Harder, Stronger, Tighter
Boris Johnson held a cabinet meeting yesterday, and the report in MailOnline makes for alarming reading:
Boris Johnson held a top-secret cabinet meeting to discuss an even-tougher lockdown with limits on exercise, compulsory mask-wearing outdoors and no more social bubbles all being floated by ministers, sources claim.
The Cabinet Office refused to deny that draconian new laws were incoming – and instead pointed to Matt Hancock’s vague statement earlier today.
The Health Secretary refused to speculate when directly asked if harsher measures – including curfews and nursery closures – might be brought in, and instead said Britons should ‘follow the rules that we’ve got’.
One Whitehall source told MailOnline that the changes discussed today even included introducing a ban on people leaving their homes more than once a week.
Under current rules, Britons can exercise with one other person or with their household or support bubble.
But a Government source said the rule is “being used as an excuse for people to go for a coffee in the park with their friends” and could be tightened, the Daily Telegraph reports.
The UK announced a further 573 coronavirus deaths yesterday in the highest Sunday rise since April, and the third-deadliest Sunday of the entire pandemic.
Infections also continue to be high, with 54,940 announced on Sunday, the thirteenth day in a row they have been above the 50,000 mark.
They said the “rule is there for exercise, for people’s mental health, particularly for older people who are not going to be going for a run to see someone” but many are using their “imaginations” to make it what they want.
Their concerns came as hordes of people were seen flocking to beaches and town centres over the weekend, despite Boris Johnson’s pleas for families to stay at home and help control the mutant Covid variant spreading rapidly through the country.
Officials are also set to encourage shops and workplaces to improve on their Covid social distancing measures.
Supermarkets will be a key focus of the Government’s latest push, with many worried that lax enforcement of the rules means shoppers are at risk.
Worth reading in full.
When Governments fail, they blame the governed. Clearly, their “imaginative” interpretation of lockdown restrictions is to blame for the high Covid death toll. Nothing to do with the lack of PPE, the failure to create dedicated hospitals for Covid patients, spunking tens of billions of pounds on a not-fit-for-purpose Test and Trace programme, building the Nightingales but not recruiting or training enough healthcare workers to staff them, decommissioning the Nightingales, failing to eliminate in-hospital infection and the ongoing scandal of secondary transmission in care homes… no. It’s all the fault of the disobedient general public.
The irony is that the public agrees with the Government. According to Opinium, 72% of Britons think the authorities have not acted fast enough and 64% say they want a Government that “quickly puts lockdown measures in place, even if that means that sometimes measures are put in place that didn’t need to be”, compared to 25% who want a Government that “tries the hardest they can to not put lockdown measures in place, even if that means sometimes decisions are made later than they would otherwise have been”.
In a recent article for the BMJ, Steve Reicher and John Drury point out that, actually, the British public has been remarkably compliant throughout.
The notion of behavioural fatigue associated with adherence to COVID-19 restrictions (so-called “pandemic fatigue”) has been a recurrent theme throughout the crisis.
Linked to the notion that people in general will find it hard to adhere due to shared human psychological frailties is the idea that when particular individuals break the rules, it is due to their particular psychological failings. They are either too weak, too stupid, or too immoral to do the right thing. Hence, terms like “covidiots” have become almost as familiar as “pandemic fatigue”. This feeds into a widespread narrative of blame whereby the spread of infections is explained in terms of individuals and groups who choose to break the rules, rather than failures of public health response.
The narrative of blame is exemplified in the language used by politicians… It is also exemplified in a media focus on particularly egregious examples of violations such as raves and large house parties. All in all, this narrative explains the worsening pandemic in terms of widespread non-adherence to rules which is a function of poor psychological motivations, which in turn are particularly prevalent in some people and some communities…
Adherence to stringent behavioural regulations has remained extremely high (over 90%), even though many people are suffering considerably, both financially and psychologically. Equally, despite anecdotal observations about growing violations and polling which shows that people report low levels of adherence in other people, both self-reported data and systematic observations of behaviour in public places suggest that adherence stayed high during the second lockdown. Some 90% of people or more adhere to hygiene measures, to spatial distancing, and to mask wearing most of the time. Moreover, people generally support regulations and, if anything, believe that they should be more stringent and introduced earlier. This pattern has been repeated in the last few days, with 85% of the public endorsing the January ‘lockdown’ and 77% thinking it should have happened sooner…
The problem, then, is that in psychologising and individualising the issue of adherence, one disregards the structural factors which underlie the spread of infection and the differential rates in different groups….
Additionally, one overlooks the fact that some of the rules and the messaging around them, may be the problem. It is particularly misleading and unfair to ask people to do things and then blame them for doing so.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Appearing on the Andrew Marr show, yesterday Keir Starmer demanded that Boris do more and suggested… closing nurseries. He is probably kicking himself now and wishing he had been more ambitious so he can then take the credit when a new set of draconian restrictions are announced today.
Don’t Panic, Chief Constable Mainwaring
Like the rest of us, Cabinet Ministers are struggling to tell the difference between law and guidance. The Telegraph has the story.
Police were right to fine two women £200 each for driving five miles from their home for a walk, Matt Hancock has said, as he warned the public to follow the rules because “every flex can be fatal”.
The Health Secretary said he would “absolutely back the police” after Derbyshire Constabulary was criticised for overzealous enforcement of the coronavirus regulations on Friday.
Asked whether police were right to hand Jessica Allen and Eliza Moore a £200 fixed penalty notice for meeting up for a walk, Mr Hancock said: “I’m absolutely going to back the police because the challenge here is that every flex can be fatal.
“You might look at the rules and think, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter too much if I just do this or do that’.
“But these rules are not there as boundaries to be pushed, they are the limit to what people should be doing.”
MailOnline reports that the Home Secretary supports them too:
Priti Patel today defended police as they began strict application of Covid rules that includes £200 fines and less tolerance for rule-breakers.
The Home Secretary warned that officers “will not hesitate” to take action because the increasing number of new COVID-19 cases proved there was a need for “strong enforcement” in cases where people were clearly breaking the rules.
Police tactics have come in for scrutiny after Derbyshire Police handed out £200 fines to two women who drove separately to go for a walk at a remote beauty spot situated around five miles from their homes.
The police, however, as the Telegraph says, admit the possibility that they might have got it wrong:
Derbyshire Police has since announced it will review its fines policy in light of new national guidance, following an outcry and accusations of overzealous policing of the lockdown rules.
The two women issued with a fixed penalty notice said police had told them their hot drinks “counted as a picnic”, after they were surrounded by police, read their rights and fined.
Perhaps they should listen to Peter Hitchens:
The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Lockdown Fraud
The FBI, and other security services around the world, will by now be in receipt of an open letter requesting an expedited investigation be opened into the role of the Chinese Community Party in promoting catastrophic public health policies across the West, i.e. lockdowns. The letter was written by a number of people, some of whom will be familiar to readers of Lockdown Sceptics:
Michael P. Senger, Attorney
Stacey A. Rudin, Attorney
Dr. Clare Craig, FRCPath
Retired Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding
Randy Hillier, MPP Lanark, Frontenac & Kingston
Francis Hoar, Barrister at Law
Sanjeev Sabhlok, PhD
Brian O’Shea
Maajid Nawaz
Simon Dolan
It begins:
We are writing this letter to request that a federal investigation be commenced and/or expedited regarding the scientific debate on major policy decisions during the COVID-19 crisis. In the course of our work, we have identified issues of a potentially criminal nature and believe this investigation necessary to ensure the interests of the public have been properly represented by those promoting certain pandemic policies.
During times of crisis, citizens naturally turn to the advice of those they perceive as experts. In early 2020, the public turned to the advice of scientific authorities when confronted with an apparent viral outbreak. Soon after, most nations followed the advice of prominent scientists and implemented restrictions commonly referred to as “lockdowns.” While the policies varied by jurisdiction, in general they involved restrictions on gatherings and movements and the closure of schools, businesses, and public places, inspired by those imposed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Hubei Province. The intervention of federal authorities with police power may be required to ensure that those who have promoted these lockdown policies have done so in good faith.
