down one day, but I will never put one of those disgusting blue things on my face, fits snuggly, yeah right! For me it is about taking the piss out of this whole shit show, mask wearing. THERE IS NO ONE IN HOSPITAL IN NSW TODAY WITH COVID. Shine on…..
I considered getting a niqab – the hood that Muslim women wear with their hijab. For now I prefer my mask exemption card, although I expect that I will start being targeted for having one.
once you’ve skinned that cat you can make a mask out of it. Don’t wear a fucking mask, there is nothing subtle about it. Fuck these people and show them you[re not scared
If you are going to wear a mask, this is the model to go for.
Zorro mask
it’s a face covering after all
I see why you would suggest that, but consider that the whole point of making us wear masks in the first place is to dehumanise us. The government and its agencies would love for us to wear the Bane mask…
While sex is a great way to increase our gut biome, and can contribute to health and joy in life, there are other factors involved – along with consent.
Love people to show you are neither scared or holding malice.
This is fundamentally acknowledging them as human beings rather than using them to play out grievance or vendetta.
I know the word love is greatly abused by masking in virtue, but if I claim freedom I have to also give it. Yes I can be disturbed by the choices being made – but they are choices running as ‘programmed’.
If Fear is the operating system of such programming, then I feel to witness another way of seeing and being – to the degree they are open or willing to notice – even peripherally.
I see much deeper fears than fear of viruses operating.
I have some sympathy Cecil. Not everyone can deal with all the hostility and challenge when you just want to do some shopping. For personal health reasons, my brightly patterned mask is full of slits and perforations so I can breathe, no-one ever notices, they just register that you have one on. It also comes off on the bus when I sit down as do most others. Being underground can be useful, keep your enemies closer and all that.
Anyway, round here good to see lots of people out exercising on the old railway line, in clearly mixed household groups, lots of smiles, no masks and very little Covid swerving. It seems a lot are playing along whilst knowing that it’s all bollocks.
Well put. Better steel ourselves.
Good man Fred. I’m fighting like f*** for my 6 grandkids.
The story of how Denmarks Jews escaped the nazis is a fascinating one not least in the way that Danish Police and Civil Servants went all out to assist them unlike collaborationist France.
One of the escapees was Niels Bohr who went on to take a significant part in the Manhatten Project.
This is not Denmark folks. Wake up, the majority of the population in this country want to kill you not save you
If you want to assist in the process of identifying yourselves to the people who want to do away with you that’s your call
I intend to preserve myself and carry on the fight underground
Dead people are no use to the cause
I don’t agree about the majority. The fact that foul attacks on people with faces make news shows that they aren’t normal.
There are sympathisers behind the knickers. Cowardly yes, or afraid for their jobs, but not hostile.
Apologies, but ‘it couldn’t happen here’
no longer washes
‘They are not bad sorts once you get to know them’ is naive
I take your point, but disagree. There are thankfully still perfectly legal exemptions to masks built in to the law in the UK. Anyone stopped by the police just needs to politely explain that they are exempt. In terms of shops, usually staff will not want a confrontation. In terms of other customers, ignore them, bite back or (my favourite) report them to the manager for verbal abuse.
Every single person wearing a mask is a signifier of compliance and fear. If you are in a mask, nobody can tell if you are actually dissenting from that or not. We need strength in numbers. There are millions of people uncertain or wavering on the issue of masks who gain strength from seeing the unmasked. That is why in my opinion it is vital to show them.
Agree with this a 100%.Wearing a mask is nothing but a sign of total compliance to a oppressive government system .It has zero medical benefits. I dont care if people in a supermarket want to harm me.Better trained people with conviction tried and I’m still here.Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.
Absolutely got your back, brother.
Totally agree Danny, I’m exempt and proudly show my face in public.
If I lived in London I’d have to disagree with you. The Met is targeting people with mask exemptions and requiring them to provide GP notes documenting their exemption. Despite the fact that that government’s own website says that isn’t necessary. I’ll continue to use an exemption card for the moment until attacks on people with faces become more frequent.
Proves my oft-made point that London is an entirely different country!
The Met Police is an appalling establishment.
Piers Corbyn was on Richie Allen today. He is planning to run for Mayor of London. I hope that he kicks the sadist asshole who’s running the City at the moment.
Do you know what areas.Im sure they will leave the more diverse parts alone
Surely in doing so, they are acting ‘ultra vires’?
The Govt website is absolutely clear on this. There is no requirement to have any sort of exemption letter.
I won’t be wearing any mask. I do have a legitimate exemption. Nobody has challenged me (maybe being a big ugly bugger helps😁) I couldn’t care less about daft twats glaring at me. If anyone asks, I’ll ask them if they’d like to discuss their medical history in a shop first.
People must, of course, do whatever’s comfortable for them. I’m a very mild mannered person, I’ve never sought confrontation in my life. But I’ve also never been so angry about anything. I will NOT wear a mask.
Acting ultra virus.
I have fainted many times. It’s never pretty. And I always vomit when I come round.
Who wants that?
That’s awful Sophie, how horrendous. I totally get where Cecil is coming from, though, and I get your points of view too I am not so worried about interaction with police. It is the cordial drinking hatefilled general public, they are monsters. And everything, everything is on social media which is where the ‘news’ gets its information from. I don’t want to be the ‘karen’ plastered across mainstream media. I must be the only person in Oz who leaves the house without a phone. I just wont take it with me. A tool for our convenience has become a tool of oppression. Someone told me today they saw someone in Aldi with undies on their head. I do fear for you all, after what happened in the US today, I think the writing is on the wall for all our nations.
Hi Girl down Under, most of the time we also leave our mobile phone behind when we go out, so we can’t be asked to scan QR codes (not that most Canberra businesses seem to care). Never did it on our recent trip to Melbourne. Very angry that Apple downloaded an “exposure notification” app to our phone in the last software update that they will remove only when they see fit to do so, but we’ve managed to make it non-functional. I hope things improve for you (in NSW?) soon.