They set out an impressive array of evidence in support of their central contention, which is that the lockdown policy was aggressively promoted to Western governments by the CCP with the help of various “useful idiots”, e.g. public health scientists.
Lockdowns originated on the order Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and were propagated into global policy by the World Health Organisation with little analysis or logic
When the lockdown of Hubei province began, the World Health Organization (WHO)’s representative in China noted that “trying to contain a city of 11 million people is new to science… The lockdown of 11 million people is unprecedented in public health history…” Human rights observers also expressed concerns. But those concerns didn’t stop the WHO from effusively praising the CCP’s “unprecedented” response just days after the lockdown began, and long before it had produced any results… The WHO held a press conference during which Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward – who later disconnected a live interview when asked to acknowledge Taiwan – told the press: “What China has demonstrated is, you have to do this. If you do it, you can save lives and prevent thousands of cases of what is a very difficult disease.” Two days later, in an interview for China Central Television (CCTV), Aylward put it bluntly: “Copy China’s response to COVID-19.”
The most influential institution for COVID-19 models, self-described as “China’s best academic partner in the West” has been by far the most alarmist and inaccurate COVID-19 modeler
In February 2020, a team from Imperial College London led by physicist Neil Ferguson ran a computer model that played an outsized role in justifying lockdowns in most countries. Imperial College forecast a number of potential outcomes, including that, by October 2020, more than 500,000 people in Great Britain and 2.2 million people in the U.S. would die as a result of COVID-19, and recommended months of strict social distancing measures to prevent this outcome. The model also predicted the United States could incur up to one million deaths even with “enhanced social distancing” guidelines, including “shielding the elderly”. In reality, by the end of October, according to the CDC and the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS), approximately 230,000 deaths in the United States and 37,000 deaths in the United Kingdom had been attributed to COVID-19…
A study by researchers at UCLA and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) compared the accuracy of various institutions’ models predicting COVID-19 mortality. Across all time periods, the models produced by Imperial College were measured to have far higher rates of error than the others, always erring on the side of being too high.
In March 2020, Imperial College produced a report titled “Evidence of initial success for China exiting COVID-19 social distancing policy after achieving containment,” concluding: For the first time since the outbreak began there have been no new confirmed cases caused by local transmission in China reported for five consecutive days up to March 23rd 2020. This is an indication that the social distancing measures enacted in China have led to control of COVID-19 in China… after very intense social distancing which resulted in containment, China has successfully exited their stringent social distancing policy to some degree.
Imperial College had no way of knowing if this was, in fact, true; failing to discover cases does not mean they do not exist, particularly with a virus that is fatal to hardly anyone except the most vulnerable, and a regime with a long history of fraud. Its conclusion directly contradicted that of the U.S. intelligence community around the same time that China had intentionally misrepresented its coronavirus numbers.
Deadly recommendations for early mechanical ventilation came from China
In early March 2020, the WHO released COVID-19 provider guidance documents to healthcare workers. The guidance recommended escalating quickly to mechanical ventilation as an early intervention for treating COVID-19 patients, a departure from past experience during respiratory-virus epidemics. In doing so, they cited the guidance being presented by Chinese journal articles, which published papers in January and February claiming that “Chinese expert consensus” called for “invasive mechanical ventilation” as the “first choice” for people with moderate to severe respiratory distress…
By May 2020, it was common knowledge in the medical community that early ventilator use was hurting, not helping, COVID-19 patients, and that less invasive measures were in fact very effective in assisting recoveries. A New York City study found a 97.2% mortality rate among those over age 65 who received mechanical ventilation. The “early action” ventilator guidance that the WHO distributed to the world killed thousands of innocent patients; the WHO obtained that guidance from China.
Predominant, excessive PCR testing protocols came from China
Based on guidance issued by the WHO citing three studies from China, laboratories and manufacturers across the United States and many other countries are using a PCR cycle threshold of 37 to 40 for COVID-19 PCR tests that were created using in silico genome sequences supplied by a laboratory in China, pursuant to which positive COVID-19 case counts have been inflated as much as ten- to thirty-fold.
Studies showing significant asymptomatic transmission, the only scientific basis for lockdowns of healthy individuals, came from China
Underpinning the policy of lockdown is the scientific concept of “asymptomatic spread”. According to the WHO, “Early data from China suggested that people without symptoms could infect others.” This idea of asymptomatic spread was reflected in the WHO’s February report. According to this concept, healthy individuals, or “silent spreaders” might be responsible for a significant number of SARS-CoV-2 transmissions. The idea of setting out to stop asymptomatic spread was a significant departure from prevailing public health guidance and experience during prior respiratory-virus pandemics.
The concept of significant asymptomatic spread was believed to be a novel and unique feature of SARS-CoV-2 based on several studies performed in China. Multiple studies from other countries could not find any transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from asymptomatic individuals.
The CCP engaged in an early, broad, systematic, and global propaganda campaign
After concluding the CCP’s lockdowns had “reversed the escalating cases” in China, the WHO was not alone in imploring the world to “Copy China’s response to COVID-19.” Beginning the same day the CCP locked down Hubei province, leaked videos from Wuhan began flooding international social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, all of which are blocked in China, purporting to show the horrors of Wuhan’s epidemic and the seriousness of its lockdown, in scenes likened to Zombieland and The Walking Dead. Official Chinese accounts widely shared an image of a hospital wing supposedly constructed in one day, but which actually showed an apartment 600 miles away.
Then, beginning in March 2020, the entire world was bombarded with propaganda extolling the virtues of China’s heavy-handed approach. Chinese state media bought numerous Facebook ads advertising China’s pandemic response (all of which ran without Facebook’s required political disclaimer), and began erroneously describing “herd immunity”, the inevitable endpoint of every epidemic either by naturally-acquired immunity or vaccination as a “strategy” violating “human rights.”
The letter goes on to make numerous other points before finally concluding:
Throughout 2020, lockdown measures have been quite popular, but that popularity is deceptive. For the general public, the idea that anyone might accept some outside incentive to support such devastating policies while knowing them to be ineffective, needlessly bankrupting millions of families and depriving millions of children of education and food, is, quite simply, too dark. Thus, the public supports lockdowns because the alternative, that they might have been implemented without good cause, is a possibility too evil for most to contemplate. But those who know history know that others with superficially excellent credentials have done even worse for even less.
Furthermore, most of the public believes that if there were anything untoward about the science behind lockdowns, intelligence agencies would stop them. For obvious reasons, those who work at intelligence agencies do not have the luxury of such complacency. Given the gravity of the decisions being made, we cannot ignore the possibility that the entire science of COVID-19 lockdowns has been a fraud of unprecedented proportion, deliberately promulgated by the Chinese Communist Party and its collaborators to impoverish the nations who implemented it.
If you are in the FBI, this is very much worth reading in full.
Stop Press: A recent article in the New York Times sung the praises of China’s response to the pandemic and claimed that the freedom provided by the efficiently run Communist technocracy was more meaningful that the freedoms the West prides itself on upholding.
The pandemic has upended many perceptions, including ideas about freedom. Citizens of China don’t have freedom of speech, freedom of worship or freedom from fear — three of the four freedoms articulated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt — but they have the freedom to move around and lead a normal day-to-day life. In a pandemic year, many of the world’s people would envy this most basic form of freedom.
Stop Press 2: The above letter has come in for a lot of criticism on Twitter, with several people alleging its central hypothesis is a conspiracy theory. To date, no one has engaged with the arguments or the evidence as far as we can see. Rather, the debunking has consisted of pointing to some dubious things some of the authors have tweeted – Brian O’Shea tweeted this, for instance – and the links between some of them and conspiracy theorists. We’ve included one of the most comprehensive Twitter threads criticising the letter below – click on it to read the full charge sheet. It’s by Sunder Katwala, Director of a think tank called British Future. He thinks some of the letter’s content may be libellous in the UK courts and cautions against sharing it. If anyone would like to rebut the letter’s central hypothesis by challenging the evidence we’d be interested in publishing an article along those lines, hopefully kicking off a debate. Contact us here.