Is it the same effect with the narcolepsy induced in some people by the bird flu vaccine ?
I feel as if I’m suffocating if I cover my face. I can’t even pull the bedcovers up when it’s very cold. I also overheat easily. No way will I damage my health by wearing a mask.I will not harm myself to please the complicit.
Same here, can’t breathe, feel nauseous and claustrophobic.
I feel claustrophobic too.
Agree. I also get panic attacks and feel claustrophobic. No way will I wear a mask.
Same here.
I discovered that I was a mouth breather. I had to wear a muzzle for a flight to Portugal. I found I was holding my breath and not breathing properly. When I run or exercise I breath in through my nose, but not just sitting around. I found every five minutes I had to drop the mask to take a huge breath in. So when they offered food and drink I just bought a shit load so I could keep the mask off. No worn one since.
Interesting point, mouth breathing. Always thought nose breathing was the recommended way of reducing infections and in fact back in March decided to use the nose method as much as possible. In the ensuing time I have seen NO official medical advice on the possible efficacy or otherwise of noes breathing. There are a few recommendations on the web, but I suppose these have since been debunked as pseudo science?
I’m a mouth breather too due to allergies giving me a near-constant stuffy nose. A good idea to keep eating.
Exhaust fumes are called that because the oxygen has been exhausted, same goes for exhaust breath.
There’s also danger of bacterial infection from masks. Bacterial pneumonia can be nasty
I’ve no desire to get it or any other condition caused by masks. I’ve enough health issues already. It horrifies me when I see people with health issues struggling to wear one, unaware they don’t have to.
I held a light silk scarf over my face a few times in order to get a lift to church with an anxious elderly man. Even that felt suffocating. Luckily he has calmed down now and accepts I only go to church and see only my cleaner. He isn’t wearing a mask in the car now either, though who knows what Sunday will bring?
Some of us, Cecil, would be interested in how eaxctly you intend to cary on the fight, given the massive forces arraigned against we sceptics. My only option seems to be to refuse the vaccination and occasionally post something here . Do you have any other tactics or strategy that might be effective?
Yes but I wouldn’t post them on here
Go into shops and other enclosed public places barefaced as often as possible. If I have the time I sometimes spread my shopping over a few outlets.
Surprised that more people aren’t passing out as a direct result of breathing difficulties caused by covering both airways with a piece of rag. I’m sure it happens, we just don’t get to hear about it.
we have the same problem with masks what we have found online are neck mufflers, thin breathable stretchy fabric easy to wash and wear in a variety of colours that are worn on the neck as a fashion accessory but can also be pulled up on the face and head if necessary. I think I paid 6 quid for 5 from Amazon.
Yes I got some of those! I wore one as a face covering for the first time when I went to Mass yesterday, first time on over a year. Only because I was very worried about others reactions. As soon as I was seated I took it of and made sure my lanyard and badge were prominently displayed! No problems! What a relief! Couldn’t have worn a face covering anymore as my nose was running so much constantly as it was so f*****g cold ( all doors open!!!)😂
= snoods ?
One of my suggestions I had at our National Alliance meetings was to de-normalise masks wearing by showing it’s bad for you. One will wear a mask in public place then will pretend to faint. The other will come to your rescue and say loudly to take the mask off, make sure people hear you say, I’m seeing more and more people faint everyday. If we can do this with regularity it will start to have an affect.
Some leading Nazıs in the occupation of Denmark connived at it, for reasons not entirely clear – perhaps they suspected by then they would lose the war and it might stand them in good stead at a war crimes trial. Danish Jews were not a big exception to Nazi policy – there were not that many of them.
I think it was all a matter of timing. In the early years of the German occupation of Denmark, they adopted a light touch approach and pretty much left the Danes to get on with life as normal. It was only in August 1943 that the Germans imposed military government on the Danes and the “Jewish Question” became an important issue on their agenda. Of course, by this time, the military situation for Germany was worsening by the week, and it was entirely understandable that both Germans and their Danish collaborators were keen to distance themselves from direct culpability for any “deportations”.
Thank you for that, I had assumed the evacuation occured during the initial occupation.
The Danish fishermen that transported Jews over to Sweden charged them exorbitant fees. It turns out to be a rather sad and a shameful story.
There’s a novel by Sandi Toksvig called Hitler’s Canary, based on her family’s experiences in Nazi-occupied Denmark. Highly recommended.
The Copenhagen museum of the Occupation is also well worth a visit.
Hear hear Annie, I will never be muzzled unless someone holds me down and forcibly muzzles me.
It’s becoming a trend on there to compare this with what happened to the Jews in WWII. Bear in mind they were a small minority, while the measures we’re facing today is inflicted upon the entire population whether they agree with it or not. This is far more comparable to what happened to the Russians and Ukrainians which resulted in the Gulags and Holodomor. Eventually, even those who support the Covid scam in their subservient nature, will find themselves crushed under the weight of the mass poverty and crime that is coming. I also see the flavour of politics being described as ‘fascist’ which is odd too. Again, fascists targeted minority groups, particularly gays and perverts, burning literature that promoted sexual deviancy, etc. The politics we have endured for more than two decades is the opposite – it’s communist, it promotes the destruction of the national culture in every way conceivable. I do however agree that the shape of this system is communist at the bottom for us peasants and capitalist at the top, where global corporations are a major driving factor in the government’s actions. I know there are those who will say it doesn’t matter how we label… Read more »
Pick your fights wisely to win the war. Foolish bravery only hurts the overall campaign.
I’m with Cecil. It’s time to get subversive. It also serves to disarm the enemy as they’ve got nobody to shoot at all of a sudden.
This generation will conceal or just go along, the next will believe.
To look at it another way,
‘populations tend to renormalise/polarise to their most intransigent members.’ (Nasim Taleb – Skin in the game).
An interesting read here:
https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15
Interesting. I have always liked Taleb. But I read somewhere that he is a rabid Covidian zealot. (Is that right?) Strange.