Going All In On Vaccines
The Observer reported yesterday the warnings of some “senior scientists” that a lack of long-term planning is leaving the country vulnerable to major outbreaks of the disease for at least another year. Vaccines, they say, are part of the solution, but not all of it. No, we need to keep restrictions in place for at least a year.
The rollout of vaccines currently under way would cut hospital admissions and deaths among the old and vulnerable, they said, but it would still leave many other people at risk of being infected and suffering from the long-term effects of the disease.
Even though millions of doses of vaccine are being administered, serious outbreaks of COVID-19 are likely to continue throughout the year and into next year. These issues should be the focus of careful planning now, the scientists warned.
“Having 20 million people vaccinated is likely to reduce numbers of cases but we must not forget that this is a highly transmissible virus and if we do not continue with social measures, it will soon whip round communities again and cause havoc,” said Liam Smeeth, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
“I can understand the short-term panic that is going on at present as hospital cases rise so quickly but I am amazed at the sheer lack of long-term strategy there has been for dealing with Covid,” he told the Observer. “I can see no signs of any thinking about it.”
This view was backed by Mark Woolhouse, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Edinburgh University. “This epidemic would have unfolded very differently and in a much happier way if we had accepted, back in February, that we were in this for the long term,” he said. “However, the view that it was a short-term problem prevailed.
“It was thought we could completely suppress the virus, and that is why we are in the mess that we are in now.”
The idea that the virus could be eradicated was a costly mistake, said Martin Hibberd of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “We have to understand COVID-19 is going to become endemic. The virus will not disappear. We are not going to eradicate it. Even if every human on Earth was vaccinated, we would still be at risk of it coming back.”
Several other issues still have to be resolved, added Hibberd. These include concerns about how long vaccines provide protection and how new variants might evade vaccine protection. “We might be lucky and find the virus does not change very much and vaccine cover is not affected, causing the virus level to drop to low prevalence,” Hibberd said.
“However, the virus might turn out to be as good as influenza at changing its coat. In that case, we will end up having to make new vaccines and distribute them every year. We should be thinking about that problem now.”
Worth reading in full.
Meanwhile, an article by Helen Branswell in the Boston-based STAT News sets out how the UK’s vaccine rollout is exciting the interest of friends overseas.
In an extraordinary time, British health authorities are taking extraordinary measures to beat back COVID-19. But some experts say that, in doing so, they are also taking a serious gamble.
In recent days, the British have said they will stretch out the interval between the administration of the two doses required for COVID-19 vaccines already in use, potentially to as long as three months, instead of the recommended three or four weeks. And they have said they will permit the first dose and second dose for any one person to be from different vaccine manufacturers, if the matching vaccine is not available.
The moves are borne of a desire to begin vaccinating as many people as quickly as possible, particularly with Britain facing high levels of transmission of an apparently more infectious form of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
But they are also effectively turning that country into a living laboratory. The moves are based on small slices of evidence mined from “subsets of subsets” of participants in clinical trials, as one expert described it for STAT, and on general principles of vaccinology rather than on actual research into the specific vaccines being used. If the efforts succeed, the world will have learned a great deal. If they fail, the world will also have gained important information, though some fear it could come at a high cost…
While data from both suggest the vaccines start to protect about 10 or 12 days after the first dose, it’s not known how long that initial protection lasts. In clinical trials, levels of neutralizing antibodies, which are thought to play a critical role in protecting against infection, were not substantial after the first dose of vaccine for the Pfizer vaccine.
“While we think that single shot could give protection for more than four weeks, we just don’t know that. We don’t know when it’s going to drop off,” said John Mascola, director of NIAID’s Vaccine Research Centre. Mascola said Operation Warp Speed, the federal Government’s project to fast-track Covid vaccines, ruled out the possibility of altering vaccination schedules before Britain decided to do so.
Paul Bieniasz of Rockefeller University is one of those who is watching the evolving situation in Britain with dread. A retro-virologist who turned from HIV research to work on SARS-2, Bieniasz is studying how the virus acquires mutations that allow it to evade the protective antibodies people develop when they have contracted COVID-19, or when they have been vaccinated against it…
Bieniasz believes Britain is replicating in people the experiments he’s been doing in his lab, and could be fostering vaccine-resistant forms of the virus…
Not everyone agrees there is a disaster in the making. Some believe it makes sense, given Britain’s surge in cases and the rapid spread there of the B.1.1.7 variant, which studies suggest may be 50% more transmissible than the viruses it is quickly replacing.
“At the core of my being, I really wish that we could adhere to the original schedule of vaccines, because that’s the safest thing to do,” said Akiko Iwasaki, a virologist and immunologist at Yale University who tweeted about her support for the British approach. “But seeing what’s happening in the world and just sort of looking at the situation of poor rollout and distribution, I’m feeling frustrated that we need to come up with some other options.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Sebastian Rushworth MD has also produced a useful analysis of the three vaccines’ safety and efficacy.
Stop Press 2: A reader has spotted a Job Ad for the position of Covid Administrator working at a college in Greater Manchester. It appears to imply that vaccination will be be compulsory for students returning to this particular college.
Covid Administrator
Role: Administrator – COVID-19
Location: Greater Manchester
Type: Full time Temporary
Rate: £10 an hourEden Brown are currently looking for a strong administrator to work within an FE college in Greater Manchester.
This is a short term temporary position to start as soon as possible.
You will be expected to carry out all aspects of administration, in particular relating to the COVID-19 vaccination that all students will be required to have before returning to college.
To apply for the role you will have a business administration level 2 minimum and sufficient admin experience.
Stop Press 3: Jonathan Engler has written a helpful Twitter thread explaining the data on the efficacy of the the Pfizer vaccine.
And the Moderna vaccine (which looks impressive).
Another Reader Writes
We’ve been sent the following comment from a reader:
The vaccine can’t come fast enough for some vulnerable people in this country, but not necessarily because it might save them from Covid. Instead, it looks like it’s the only way they’re going to be saved from the Government’s fixation that the only risk any one of us faces is Covid. I’ve just received this from a very old friend to tell me about the experience of her chum:
“She’s now in her late 40s. A few years ago she had breast cancer and after lots of invasive surgery and chemo she beat it. However, a few months ago, the cancer came back and this time it’s in spread into various other organs. In short, she’s now got terminal cancer but she has yet to have any treatment at all and the vast majority of her appointments have been over FaceTime. So the lives of very elderly people with Covid are being prioritised over the life of a relatively young woman with a teenage child who, with timely treatment, could possibly have her life expectancy extended by at least enough to see her child into adulthood? Instead she is being cast aside and left in a seemingly endless cycle of waiting for something – anything – to happen. Can you imagine how horribly frustrating this must be for her? It really makes me so angry.”
Call me a cynic, but are we slowly discovering that the real truth now is that it doesn’t matter what you die of, or when, just so long as it isn’t Covid? It also makes me wonder how many of the vulnerable people are actually going to die sooner than they might have done thanks to all the treatment they haven’t had for what made them vulnerable in the first place.
Stop Press: The Telegraph is reporting on the collapse of cancer treatment, with 10,000 fewer patients being treated for non-Covid issues today than in the middle of last month.
Has Covid Revealed the NHS’s New Clothes?
A critical care surgeon, who we are calling Dr Jonathan Snow (not his real name), tells us that COVID-19 has exposed the shortcomings of the NHS. It is frequently, he says, unable to deliver.
Many times during this pandemic we have been told that we must sacrifice our civil liberties, jobs, mental health and children’s education. Why? Because excess infections will lead to surge demand on the NHS that cannot flex capacity, leading to patients being denied the care they need.