I believe I saw a statement by Taleb berating sceptics, so yes, I think he is one of the fallen.
Yes, there was a post of his linked here a while back that was 100% panicker zealotry.
Imo just goes to confirm that no amount of intellect and intelligence are of any protective benefit once fear is allowed to take root. Fear is indeed the mindkiller, and we are dealing with functional stupidity. Many of the worst sufferers are among our most intelligent and most highly educated (by no means necessarily the same thing) classes.
Well, there was an exchange in Schindler’s List:
Jewish woman: What if I just take this thing off? (Referring to her Star of David armband)
Jewish man: They will shoot you.
In Au Revoir Les Enfants French schoolboys go to a bathhouse. When they emerge they notice a young man put on his overcoat and it had a Star of David on it – he had covered it with a scarf. One of the schoolboys mutters, “The nerve!” Another says to him, “Shut up!” Jews were not allowed to use bathhouses in occupied Frence.
The trouble with a face mask is that no one can see you smile. I go about doing my shopping, or whatever, with no mask, as if I have a perfect right to, and I’m friendly and polite to everyone. Generally, everyone is friendly and polite to me. Sometimes I can see that I make their day a bit better; perhaps because I’m obviously normal and not scared.
I do the same, Rod, and I don’t get challenged.
I experienced this yesterday with an attack from 2 maskoids at the same time. You are right it is going to get very nasty and I think you have go out now half expecting it. I thought yesterday how would a frail person have coped with what I had yesterday and maybe you are right…if you are frail and timid you may be better off masking up. I am neither and would rather go down fighting. I’m pretty big and tough… mentally and physically…. and ready for what comes. If anyone actually physically attacks me they will regret it.
If they do threaten with prosecution for Assault Aggravated by Disability Discrimination. If shop staff refuse to assist by not providing CCTV coverage they might be guilty of Aiding and Abetting after the fact.
The number of vids showing actual attacks are vanishingly rare, mostly on trains and seem to be committed by skanky junkies who would be just as likely to attack you for wearing ‘their’ trainers.
I will never wear a mask I was just saying I understand frail people fearing being attacked. Things are definitely getting much nastier out there. Just this morning I went into the Morrisons kiosk to pay for my petrol and the masked woman behind me turned a full 90 degrees to face the wall as I walked out. These sort of things are now becoming a daily occurrence if you venture out among the zombies.
Personally I would not report anyone who attacked me physically…. I would just beat the shit out of them. I am a very peaceful respectful person but if someone attacks me I reserve the right to use my physique to give them what they deserve.
That’s the sort of thing that makes it so much fun. 🙂
Anyone try to violently attack me over not wearing a muzzle will find my boot sharply in their crotch.
I always felt there is an element of divide and rule with lockdown policies and mask wearing is an element of this. When masks became compulsory for everyone, the message is given everyone is a potential disease carrier even if they are perfectly healthy and have no covid symptoms. If the zombies see people not wearing masks, they are seen are irresponsible disease spreaders which creates conflict which is exactly what the government wants.
If it wasn’t for the hysteria created by the government, media and the internet, you wouldn’t notice we are in a pandemic. People are not dying in droves, you don’t see loads of sick people and you constantly hear people saying they don’t know anyone with covid. Everyone around me is perfectly healthy. Everyone wearing masks gives the impression we are in a pandemic.
And that is, of course, why face knickers are supposed to be compulsory. Every moment of your life, unless you are hiding in your bedwetter-burrow (and ideally there as well), you are reminded that you are a diseased sack of filth and so is every other person you meet. Perfect recipe for poisoning the human spirit.
Agree with every word of that…the govt have done a very good job of divide and rule…the people are now policing the moronic mask wearing themselves.
Viva La Resistance
As a behaviour, the wearing of paper or fabric masks by ordinary people in public places represents an assault on reason, because, as we know, there is no robust evidence base to support it.
I don’t like the practice; I can’t respect people who engage in it; I am significantly affected by the ways in which it degrades the social and relational nature of the public sphere. However, I will tolerate it, because in a liberal society we all have to tolerate the expression of other people’s ideas, feelings and beliefs.
As a law, the enforced masking of a population represents an extraordinary and grotesque assault on bodily autonomy. It thus not only signifies the abandonment of reason in favour of neo-cultic superstition, collective hysteria and magical thinking: it also constitutes an absolute wrong in itself.
I will not wear a mask because I will not submit to this wrong. I will never be complicit in my own depersonalisation.
My body, my choice.
No-one has ever confronted me, well once, and frankly they would not dare, they can see the repercussions in my eyes before they even have the thought.
Sorry, don’t agree with you.
Many people are not wearing a mask because they are exempt by having a very good reason
Everyone who is not wearing a mask has many good reasons.
I take your point. In fact if they make nap-wearing outside compulsory it will be very hard to pick out the dissenters! But some of us find wearing them utterly distressing for lots of combined reasons. I actually wear a big, fat, official-looking badge saying I’m exempt for medical reasons (which is true.) It also shows that I’ve used my common sense, read the law, and understood my rights in exempting myself. So many people complain about wearing masks, and even get very upset about it, but can’t be bothered to actually read up on their right of exemption if they feel they can’t wear them. They actually believe the “law is the law” and they are powerless, even when I tell them otherwise! So, frankly, anyone wearing a lanyard or badge has shown common sense over the majority of people, and are actually exercising their (few, remaining) rights!
I understand the point you are making Cecil but I’ve got to disagree here. I refuse to wear a mask and the more of us that don’t the better because they are just a badge of submission and don’t work at stopping viruses. Exemptions are allowed plus if anyone does give you shit for not wearing one they are breaking the law and can end up in a lot of trouble. I can’t breathe in the damn things and so far no one has given me or my wife any trouble for being bare faced.
Compliance is complicity.
Only visible non-compliance will end this madness. More compliance will perpetuate it.