Back in March the public and society was rightly sympathetic – there was very little time to plan for such a situation. But come Christmas, we are told that the NHS is still unable to cope with similar levels of demand, despite having had some nine months to make plans for a fairly predictable eventuality. Please don’t misunderstand me here – this is not in any way a critique of the fantastic clinicians and hospital workers who work tirelessly caring for patients at the coalface. Blame for the current situation has rightly been directed at the Government, but also, and rather unfortunately, at the public for not following the rules. But surely NHS and hospital leaders have some responsibility for not planning for this current wave – why are difficult questions not being directed at them? Of course, it isn’t possible to train more ICU nurses in nine months – ICU nursing is a highly specialised form of nursing that takes years to complete. But it is very possible to train other hospital nurses, whose departments will be largely underutilised in a pandemic situation, to ably support ICU nurses so that they can safely manage three or four times more patients than they usually would. Nine months is also a long time to secure additional intensive care hardware such as dialysis machines and ventilators. If this had happened, acute care and ICU capacity could have been flexed considerably this winter.
But perhaps a more fundamental question needs to be asked. The British people will pay a heavy price for lockdown in terms of non-Covid lives lost, mental health, relationships, livelihoods, children’s education and Government borrowing that will be paid by us and our children for generations. When lockdowns have been imposed in part due to the NHS’s inability to cope – why are we being asked to sacrifice so much to prop up a failing institution? The question therefore follows – is the NHS in its current form fit for purpose? As someone who has been in UK healthcare and the NHS for 20 years I have seen at first hand that NHS is frequently unable to deliver basic 21st century healthcare in normal times. Cancer care performs poorly in this country and services cannot cope with modern chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and obesity where excellent available therapies are frequently not offered or provided. Every winter routine surgery is cancelled as hospitals do not have enough beds due to accommodation of the very predictable respiratory illnesses that come through A+E. And we are all accustomed and worryingly apathetic towards the plethora of NHS services with long waiting lists that would be unthinkable in other countries – this is rationing of medical services although often not stated as such.
Worth reading in full.
Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink
The Toronto Sun has published a compelling interview with Dr Ari Joffe, a specialist in paediatric infectious diseases at the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton and a Clinical Professor in the Department of Paediatrics at University of Alberta. He was initially a lockdown enthusiast, but he’s come round to our point of view. There is more rejoicing in heaven… etc., etc.
You were a strong proponent of lockdowns initially but have since changed your mind. Why is that?
There are a few reasons why I supported lockdowns at first.
First, initial data falsely suggested that the infection fatality rate was up to 2-3%, that over 80% of the population would be infected, and modelling suggested repeated lockdowns would be necessary. But emerging data showed that the median infection fatality rate is 0.23%, that the median infection fatality rate in people under 70 years old is 0.05%, and that the high-risk group is older people, especially those with severe co-morbidities. In addition, it is likely that in most situations only 20-40% of the population would need to be infected before ongoing transmission is limited
Second, I am an infectious diseases and critical care physician, and am not trained to make public policy decisions. I was only considering the direct effects of COVID-19 and my knowledge of how to prevent these direct effects. I was not considering the immense effects of the response to COVID-19 (that is, lockdowns) on public health and wellbeing…
Third, a formal cost-benefit analysis of different responses to the pandemic was not done by Government or public health experts. Initially, I simply assumed that lockdowns to suppress the pandemic were the best approach. But policy decisions on public health should require a cost-benefit analysis. Since lockdowns are a public health intervention, aiming to improve the population wellbeing, we must consider both benefits of lockdowns, and costs of lockdowns on the population wellbeing. Once I became more informed, I realized that lockdowns cause far more harm than they prevent.
There has never been a full cost-benefit analysis of lockdowns done in Canada. What did you find when you did yours?
First, some background into the cost-benefit analysis. I discovered information I was not aware of before. First, framing decisions as between saving lives versus saving the economy is a false dichotomy. There is a strong long-run relationship between economic recession and public health. This makes sense, as Government spending on things like healthcare, education, roads, sanitation, housing, nutrition, vaccines, safety, social security nets, clean energy, and other services determines the population well-being and life-expectancy. If the Government is forced to spend less on these social determinants of health, there will be statistical lives lost, that is, people will die in the years to come. Second, I had underestimated the effects of loneliness and unemployment on public health. It turns out that loneliness and unemployment are known to be among the strongest risk factors for early mortality, reduced lifespan, and chronic diseases. Third, in making policy decisions there are trade-offs to consider, costs and benefits, and we have to choose between options that each have tragic outcomes in order to advocate for the least people to die as possible.
In the cost-benefit analysis I consider the benefits of lockdowns in preventing deaths from COVID-19, and the costs of lockdowns in terms of the effects of the recession, loneliness, and unemployment on population wellbeing and mortality. I did not consider all of the other so-called ‘collateral damage’ of lockdowns mentioned above. It turned out that the costs of lockdowns are at least 10 times higher than the benefits. That is, lockdowns cause far more harm to population wellbeing than COVID-19 can. It is important to note that I support a focused protection approach, where we aim to protect those truly at high-risk of COVID-19 mortality, including older people, especially those with severe co-morbidities and those in nursing homes and hospitals.
Worth reading in full.
Dr Ari Joffe has written a paper titled “COVID-19: Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink” in which he describes how initial modelling predictions induced groupthink and how reality only started to impose itself as data began to emerge of the significant collateral damage done by lockdowns.
Why Haven’t Our Points Landed and What Lies Behind the Hysteria
Today we are publishing a new contribution to the ongoing debate on why Lockdown Sceptics have failed to convince, this one by A.R. Norman.
Why haven’t our points landed and who or what is behind the hysteria that grips us? Is it the Government, the media, scientists or SAGE or some other malign agency?
In his very persuasive essay, Dr David McGrogan claims that both the reason lockdown sceptics have failed to break through the hysteria surrounding COVID-19 and the source of the hysteria itself is the successful establishment of a ‘moral truth’ by the advocates of lockdown. In response, Guy de la Bedoyere argues that, against such truths, reason will never prevail – that emotion always has, does and will win the day.
There are, however, some other factors worth considering. The first is context. In 2016, something happened that was not meant to happen. Having being given a referendum, the British people defied their political masters and voted for Brexit. This, from the perspective of the Establishment – the political and professional classes, together with the media that represent them and the businesses that fund them – was an absolute catastrophe, a catastrophe compounded when Donald Trump came to power in America. This was a disaster for the same political and professional classes whose identity politics and global-capitalist economic project was threatened by his overt nationalism and the protectionist policies he promised.
Brexit and Trump were thus two enormous wins for populism, the revolt by broadly patriotic, socially conservative, anti-globalist parties which now form governments in much of Eastern Europe (and, let’s not forget, in Russia too) and which continue to gain support throughout the rest of Europe via the likes of National Rally in France, AfD in Germany, Lega Nord in Italy and Vox in Spain. From these gains – and the eruption of violence in America today reinforces the view – it became clear to those who people the entire western Establishment that unless they can do something drastic, they are in serious danger of losing control.
The Covid scare gives it – the Establishment – the perfect opportunity for a massive reassertion of its authority. When people are afraid, they cry out to their leaders for protection. As it turns out, these leaders have precisely nothing to offer so they do the only thing that is in their gift: they deprive the people of their liberty and make them pay for the privilege through the expenditure of blood (think here of all those missed hospital tests and treatments, think of all the suicides and of all those acts of violence in the home) and treasure (the, as yet uncounted, trillions of dollars worldwide). So it is that, under cover of fulfilling the people’s wishes for protection (and let us not forget how enthusiastically most have embraced lockdown), the Establishment has just pulled off a blinder. It has massively arrogated power to itself. By terrorising an already frightened populace, by bankrupting future generations and, crucially, by depriving a generation of young people of a significant proportion of their education, it looks like it has succeeded brilliantly in shoring up its position far into the future.
Worth reading in full.