What happens to be going on behind your eyes literally doesn’t matter. It is of no political significance. And if you’ve covered up your face with all the cues by which your eyes could be read, then what you think is of no social significance either. However you flatter yourself inwardly, if you put on the gag you have deleted yourself.
Face knicker wearing exposes the myth that the eyes are the mirror of the soul. Without the rest of the face, the eyes are vile jelly.
This is a bit different in the case of the ultra-zombies, whose eyes are like little black pebbles and yet manage to convey hatred and spite. I don’t think that lot were ever properly human.
Yes, the eyes alone, if they convey anything at all, can convey only dark emotions: fear or hatred. But most often just a vacant inhumanity.
That may or may not be a fair representation of what is going on in the wearer’s head. But that is what is projected out and pollutes our public spaces. And that is precisely why those who seek to trim and compromise on this are, with all due respect, entirely wrong.
I agree with those who have said that masks should never be worn .Wearing one just reinforces the norm and encourages the feelings of isolation among dissenters. I have not worn one yet and have no intention of doing so. There might come a time when it is necessary to conceal one’s identity in the way you describe, Cecil, but I do not think we have reached that point yet. The dangers of unpleasantness are real, but are not as great as you describe. Confront them, accept that those are the risks and choose to run them. And in the vast majority of cases they will not materialise. And if anyone is physically attacked for not complying, respond as you would with any bully – go down as hard as you can and try to make sure they pay a price for it. If you see anyone being bullied, go to their aid. But such attacks are still very, very rare. All that said, not everyone is in a position where they can manage that level of confrontation or risk, and that’s fine. We all do what we can, and even if it is just giving help and support to… Read more »
The solution has been staring me in the face.
15500 lorry drivers tested, 36 positives so, most likely, all false positives.
We know the lifestyles of lorry drivers, sleep in the cab, eat all day breakfasts and Yorkie bars.
All the government has to do is buy everyone a lorry, increasing employment and our manufacturing base, offer everyone free breakfasts and chocolate bars, thus rejuvenating the hospitality business and creating a state owned chocolate industry which you know this country has always needed.
Right, covid solved, on to the next problem, before breakfast: how to reform the NHS.
https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Niemietz-NHS-Interactive.pdf
There’s enough problems parking a Ford Fiesta in this country, let alone Merc truck. The councils would have a field day dishing out parking tickets.
I note that, unlike lockdown .1, traffic wardens are continuing their essential work of ticketing cars who overstay two hour parking bays.
Most residents bays are once again permanently occupied by the same vehicles leaving others legally obliged to stay home all day to emerge every two hours to play musical chairs with their cars.
I’ve got to the stage where I’d suggest to have massive corona (beer and virus) parties and get everyone infected – sort the wheat from the chaff / kill or cure / survival of the fittest as nature intended – then society can move on with our lives.
Like a drunk version of the hunger games! I like it.
There was a fair bit of that going on in lockdown .1 but there was so little incidence of the virus among the general population in this region that it didn’t work.
Thank you Germany for at least acknowledging that masks can harm people. I have a staff of five people. 1x worsening asthma, 1x new dry eye, 1 x facial exzema.
Here’s hoping all mask zealots suffer from fungal mouth infections….
I’ve noticed most shop workers who wear them all day long have become listless and apathetic, very sad to see
GPs asked to stand down routine care to delive vax. The insanity increases.
I think the Government have started to commit genocide.
14 million people with a untested vaccine while denying medical services,there is no other word
They started in March
I used that word in a conversation with my mother (terrified 79 year old) yesterday to describe the actions last March when the NHS dumped so many in care homes to die. “That’s a strong word, but it was disgusting what they did” was her reply.
Using the oldest and most vulnerable as guinea pigs for the snake oil just compounds the crime.
A bit of euthanasia to start with
Attributed to Dr Mengele. “The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”
Jonathan, they have to keep us locked down because deaths have fallen since week 48 (according to euromomo), and if they don’t coerce vaccination quickly the public will believe the virus disappeared like winter viruses do. They must convince the public this time that the vaccine was the reason they got their freedoms back so that they can do the same thing next year or the year after.
Matt Hancock said as much a couple of weeks ago.No end of lockdown until enough people have been vaccinated.
they not only deny medical services but those who die will not get an autopsy or inquest. -coronavirus act 2020
So any suspicious circumstances cannot come to light.
Dolores Cahill says that organ failure, (which could be caused months after taking the vaccine by antibody dependent enhancement on exposure to a normal coronavirus circulating in the population) can readily be distinguished from pneumonia at autopsy.
This government are wicked, no other word for it, many people need routine care for all sorts of things.
Hear ye! The entire universe is woke!
DT reports that Jodie Foster is quitting her role as Dr Who because it’s been trashed in the name of wokeness. Stories revolve round woke correctness. Characters spout woke garbage. Viewer numbers have slumped. That doesn’t surprise me, because I slumped some time ago, having previously been a fan since, at the age of eight, I watched the first Dalek series from behind the sofa. It’s pretty certain that the next Doctor will be a fat black woman, or possibly a fat black person of no fixed gender.
Thus the BBC slaughters one of the best fictional concepts ever invented.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/bbc-has-failed-doctor-jodie-whittaker-no-wonder-quitting/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr
Oh, and sources close to Annie have confirmed that the next time the Daleks appear, they will have modified their shooter arms into syringes and will be grating out ‘Inoculate! Inoculate!’
Aaah its not really her fault. That twat chibnell is to blame. Squeezing in lame left wing politics, wokery, anti trump bullshittery and writing a story that kills and pees all over 50 years of the doctor to say men bad women rule and our version of the doctor is better than yours. I too hid behind the sofa, not so much the Daleks, the cybermen always scared me. All those fantastic companions like leela, you know strong women who didn’t need no man. Just well written sci fi. These writers standing on the shoulders of giants, but they are so tiny and mentally insignificant they cannot see anything. My god what happened to the BBC!
I was Dalekphobic too Annie.
‘InoculAte, InoculAte’. Brilliant.
I happened to watch an episode this time last year where a character (I think portrayed by Stephen Fry) asked the doctor something along the lines of ‘you look different’. The doctor responded ‘I’ve had an upgrade’. Load of tripe, the old ‘women are better than men’ trope. I also saw an interview with Jodie Whittaker in which the said the doctor had been traditionally portrayed through the ‘white male gaze’. Wtf?!
“Gaze” is a favourite word in postmodernist discourse.
This may be the only good news of the day.
Even Annie’s woke! 🙂 funniest thing I’ve read on here.
Strange thing that more people in certain age groups apparently know about daleks than Jesus Christ, and yet daleks are just the (rather silly) invention of someone who used to teach one of my relatives (he taught him rather unorthodox ideas about hand writing, apparently), and based on, as I remember, pepper pots or some such.
The James Alexander Gordon version – “Exeter 8, Exeter 8, Exterminate destroy” (pretty much what’s going on at the moment – apart from the “Exeter 8” bit).
Probably a good thing, on balance, that few are likely to read this
Freddie Attenborough asks what Sceptics would have done were we in charge.
After three weeks lockdown when it was perfectly clear that the Covid was nothing like as bad as had been feared Our Boris should have come out as a closet sceptic all along.
Dismissed fergusson as a charlatan.
Wound up SAGE.
Delivered a nationally broadcast speech in which he thanked the brave British people for squashing the sombrero and saving the NHS.
Told the BBC to get its doommongering act together.
Urged everyone to go back to work but, if you can do so from home that’s fine; all schools, colleges and universities to re-open forthwith.
Told healthcare management to designate Covid isolation hospitals.
Those many individuals who might be considered vulnerable by virtue of age or underlying conditions to shield 100% (with generous government support) for the foreseeable future until a proper vaccine could be developed and tested.
Encouraged congregations of all faiths to hold Services of Thanks for our salvation on Mayday.
Maybe there’s an alternative universe in which these things happened. Pity we can’t get there.
That sounds fair enough plus I would add the setting up of some sort of data realism team to ensure that all data on deaths, hospitals, infections etc was properly reviewed, balanced and put into context before being released. I note that Bristol University are doing a study on Covid misinformation; https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2020/december/covid19-misinformation.html I rather get the feel that this study starts with the view that lockdown zealots are correct and everything else is misinformation? And yet as I guess we would tend to agree there is misinformation on both sides. Take the use of death statistics, this week Uberfuhrer Johnson quoted rising death rates as one of the justifications for his lockdown and yet the official ONS figures show weekly death rates at normal winter levels. The MSM yesterday whipping up hysteria by saying there were over 1000 deaths in a day and we are back to the situation we had in April. When in fact the way we record and present death data is now different to how things were in April when we were getting 20,000 deaths a week compared to now when Covid is the only respiratory death cause in town and weekly rates are normal. So… Read more »
I gather that bozos claim that deaths had risen by 20% was based on deaths over the Crimbo holiday all being counted as happening on a single day.
There was clearly a delay in reporting over the Christmas period. This depressed the figures during the Christmas week and inflated them the following week.
By mid-January the correct picture will emerge. I’ll put my money on 10% or less.
Being bored last night I had a butchers at the released yougov testing figures, the numbers the fat pig dictator quoted, 60,000 cases and a 1,000 dead, were unsurprisingly manipulated. We have been on 500 deaths a day then we get the previous day of 100? Then boom 1,000. The same with the cases number, we have been averaging about 40,000 cases a day since mid December, then the day before, 1,500 then boom 62,000. So now even the statistical people are lying.
Nobody likes us, everybody hates us, we’re going on TV to count the deaths,
Scary Covvideaths, tragic sadlideaths, lovely lovely lovely deaths.
Cut out the facts and broadcast the lies and throw the truth away,
Nobody knows how we survive with our thousand deaths a day.
Why accept that the April figures weren’t due to the official fiddle factor? They knew they couldn’t push their luck too far and so excess deaths had to plummet by the end of May, which they did. They are lying now so it’s highly likely they were lying then.
The term “misinformation” is properly defined as anything that the contemporary ruling class doesn’t like.
+ Multi-disciplinary unbiased panel of advisors with absolutely no ties/grants in pharma or other nefarious organisations (WHO, UN etc) – including economists etc
+ Correct and consistent statistics which are peer reviewed.
+ Not keep changing the goalposts
+ Tests that are positive are verified/confirmed before adding to stats
+ Being honest and transparent to the nation and treat like grown ups – these are the risks and our advice but it’s up to you…
I agree PP but finding top medics without ties to big pharma, not easy. Those tendrils run deep!
I’ll take anyone from the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service. Or anyone that supports Campaign for Truth in Medicine.
None of what you propose can be allowed to happen.
As all liars know, once you start with the porky pies you have to keep doing this to cover up, and then the lies get bigger and more extravagant to keep the lie going. Then more and more people get pulled into your lie. The fat pig dictator could have ended this in June. No hospital admissions, hardly any cases. He could have proclaimed himself Churchill in his decision making and we could have gone back to our normal. Then switched testing to LF test and success. BUT what to do with 200 million doses of the vaccine we procured and people are asking about care home deaths and why we spent 54 billion pounds on a track and trace that does not work. Oh bollocks. Right put everyone in masks, ramp up the fear and test, test, test, and….. full lock down.
I got the cane twice at school, not for smoking but for lying about it. Clearly not a lesson learned by bozo & co.
I got the cane only once for chucking a blackboard rubber at a girl who was teasing me, the head walked past just as it left my hand, and stopped to look as it hit her on the bonce. Great timing!!
Agree 100% with all of this. Pandemics before have always been dealt with by boosting the healthcare capacity, looking after/shielding the vulnerable and helping/allowing society to function as normal as possible. I see no reason for these ridiculous lockdowns that are harming millions. Lets face it we are in the midst of mass hysteria.
We are witnesses and victims of a traitorous coup.