Round-up
- “Police arrest more than a dozen protesters at anti-lockdown march in London” – The Independent reports that 16 protestors were arrested for attending a rally on Clapham High Street
- “Video of woman being ‘arrested for sitting on a bench’ was stage managed by anti-lockdown protester” – MailOnline reports the Dorset Police claim that footage shared widely online, showing three police officers surrounding a woman in Bournemouth, was a fake
- “Shop queue clampdown: Supermarkets are told to bring back limit on number of customers” – The Daily Mail reports on the return of queues outside supermarkets
- “PHE data shows outbreaks in homes more than doubled over New Year period” – MailOnline highlights the urgent rise Covid cases in care homes
- “The silent epidemic that has hit nine million lives as Covid rampages through UK” – The Sunday Mirror, together with Age UK, Mind, and the Jo Cox Foundation, is pressing the Government to tackle the growing problem of loneliness
- “No firm evidence that closing schools reduces the spread of coronavirus, say leading British scientists” – The Mail on Sunday highlights the pointlessness of school closures as Keir Starmer demands nurseries close
- “You don’t have to be a lockdown sceptic to worry about how Covid is being policed” – The ‘tough’ talk ignores who is always targeted in such crackdowns, and those who still need help, says John Harris in the Guardian
- “Better treatments for COVID-19” – “The UK has made progress on how to handle the virus,” says John Redwood on his latest blog
- “We need to start talking now about how life will be once jabs make Covid less deadly” – writes Professor Robert Dingwall in the Mail on Sunday, or else we’ll never “defeat those who would keep us in lockdown forever”
- “Where to volunteer during the pandemic: from vaccine help to food banks” – The Times details one of the few remaining reasons to leave the house
- “Lockdowns destroy more than individual freedom” – “They imperil the very communities in which our lives have meaning,” says Dave Clements in Spiked Online
- “Jabs need more punch” – Nick Booth offers a personal account of getting the Pfizer jab for the Conservative Woman. Painless and efficient, but the centre wasn’t very busy
- “The importance of Sweden” – George J. Dance on why Sweden is still worth talking about if you’re a lockdown sceptic
- “Not agreeing with lockdowns to curb spread of COVID-19 does not mean you are ‘anti-science’” – A great column in defence of lockdown scepticism in the Irish Sun
- “The West should envy Japan’s COVID-19 response” – Japan neither imposed a lockdown, nor tested obsessively and the country was not ravaged by a wave of COVID-19 deaths, says Lockdown Sceptics contributor Ramesh Thakur in the Japan Times
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Five today: “Your Fault” by Stephen Sondheim, “Are the Good Times Really Over For Good” by Hank Williams Jr, “Putting Out Fire” by David Bowie, “Freedom Isn’t Free” by Team America, and “Stand Up! Speak Out!” by Peggo & Paul.
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. We have a team of moderators in place to remove spam and deal with the trolls, but sometimes it takes a little while so please bear with us. You have to register to use the Forums as well as post comments below the line, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.
Sharing Stories
Some of you have asked how to link to particular stories on Lockdown Sceptics so you can share it. To do that, click on the headline of a particular story and a link symbol will appear on the right-hand side of the headline. Click on the link and the URL of your page will switch to the URL of that particular story. You can then copy that URL and either email it to your friends or post it on social media. Please do share the stories.
Social Media Accounts
You can follow Lockdown Sceptics on our social media accounts which are updated throughout the day. To follow us on Facebook, click here; to follow us on Twitter, click here; to follow us on Instagram, click here; to follow us on Parler, click here; and to follow us on MeWe, click here.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, we turn to the National Trust who have experienced a fresh backlash from their Colonial Countryside Project, a child-led history and writing initiative which it runs in conjunction with the Leicester University. The Express has the story:
National Trust bosses have come under fire after it emerged they drafted in schoolchildren to lecture staff and volunteers on the colonial and slave-trade links of some of the charity’s country houses.
So-called child advisory boards were brought in to deliver “reverse-mentoring” sessions at a number of historic properties as part of a scheme to ensure the impact of their background could be fully explained to visitors. Staff were lectured on imperial history by schoolchildren who have been taking part in the Trust’s Colonial Countryside project in conjunction with Leicester University academics. None of the Trust’s team was forced to take part.
The university said the four-year project looked at “a range of colonial links, including slave-produced sugar wealth, East India Company connections, black servants, Indian loot, Francis Drake and African circumnavigators, colonial business interests, holders of colonial office, Chinese wallpaper, Victorian plant hunters and imperial interior design”.
But the scheme has been criticised by anti-woke campaigners who claim important aspects of British history are being erased to satisfy a politically-correct agenda.
Tory MP Sir John Hayes said: “It is a source of sadness that the National Trust are out of touch with the reality of militancy that they are explicitly endorsing, out of tune with their increasingly disillusioned members and running out of time to put these wrongs right.”
A spokesman for the National Trust said: “Colonial Countryside is a project started in 2018 at 11 National Trust houses.
“The participation of the children, which has now concluded, has tested new ways of working with staff enabling us to hear and reflect the children’s responses.
“It was not a compulsory exercise for staff and volunteers.”
He said Trust chiefs hope the process would ensure “British imperial history is fully represented in the organisation’s country houses”.
Around 100 primary school children have visited 10 National Trust houses to craft fiction and short essays which are then presented to audiences.
A Leicester University spokesman said: “Children will participate in conferences and give public talks.
“Child advisory boards will reverse-mentor National Trust staff to ensure that British imperial history is fully represented in the organisation’s country houses.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Read why Nottingham Forest striker Lyle Taylor refuses to take the knee in SportBible.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a one-stop shop down here for people who want to obtain a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card – because wearing a mask causes them “severe distress”, for instance. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and the Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. And 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.
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 and Prof Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson’s Spectator article about the Danish mask study here.
Stop Press: A number of readers have got in touch to back up our reader who debunked the idea that mask-wearing is endemic in Asia. Our thanks to them all.
I’m Asian and have family in Hong Kong, a place I’ve visited many times over the years. I’ve also been to many other South East Asian countries – Thailand, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea – and I can say your writer is correct. Only a very small number of people wear masks, mainly due to pollution.
It’s just not true to say mask wearing was common place in Asia prior to Covid. It is very hot and humid in these countries and the last thing anyone wants to do is put a piece of cloth over their face. Imagine how sweaty and dirty it’d be!
Hope this smashes the myth of mask wearing in Asia!
Another said:
I lived in Japan for many years and during that time saw only one person I knew wearing a mask. This was a nursery teacher in my son’s nursery school who had come down with a cold. Though you saw masked traffic policemen in Tokyo, that was to protect them from pollution. People did not in general wear masks. A polite greeting on parting was “Make sure you don’t catch cold”, but “Make sure you wear a mask” was never part of the advice. I haven’t been back to Japan since 2003 and things might have changed. However, I read the Japanese online news every day and can state hand on heart that until Covid started there were never any pictures of people in masks.
And in Vietnam:
I have spent a fair bit of time in Vietnam travelling by motorbike, up to about 7000km cumulatively now. Fabric masks are commonplace there by day among motorcyclists (of which there are of course many!) to protect them from the relentless sun and the terrible dust and pollution on the roads. I’ve no experience of anyone in that particular Asian country wearing them when ill.
Masks are more common in South Korea in one reader’s more recent experience, but again, only to protect the wearer from pollution:
Definitely more of a cultural phenomenon in South Korea when I visited in 2019 (as well as in areas with high South Korean demographic in Sydney as I have lived there on and off for upwards of 20 years). From what a friend whose brother is married to a Japanese woman tells me, masks are very common in Japan as well but primarily to protect against fine dust/air pollution or as a polite measure when the wearer is sick. Also somewhat of a fashion trend in South Korea but definitely not in the sense that one is glared at if not wearing a mask. It was common, in my experience, but entirely discretionary.
Another offered his perspective, and asked a good question:
I lived in Japan from 1999 to 2001 and saw a few people in masks each day (maybe 1 in 100 people). I thought it was odd so plucked up the guts to ask someone once and he said he had a cold and didn’t want to pass it on. It was considered good manners then. I have not been there in the last year but acquaintances tell me that literally everyone wears one now, although I have not heard of anyone bring “shamed” for not wearing one. They are mandatory in most schools, though not by law.
This begs the question: Is it worse to have mandatory irrational mask rules, or the voluntary irrationality of mass mask-wearing without the rules? I’d like to think that if the mask rule is lifted in the UK we will all stop wearing them but perhaps we will do as the Japanese do and wear them anyway “just in case”.
And finally, a reader has an interesting suggestion:
Your reader’s experience of mask wearing tallies with mine. I travelled extensively throughout China in 2018 and don’t recall seeing masks being worn beyond the odd person even on pea souper days.
For fun, why not try entering “Beijing crowds 2018” into Google Images and play ‘Where’s Masked Wally?’ with any random result. Unless you luck out and pick a photo of a political rally or protest, it’s tougher than the original game. For advanced players, replace Beijing with any large East Asian city.
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. 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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Oh wow, hello!
You win! Speech, speech, speech!
Obviously, make it profound and dolorous.
The description in the attached video states “If you listen carefully the Officer indicates the suspect was filmed being out on three separate occasions in one day.” and I believe that was said. https://brandnewtube.com/watch/mZl8JwHZhuGHsi5
Stage managed?
I don’t think it really matters whether it was or wasn’t. There’s no legal limit on how many times a day you can leave your house. It doesn’t have to be “essential” either. Just a reasonable excuse.
It doesn’t have to be a reasonable excuse, the law is an ass and should be ignored.
So many do not even begin to understand the difference
Lockdown – a term originating from the US (Corporate) Prison System. It is a system in which prisoners are locked in their cells 24 hours a day. The ‘lockdown’ may be invoked if the priisoners get uppity, or more commonly when the corporate wants to cut staff to reduce costs/increase profits.
When I was still watching the news in spring, the word made me have short periods of anxiety. One reason why I had to switch off MSM, and I absolutely hate it!
The Americans call it quarantine and it is a friendlier word.
I suspect the choice was deliberate in the UK as it doesn’t have that connotation here. But there is always a token of truth in their barrage of lies.
Isolating only the confirmed infected isn’t enough with Covid, because it’s virulent enough to kill lots of people, but not so virulent that you get obvious symptoms almost immediately after infection (which is what made SARS-1 and Ebola so much easier to control).
There’s a reason why Vietnam’s successful response to Covid involved contact tracing out to five degrees of separation!
There’s a reason Japan, Sweden, Belarus, Brazil have been successful in their handling of this respiratory virus.
They did not seek to wreck their countries economy, society and education because of a respiratory virus that has had a death rate comparable to a bad flu year.
The prophylactic measures were known before march and are much improved since i.e. Vit D, HCQ and now Invermectin ,see Taiwan for an example of how to make the virus incredibly unlikely to kill more than a handful of people out of millions infected.
Where did you get the idea that Brazil didn’t institute lockdown? We’ve been in one form or another of lockdown since March 2020. The schools have been closed, businesses ruined, travel restricted, and non-essential stores closed or severely limited. We had three day lockdowns over Christmas and New Year to to complete the misery.
The President was against these measures but our supreme court took the power out of his hands and and passed the decisions onto state governors. This bunch then decided to play political football and only turned to the central government for their money.
In comparison to Peru you had some minor restrictions I believe.
If you look at this website, you will see a Postcard from Brazil detailing some restrictions that everyone ignored:
https://dailysceptic.org/a-postcard-from-brazil/
Also:
https://dailysceptic.org/brazil-automatic-recuperation/
So the answer to your question of where I got the idea that Brazil didn’t lockdown is this very website.
bollocks
If it was stage managed, that’s multiple people ” impersonating a police officer”, which is a criminal.offence.
That they are not looking for any impersonators rather gives the game away doesn’t it?
What Leftists Think About Freedom of Speech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SicsQervb4
AwakenWithJP
Coming our way soon, America’s Big Tech coup
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/coming-our-way-soon-americas-big-tech-coup/
A very accurate article I thought. Very dark times ahead not just in the UK, but in every Western country.
Indeed, dark times are here now, but much worse is just around the corner. I never thought I would say this, but being old is now a bonus. Oh not to be young in these worse than Orwellian times. That being said, the old, who’ve lived mainly through much better times, must do all that they can to resist the darkness being inflicted upon us all by the sold out Johnson and his demented henchmen.
“Civil liberties matter. It is in the nature of our humanity that people need at least some solace and support, and either the rules themselves or the way they are enforced must leave room for that. We also have to be vigilant about simple prejudice, and the warped ways that so many laws and regulations are enforced.”
Now where would you expect to read something like that?
Maybe not in the hyperlockdownista, covviphiliac Grauniad. But that’s where is, in the article listed above.
I suppose the law of averages requires that a glimmer of sanity should occasionally manifest itself in the most unlikely places.
Whats the expression? A broken clock is still right twice a day. I see sceptical articles in the daily mail, but then you get a “Boris: you must stay at home” banner headline. With cobblers about 1300 dead. If you take 10 seconds to look at the number you can see that this was a manufactured number. But because they gave stopped producing the total death figures there is no context. Why are journalists not doing their job every day when my radio wakes me up the news has another twat government minister spouting rubbish about non compliance, but these views are totally unchallenged.
I find it hard to muster any enthusiasm over someone like Dr Ari Joffe, who talks about initial data falsely suggesting an IFR of 2-3%. I’m a lay person and even I knew that whatever initial data show, the actual fatality rate is likely to be an order of magnitude lower. Others pointed this out early in the pandemic, such as this article. This guy Joffe is an infectious diseases specialist: he should know this stuff! Did 99.9% of “experts” forget everything that’s happened in recent pandemics and everything they ever learned about infectious disease and immunity?!
Didn’t Ionniddis estimate the IFR back in March to be around 0.2% based, among other data sources, on the Diamond Princess?
😂
You are Neil Ferguson and I claim my five pounds.
Prof John Ioannidis, the World’s leading Epidemiologist from a peer reviewed study on WHO’s website says 0.23% (I think). He says it’s no different to a bad flu (at it’s worst). Here is the article for you to check.https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/BLT.20.265892.pdf
And he’s since lowered his estimate a bit more to 0.15-0.2%:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/eci.13423
A very good point. It was obvious very early to anyone with the most basic mathematical literacy who cared to look that the combination of IF and IFR was not going to be catastrophic. And every passing day and week confirmed this.
I think he was probably not paying sufficient attention at the start when the commentary (deliberately) conflated cases and infections. Obviously the larger Case Fatality Rate figure is more scary and was given prominence. You will have no doubt noted that this mendacity continues a year later with the practice of referring to positive tests as ‘cases’.
I agree wholeheartedly about Brexit and the rise of patriotism across the West and the elites need to put us back in our ‘box’, because that is precisely what I felt back in the Spring. The whole reaction to this Plandemic was so utterly over the top, so authoritarian, so vile for something akin to the flu there must have been more to it. The problem with the ‘elites’ they continue to want to live their lives whilst expecting us to isolate ourselves in our homes. I think civil war isn’t far off.
Had you suggested that civil war was possible six months ago, I would have dismissed that notion as fanciful. Not any more. The way matters continue to spiral out of control in a lot of Western countries, leads me to the conclusion you are probably right. The powder keg is the U.S. that when ignited, will quickly spread.
Yes. But with China less as Barabbas in ‘The Jew of Malta,’ and more as Fortinbras in ‘Hamlet.’
Well said. As I’ve long said, the situation will get uglier and civil unrest is bubbling under the surface.
‘Prague Spring’, ‘Arab Spring’ – are you predicting there could there be a ‘British Spring’?
I can’t see any signs or even murmurings of civil unrest myself but then I don’t get out much!
I have no idea to be honest but with redundancies and bankruptcies predicted to go up the roof, I can imagine that many people will realise they have nothing to lose and do the unthinkable.
‘Nothing to lose’ is a trigger in most revolutions any where, at any time IMO.