There was never going to be any politically safe way out of lockdown once lockdown had been started. No, a proper sceptic in charge would have released a reasonable worst case scenario for the cost of lockdown in avoidable deaths, and then rubbed the media’s face in it every day till midsummer.
No lockdown. No restrictions. Open mockery of Peston’s hysteria, along perhaps with a little more personal needling – if appropriate – about why he is so indifferent to cancer outcomes.
There are times when ‘compromise’ is a dirty word. There should have been none whatsoever with those demanding murderous lockdown.
How about fortifying everybody’s immune systems, reinstating HCQ, and to hell with the unnecessary vaccine.
Waiting for a proper vaccine, that’s going to be a long wait.
Shielding the vulnerable indefinitely, or until they died of other causes, would have been less ruinous than the clobber of policies produced this far
From the main tex ‘A Village Snitch Story’
The Mail has a good cartoon
All bar 16 MPs voted for Lockdown 3. All bar 16 MPs are fascists.
I refer again to the letter sent to his MP by Scotty87.
In it he points out the personal responsibility of each and every MP for the many negative results of lockdown.
I think Scotty87 only posts late at night so take the liberty of posting it here.
A proper link from someone more skilled than I would be appropriate.
Good letter from Kathy Gyngell, in today’s Conservative Woman, to her MP.
I saw 2 customers yesterdat and suggested they remove their face masks so I could see and hear them but every 2 or 3 minutes they kept putting them back up. Contrast that with 2 other customers earlier in the day who were happy and relieved to remove face coverings and very receptive to at least listen to some sceptic views from me. Hopefully a little bit of counter propaganda from me and they’ll go and look themselves at the real evidence. Still, it will be a long task. I will continue to inform people of my views where I can. Therwe is no point to me going “underground” because I thonk there are large numbers of people who have effectively done so with a kind of resigned acceptance of the restrictions but increasingly tired of them. Credit to the gutsy 16 MPs who stood their ground. Shame on the thougtless remainder. Maybe I should present a case to the non-sceptic, not using data, but along the lines of lost freedoms: Freedom to see your children Freedom to see your grandchildren Freedom to see your friends Freedom to leave your home when you want Freedom to work Freedom to have… Read more »
Just officially adopted “Stay sane” as an appropriate response to that awful “Stay safe” mantra. Thanks. Now wondering just how often the sheeple are going to be aware that I didnt say what they expected back to them – given the number of people who don’t listen properly to what one says even in Normal Times. It took me a couple of repeats to get a Council official out of my garden yesterday – when he didn’t seem to hear me the first time that I said to him “Either take that mask off – or Leave my garden”. I had to repeat myself pretty forcefully before he realised he had no choice but to leave my garden – as I wasn’t going to accept someone standing there in my own territory with a mask on.
Stay sane, stay rational, stay cheerful, stay human.
Freedom to go to the pub, TC ! 🙂
Freedom to go to the gym!!
Freedom to ring church bells. (by the way, I think I must be the only sceptical bellringer in the country!)
We do ring our solitary bell before the service each week.
I’m really not understanding the sneering from zealots. Lockdown is a failed policy. That is plainly evident. They should be embarrassed. For the same reasons, I’m also not understanding the defensiveness of Toby and downbeat attitude of sceptics. Can someone explain it all to me?
The summer lockdown, allied to test and trace, has caused this shambles:
Sir Patrick Vallance on March 12th:
“If you completely locked down absolutely everything, probably for a period of four months or more then you would suppress this virus,” he told Sky News.
“All of the evidence from previous epidemics suggests that when you do that and then you release it, it all comes back again.
“The other part of this is to make sure that we don’t end up with a sudden peak again in the winter which is even larger which causes even more problems.
“So we want to suppress it, not get rid of it completely which you can’t do anyway, not suppress it so we get the second peak and also allow enough of us who are going to get mild illness to become immune to this to help with the whole population response which would protect everybody.”
It very much looks like the entire globe is descending into darkness and the reign of the anti-Christ. Trust in Jesus and send a donation to Toby.
I see that the 18 opponents of pseudo-medical tyranny included 4 from Norn Iron and another 4 with surnames of Irish origin.
My maternal grandfather was from County Cork!
My wife’s DNA is 34% Scandinavian (Swedish I hope).
Swayne sounds like it’s of Viking origin.
I think Desmond Swayne sounds like a Withnail stage name.
Swansea is named after Swein. some Viking adventurer.
Sadly Ireland has long since disappeared down the Zero covid rabbit hole. Not that it has don’t them any good.
But they did bring us Ivor Cummins and Prof. Cahill!
Freud said the Irish were impervious to psychoanalysis
Most probably because they can spot bullshit from a mile off
Except when it is our own bullshit. Ireland’s history is full of that. Often starts off as a sensible thing then disappears up its own arse
Lie on the couch and tell me about the first thing that comes into your head
“Kill. Rip. Disembowel.”
I am glad to see 4 Norn Irish folk voted against, just a shame Arlene Furher still in charge here.
The police will crack down hard on anti lockdown protesters and all those who “break the rules”(sceptics).
I’m truly speechless like all of us will be when face nappies become mandatory.
Fear not. With each blow the government serve to deal, they only serve to harm themselves. This will implode.
The more interventions, the better for me. I don’t adhere to them anyway.
Thanks Tom, you’ve bucked me up; I was feeling down just for a moment.
I’m not sure, I dunno about London (Met) but around here in Suffolk the police are near non existent and when I do see them a number look exhausted, whether its through non stop muzzle wearing or just fatigue it seems they are fit to drop. I wonder how many coppers are actually as sick of all this as us?
We can expect the usual fabrication of statistics when it comes to the ‘vaccine’
So for starters, please reply if you know the answer
1 How do they know the numbers that have been vaccinated? Is there a central database?
2 Where is the fact that a person has been vaccinated recorded. Is it in the individuals medical record or elsewhere
3 Is the process GDPR compliant?
4 Is it possible to determine how much vaccine is wasted?
I do not know the absolute current position on vaccine IT data but no surprise to hear that a couple of weeks ago things were in a muddle, as reported;
GPs will use pharmacy IT platforms Pinnacle and Sonar to record Covid vaccinations under the new enhanced service, until their own IT systems have been modified.
The rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine to GPs and vaccination centres across England next week could be “thrown into chaos” because of IT issues and last-minute changes to protocols, doctors have told i.
GPs are concerned that the Government has failed to put in place a system that alerts them to whether any of their patients have already had the first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in a hospital, resulting in them not knowing who to contact first on their priority lists.
There are also concerned that a switch in the IT system being used to record patients receiving the vaccine this week – from one called Sonar to the latest Pinnacle software – has come too late for GPs to be trained before the inoculation process begins on Tuesday.
Thanks very informative
So how can they produce accurate statistics from this chaos?
I suspect that when they refer to people vaccinated they are actually referring to doses transferred from point A to point B
Any whistleblowers out there who would like to enlighten us?
Earlier this week I received a lengthy text from my GP practice saying that I had probably heard about the vaccine from the media. We are prioritising vulnerable groups initially thr over 80s . . . Do not call us about the vaccine or go to hospital. We will call you when you are eligible’.
Yet outside the surgery is a large professionally designed plasticised banner
“NHS Coronovirus Vaccine Programme now here at (my practice)
Please call in or contact the surgery”.
LOL, it’s hard enough contacting them if you’ve had a heart attack.
.
Go out and spread the word. Lockdown don’t work.
I’m doing my best to ignore the whole charade and just carry on as normal. I figure if people see me unmasked and acting normal then they will start to feel ridiculous, especially given there are no bodies piling up in the street nor symptomatic people coughing their last in the street.
Jonathan Sumption is on R4 at the moment, spread the word.
Still standing his ground (and ours).
On the Coronavirus dashboard
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases
They publish death data and it was this data that the PM used as part of the justification for lockdown, do we know how this death data is compiled and where the data comes from?
The dashboard says;
Data on COVID-19 associated deaths in England are produced by Public Health England (PHE) from multiple sources linked to confirmed case data. Deaths newly reported each day cover the 24 hours up to 5pm on the previous day.
Deaths are only included if the deceased had had a positive test for COVID-19 and died within 28 days of the first positive test.
Does anyone know what are these ‘multiple sources’? and is this death information on the dashboard anything like as definitive as the later ONS figures on total registered deaths?
One observation about the death criteria you mention suggests even if you’ve had a negative test after a positive, you still get recorded as a covid death if you die within 28 days of the first positive test. The death figure is meaningless.
Yes, I asked this under FOI. There are multiple NHS agencies hence the ‘sources’. I audited their published data. I found that in the past 10 yrs on average 1300 people die a week from flu-pneu-resp illness in England-Wales each and every year. SAGE, Doris etc are lying about the past flu-pneu-resp dead counts.
The actual ONS process to aggregate the NHS data is unknown and the ONS did not answer my FOI on this. Neither did the NHS or ONS provide me under FOI the data flows I asked for, end-to-end, to understand the entire process of data production. I am in IT and highly skilled with data. I can tell you this; the produced data is manually manipulated in xls sheets and is not auditable back to a source data (MCCD).
This indicates a high degree of manipulated and made up data. I know this because I have seen it countless times in my job – the exact same issues I see in private corps are simply multiplied within the NHS-ONS.
The data the ONS publishes is largely unverified.
This is a core issue: lack of transparency, data manipulation. Experts like yourself need to be getting exposure. What does your MP have to say?
DisasterWildCard (@LucyGoBag) Tweeted: If this level of intervention is needed then Covid 19 must immediately be declared a High Consequence Infectious Disease @PHE_uk @DHSCgovuk While it isn’t, what is being proposed here is disproportionate to the risk
https://twitter.com/LucyGoBag/status/1346920244737052674?s=20
An interesting point. As we all know here, Covid was removed from this list on March 19th, a week before the first lockdown.
Roadrash (@Roadras91467253) Tweeted: @SusanMichie This would be the NHS that has been on the brink of being overwhelmed since I was an egg
https://twitter.com/Roadras91467253/status/1346952558703734786?s=20
One of the responses to Susan Michie’s post above!
If they want to try give the vaseline to 14 million people in a month we’ll see just how many people will go for it. If it’s almost all then we’re fucked. Life is over. The new tyranny has moved in and it’s gonna use your refusal to take the vaseline to fuck you in the ass. That’s got to hurt.
As I understand it vaseline is a poor substitute for KY Jelly when it comes to taking it up the ass.
Do you mean R J Kelly?
Wikipedia
R J Kelly
Robert Sylvester Kelly is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, philanthropist, and subject of numerous sexual abuse allegations.
Chris Whitty has a haunted ‘just been ass raped’ look about him, doesn’t he?
Stop, you are making me laugh and that has been illegal since midnight
They all do. It would be interesting to know who is doing it to him, Johnson, Starmer…
All of them?
They all have that deer in headlights look. Somebody is pulling their strings. They kind of look and act like Korean War prisoners who made a broadcast. Later they all said things like brainwashing and they didn’t want to do it.
He looks like, and acts like a baddie from Thunderbirds
I regularly imagine them all in one big circle jerk.
Don’t know – but I would put money on there being a Chinese element.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1GUJMTmoMY Like this? One of my favourite films.
Always in favour of ‘bizarre tobacco substitutes’. 🙂
BBC R2 07.40 Make A Difference campaign.
Encouraging listeners to donate unused laptops to local schools to be passed onto disadvantaged pupils currently unable to work from home for lack of equipment. (Although those pupils have now been designated as ‘vulnerable’ and eligible for live learning).
Ye gods, one of the wealthiest countries on earth sending out the begging bowl to assist the most needy, through no fault of their own, 9 months after this all began despite spunking unknown billions on relief schemes for businesses of dubious long term benefit.
A fucking disgrace. And the shrill Blue Peter classes are the main drivers behind it all. Well, they do say it was the teachers and nurses that were the worst in 1930s Germany.