But there’s a surprisingly large underclass in Britain propped up by the welfare state which already has ‘nothing to lose’.
Perhaps there will be enough of us to wo-man the barricades however.
Furlough is ending in March. Surely they can’t extend it even more.
Even with furlough, there are still people being made redundant and there are others who can’t claim them. My workplace is one of them and that’s why we’ve ended up in the situation we are in.
Money printing press goes brrrrrr 24/7 since 2008
They don’t even need a press these days – other than to press a few keys on a keyboard.
Fiat pecunia. Et pecunia erat.
‘Furlough is ending in March. Surely they can’t extend it even more.’
Oh yes they can, Bart. If they want to. More and more debt. Then they’ll reset the fiat currency….and it’ll be very bad news for anyone with assets (savings, pensions etc). We are seeing…and will see much more…redistribution of wealth …from the plebs/mid classes to the ultra rich.
British Spring? Buds are coming out already and it is still January.
The problem is, when you take away peoples right to say what they think, it drives these opinions underground. When our views are not represented in the msm we gather in enclaves like this site where we can air our views. On YouTube you see lots of people challenging the narrative but they then get banned. Then you see bullshit polls saying 75% support lockdown. Out of all the people I know and all the people I have chatted to over the park or when playing golf, I only know one person who thinks the government is correct. If we were allowed to protest this would be obvious and is the reason they were stopped. People obey the law.
Allowing people to leave home once a week and ending support bubbles? How would vast numbers manage to work and would the nation really go along with this? Lots of people might conclude that it might be worth actually getting shot by the police than living under such a regime. What’s the point of living like that?
Opinion polls are frequently being cited by LS as if they are reliable. I maintain the level of support for lockdowns is not as high as this. Opinion polls have been weaponised. I wish the editors here would be a little more sceptical, as in the name of the site. The crowds that are out and about in the January cold suggest to me that the compliance/obedience rate is in actuality much lower than claimed by the dodgy weaponised polls.
It looks like the whole nation is going to be transformed into some sort of gigantic Melbourne. To what end? This is no policy blunder. It is meant to force a demoralised nation into taking a dodgy vaccine.
I want the most draconian restrictions possible.Something must wake up the sleeping masses
NOTHING can wake the living dead. There is NOTHING they won’t go along with.
The logical next step is to adopt the Ferguson approach to foot and mouth. Wherever there’s an outbreak, kill everybody within a, say, two-mile radius.Control the virus, save lives.
I think you are probably right,but at the moment the Government hasn’t the power to keep everyone down.if we called their bluff they would have to back down.
Lots of people are too weak to do “calling the Governments bluff” I’m afraid. I’ve been gobsmacked just how many people are weak and cowardly. There are many that will go even further than the restrictions – thinking of a friend living very nearby who is now refusing to see me (at least she’s also refusing to see anyone else either…) – even though we could both do so in legit way as each others “support bubble” because we both live on our own. This was preceded by her telling me to get off the phone to her a couple of days previous to that and I assumed it was for an important reason – but….no…it was just so she could watch the news and check what the latest set of rules is!!! There are lots like it – Wimps ‘R Us.
It’s this type of “weak” individual who becomes a threat. They are the willing drones. They will do the government’s bidding and rat on their neighbours in the foolish belief that they’re saving their own skins.
It must be very hard to be friends with someone like that.
How could they possibly police even half the population going out and about?
They are relying on the weak-kneed to police themselves.
Yep agreed, there is no limit to which the masses will NOT comply. If the Government tomorrow told them that if they see people on the street they need to kill them with anything they have to ha,nd they would do it, no questions asked. Protect life’s, Save the NHS, Long live Big Brother!
The FnM policy caused the spread, it was exactly the wrong strategy to start at a centre and work outwards. I realise I’m being pedantic but good to remember the active damage done to our country by obe fergusson.
Completely agree…and blimey Annie…how did you get access to their planning?! 😀
There’s a sizeable minority that would welcome the army lining rule breakers up against a wall and shooting them. Be careful what you wish for.
I want the most draconian restrictions possible.Something must wake up the sleeping masses
And if that doesn’t work?
Completely agree as sated in my comment. Don’t know if it is just me, or Toby et al appear to have been a bit luke warm in their scepticism lately.
Jonathan Barr is the one today.He is too willing to accept the mainstream narrative
No, it’s just not only you. He whole heartedly embraces the “vaccine” without reservation. That in itself is worrying.
The evidence is mounting that these vaccines are not really safe. Why would a government pressurise a nation into taking a dangerous product for a virus that ahs such a high survival rate? if you are not at this stage entertaining the worst of thoughts at the back of your mind, then maybe you aren’t paying attention.
Pic&mix vaccines, how we chortled at the very idea.
That is another big unknown about the emergency drugs. There is no information on potential interactions with other drugs. I guess that may be what all this push to mass use of the vaccine is all about – acquiring such knowledge. Phase III testing with no cost and no liability. Kerching.
I prefer Planter’s mixed nut platter. With Bass Ale.
Safe or not, even with 100% “safety”, he main question for me is the necessity – if over 99% of trial participants who were in the placebo arm of the trial still didn’t get covid, how do they explain that? If it’s so exponentially rampant…
Yes, and we can assume no serious cases, hospitalisations or deaths in that group either, or we would certainly have been told.
Depopulation.
Vaccines are just drugs, and like any other drug they have potential benefits and potential side effects. If the side effects outweigh the benefits the drug should not be taken.
For the great majority of people, Covid-19 is harmless, so the drugs offer no benefit (especially as all they do is slightly reduce symptoms in mild cases). For them, the drug only offers the side effects (may include death). The big unknown for the mRNA types is the long term effects on the immune system. It could potentially induce auto-immune responses or degrade the fficacy of the immune system overall.
There are currently a lot of dangers and risks to putting your head above the ‘covid’ parapet, I understand Toby has had death threats which the police have told him to treat seriously. He has a wife and family and if the people running this site are therefore being a little cautious it would hardly be surprising. I am quite happy if the news above is fairly factual, we can do the opinion and the controversial in this comments section.What i worry about is losing this site altogether, there is nothing else.
If Toby is getting death threats, it’s the government’s fault. It is the government that has terrified the public into a state of insanity.
By pushing the hardly teated vaccines so hard, the government is making threats against the public which will likely end in death for very many.
I agree. I also think he and this site have remained on the right side of reason and evidence throughout. That’s important, there are some that have stepped too far over the conspiracy theory line and are beginning to sound a bit unhinged. While I enjoy listening to James Delingpole and Laura Perrins sometimes they have gone too far. Stick with facts. For the human side Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan are good.
Facts? Or official facts? Or official opposition facts? What I perhaps can join with you in is that ‘careless talk costs lives’ and that what can be stood in and defended as having substance is different from possibilities or theories yet to be substantiated but which have emotional (or corporate) investment. JD and LP started off as an entertaining conversation that was willing to consider a wider range of possibilities – but in an undisciplined way. As such they become a low grade signal with occasional moments – and many liabilities. But humanly so and thus a sort of X-covid files – along with the fission of their relationship – which is of course warming on some level and so becomes covid soap drama. (I do appreciate them both for where their willingness and dedication shine through). Part of JD and LP is that they are not centred or focused and thus pushing out too fast and too loud as a result. Once something is given the status of fact it operates as ‘reality’ until its status is called into question and can no longer be maintained. How many ‘facts’ abide unchanged through the generations – and why would you… Read more »
Exactly where have they gone too far?
The comment from “ituex” looks very like one of those clever little posts from the army of paid trolls that the government has lined up against us, for the purposes of throttling the truth.
Some people will still be calling for a softly softly approach, when they knock their front door down one rainy dawn.
When I first joined this site near the beginning of this madness, I warned the ‘new normal’ is a communist nightmare [and worse]. I warned the government will eventually use a tracking system; they will continuously isolate us to make us weaker in every way; the borders will be shut down; and here’s the big one… they’ll try to cancel Christmas + New Year.