If it saves just one life
That is one platitude that I love ramming back down the throats of those who uttered it.
An abomination that has been a blight on our lives and our society for the last 30 odd years. Deserves to be consigned to the dustbin of history when this is all over.
Unused laptops?
Not even used ones?
Oddly enough today, I had a computer repaired today and was told by the proprietor of the shop that he couldn’t buy in parts claiming it was a national thing.
He builds his own computers from parts essentially to customer’s requirements.
Is there a shortage of laptops nationally for deprived school children like PPE in March for medics?
Apparently so, when I was sorting out getting my elderly neighbour a new telly before Xmas the guy in the independent computer peripherals shop said the cost of laptops had gone up 40% since the start of lockdown, a combination of increased demand and supply bottlenecks.
Killing Granny is soooooooooooo!! last year
Can they drop the farce now that they cared about grandma?
Unfortunately enough people still fall for that propaganda.
I share Liam Gallagher’s sentiments on leaving home.
And for 3 months this time? They have to be f’ing joking!!! I cannot believe that people are ok with this – literal imprisonment – unlawful imprisonment at that.
Sorry for posting again, but I think this is a very interesting explanation to the globally similar response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNjYUKIcXQI and could be interesting for people on the fence
A clever propaganda slogan that will work on stupid people. Remember one of OJ’s defence lawyers – he told the jury “If the glove doesn’t fit you must acquit” (referring to an item of evidence). He knew he was not talking to brainboxes.
But it doesn’t say “injected”.
Watched the video of the Police arresting a 90 something year old. Completely over the top, unnecessary and out of order. Shameful conduct by the so called police. We seem to have thugs employed as enforcers of the law.
Could do with inciting another BLM protest.
Yes. British Lives Matter
Perhaps we should start an Elderly Lives Matter movement.
As any of us who have had an elderly relative in hospital in recent years can testify, elderly lives really do not matter. Unless they’re being used for propaganda purposes, obviously, in which case killing a granny is worse than killing 20 young people.
They would blame all the deaths on ELM disease.
I did post this late last night so apologies for doing so again but I think it needs widespread publicity and I think the FB post needs sharing widely. As I was originally suspicious of the post I did check the American White Pages and confirmed that both individuals are listed with a known relationship. For those that don’t have FB here is the text. “The love of my life, my husband Gregory Michael MD an Obstetrician that had his office in Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach Died the day before yesterday due to a strong reaction to the COVID vaccine. He was a very healthy 56 year old, loved by everyone in the community delivered hundreds of healthy babies and worked tireless through the pandemic. He was vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine at MSMC on December 18, 3 days later he saw a strong set of petechiae on his feet and hands which made him seek attention at the emergency room at MSMC. The CBC that was done at his arrival showed his platelet count to be 0 (A normal platelet count ranges from 150,000 to 450,000 platelets per microliter of blood.) he was admitted in the… Read more »
holy fucking shit
DM has the story here:
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9119431/amp/Miami-doctor-58-dies-three-weeks-receiving-Pfizer-Covid-19-vaccine.html
with a comment from Pfizer “nothing to do with us, Gov!”
Fascistbook will take the post down ASAP. sadly, there will be a lot more stories like this to come before we are done
holy cow – that’s hideous. There seem to be more incidents of death creeping out on the Pfizer vaxx.
Shared to fb , not sure how long it will stay up , already had one ban this week for calling Doris ” A fat Turkish C#nt ” . Apparently that is hate speech , thought I was just stating the obvious .
Turkroach is the P.C term
Poor man RIP, that’s really bad. The pfizer vaccine sounds horrific, everyone must refuse this thing.
Tonight at 8pm, I will be having a ‘crap for carers’
We will have to start a boo for the nhs, and blasting out eve of destruction.
“boo for boris”.
For 2 minutes from 6 pm. Anti-lockdown slogans/facts thrown in, pots banging outside in from of my home
This is what I have been doing for the last few days since lockdown 3 was announced and will be doing again tonight.
Would love to read here that someone has joined in.
Thinking of moving it to 8 on Thursday as that’s when The Others will be out.
Ditto,
This hospital report from the Sun is, I guess, why there is such high public support for the lockdown;
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13671131/covid-hospital-footage-nhs-staff-icu/?utm_medium=browser_notifications&utm_source=pushly
The item states that;
Staff at University College Hospital in London said they are being forced to choose between patients as a growing number of young people enter intensive care fighting for life.
Scores of patients are losing their lives ‘at dramatic speed’ in the intensive care unit as medics are forced to prioritise those with the best chance of survival.
How do you counter this type of un-objective scaremongering journalism without being labeled a callous granny killer?
If this is supposedly true, then the first lockdown and all the restrictions since have no doubt contributed to it. Wear people down, get them less healthy, and delay the spike of the disease until the winter months, when the NHS is already under pressure. Vallance himself said on 12 March 2020 that this is what they wanted to avoid, before the dramatic lockdown u-turn thanks to Ferguson’s model.
Big clap for the government and its scientific advisors for ensuring a bigger seasonal wave and also doing absolutely nothing to scale up hospital capacity or recruit emergency medical staff from retirement/volunteers.
I read somewhere that in other countries they’ve been seeing loads of people with bacterial pneumonia, chest infections and even periodontists from previously healthy people who’ve never had those.
No prizes for guessing how that could have happened and if that report is true then we know what the culprit is/are.
Would that be muzzles per chance?
43000 killed by the LD’s unrelated to CV 19.
So the Covidiots enjoy murdering people and denying socialised health care ?
Nice.
Indeed – Feargus Walsh has an emotional piece on the BBC website from that hospital.
Cut and pasted from his 2019/18//17 pieces no doubt, but it has great power in the eyes of the public.
I’m sorry but I simply don’t buy that “a growing number of young people” are fighting for their lives in intensive care. This is along the same lines that there are lots of children ill with Covid and is probably just as accurate, i.e. not at all.