I was mocked from popular posters on this site for being a misery gut.
Everything I said would happen has since happened. Some of the ‘more extreme’ predictions are yet to happen.
I knew all this was going to happen not because I’m a smart arse, but because I stopped following the mainstream narrative 15 years ago.
‘Stick with the facts’ – if I told you the entire civilised populations of the world would be forced under police rule to wear a nappy on their face and stand 2m apart, Christmas would be cancelled and we were all expected to be vaccinated against a harmless virus – you’d have called me an ‘unhinged’ conspiracy theorist.
Point being – when are you going to wake up?
offGuardian is not too bad.
It depends on your take on the situation.it you believe that this is driven by government incompetence then you would see the vaccine as a way out of this crisis.
If you see something much darker behind the governments actions then a rushed experimental ‘vaccine’ is something to be feared and avoided at all costs.
IMO it was cowardice rather than incompetence, but I don’t agree that in thinking this it follows I see vaccines as a way out of this.
In the last few days there have been statements from government advisors suggesting “measures” (they’ve been vague about which ones) “may” be needed in subsequent winters. Hancock has also been quoted today in the Telegraph in suggesting that it may be necessary for everyone to get an annual vaccine. Some have taken those comments to mean that the Rubicon has been crossed and we are now going to be stuck in this hell, at least sporadically, forever. There are, however, reasons to doubt this – whether or not Hancock wishes it so. Firstly, I think public compliance only holds as long as people think there’s an end in sight. I know some here think the propaganda war has created a nation of sheep, but history suggests that even countries suppressed under decades of government lies will still have the will to set themselves free (see the collapse of the Iron Curtain) and even here people tend to react against governments imposing unnecessary restrictions (see the 1948 election). The other reason for doubt is that I don’t think the international situation will allow it. Many countries, having taken a significant hit from the restrictions of 2020, can’t afford to pursue the… Read more »
IMO the government is working towards making this a permanent state of affairs. I agree it is in question whether they will win. Anyway, well said.
Why are there still people who think the government is doing what it is doing because it being bullied and is incompetent? I prefer the theory that Johson is a eugenicist who has sold out to Bill Gates. Gates is also a eugenicist, a self confessed depopulationist and is the world’s vaccine supremo, a very unhealthy combination.
The concept of compulsory administration of experimental medical treatment rings a bell. I’m sure it was sort of heavily frowned on at one stage. Ah … it was Dr Mengele and the Psycho Stooges.
If the vaccines are designed to kill and that would be no surprise, with Bill Gates behind them, then your very reasonable arguments would be made redundant. I rather think we are well past the time, when the government will worry about public opinion or any inquiries into its manic behaviour.
We are now in a very serious situation, where the government has effectively declared war on its own people and it seems intent on pursuing the war to the bitter end.
Didn’t read it all, but – “It may be necessary for everyone to get an annual vaccine”?! And how much is his party getting from bif pharma?
The thought occurs that we might do worse than campaign for an end to (translucent) conflicts of interest in politics. And science.
It’s good to see some different thinking about this murky business.
Government incompetence has been a non-runner since the late Spring and why people still stick with this seems far from being too rational. Perhaps, the alternatives are just too scary, for most. This realistically only leaves us with the “darker” scenario, which you hint at and which for me has to focus around the Covid vaccines.
I doubt that the vaccines have been over rushed though and it seems likely that they will do, exactly what they are supposed to do. However it is ‘highly likely’ that the vaccines will have very little to do with preventing, or even ameliorating Covid-19.
oh no i i didnt know that about toby and’vaccine’. there is no way in hell i will get that ‘vaccine’.i ts the masks adn the ‘vaccine i hate the most , and the lockdown and the wimps majority ,, so many things to choose from
He whole heartedly embraces the “vaccine” without reservation.
Then he is almost certainly lying.
Completely agree. I tend to increasingly find the comments section contains links to far more incisive articles than those actually offered on the site itself. These have started to shift from the response to Covid being massively disproportionate, to (in the last few days) simply “what a mess the governments have made and essentially, how the NHS is struggling”.
There was a discussion on here about how this site could be compromised through the comments.I don’t think that could work as many posters are very well informed and erroneous arguments are normally taken apart.
It would be easier to corrupt the leader writers and change the tone,slightly at first.At the moment we are being led to mainstream media articles and it is fact that the MSM have been bought off to push the government line.
I may sound paranoid but after 10 months of lies I don’t trust anyone.
Didn’t Herod tell Claudius to “trust no one”? And didn’t this get taken up by the X-Files?
The personality level is the mask. Don’t be phished by the mask and don’t play a masking intent. The masquerade is an insanity entanglement that most of us have adapted to as our means to survive the ‘human world’. The idea of ‘Know Thyself’ is not navel gazing but of reconnecting to our very being instead of running in a mind-modelling of personal and social masking.
I write to a sense of someone worth sharing with. In that I extend trust – but not as a contract seeking agreement or setting terms and conditions.
Reconsidering what anything Is – including trust, has to reach outside of a circular reasoning or presumed ‘reality’ to something real and that is why relationships are the crucible of awakening and NOT what we try to make of them or use them for.
I must say that I tend to head straight for the comments section nowadays whereas at the start of this, the articles were a ‘must read’ every day just to maintain sanity.
I guess Toby has to cater for individuals that are just starting to dip their toe in lockdown scepticism whereas our views are much more concrete now.
I generally skim the main articles but you learn a lot more through the links posted in the comments
Well at least look at the China linkage offered today.
But yes a lot of LDS can be skimmed as representing old and well rutted territory that has no call to plod through over and over again.
The case against lockdown is if anything diluted by persisting in frames of futility. A resource for those who are allowing themselves to question is a relatively done deal, there is no call to be sceptical of THAT deceit is at work. But as to why, how and for what there is a need to stay disciplined.
Perhaps we do not want to go there?
Is sanity a new herd to feel some sense of shared warmth?
Truth has peace and freedom associated with its full acceptance, and fear of truth holds every kind of denial and obfuscation.
Al lot of this is a fear and hate of the evil in the human heart and the attempt to evade and hide it rather than truly look within – when fear says ‘THREAT ATTACK HIDE’
Our minds are not what we think – but of course what we think makes all the difference.
Off-Guardian tends to be more hardcore (realistic) but it needs more articles on the Covid mayhem in the UK, instead of worrying too much about the US elections.
Thats funny I have found that too…straight to the comments and always mean to go back to the articles but somehow never do. I have not read the main articles now since before Christmas I think. I cant see that changing now. It takes huge guts to keep permanently apart from the herd and a lot of people worry about what other people will think about them after a while. I think thats what we are seeing here. People are afraid of being ‘unpersoned’. Personally I prefer the Oscar Wilde saying ‘when everyone agrees with me I must be wrong’.
Perhaps you don’t need to trust anything but your own discernment of truth – and release the idea that anyone should or can meet your conditions? The self-censoring mind can work in many ways that we may not be aware of – and so even without the gov disinfo shills etc we can manifest all kinds of diversions and ‘safe hangouts’. It’s a work in progress in every one – but in some sense we are talking of those willing to start to question and thus look at and consider what is happening for themselves – and thus as the basis from which they relate to others and their world. There are a lot of revelations for anyone questioning what had been their ‘reality’ some of which are greatly disturbing but if we abide through there is another level of resource that I could call spiritual or reintegrative. Paranoia is dissociative and ungrounded. Fears have specific attributes that can be brought into relationship and curiosity – after the ferocious phase has dissipated perhaps. We are learning about ourselves and our mind and our world in ways that were unavailable while ‘normal’ ticked our boxes. Regardless of who, how and why,… Read more »
Excellent insight. This is new for all of us and we must never be too trusting.
This site can’t offer everything, but the comments section is the best you’ll find.
I find the comments section of Peter Hitchen’s blog to be very good (discounting the occasional zealot). It’s got some very well informed regular commentators. In fact, the blog itself is a long way short of the quality of views in his comments section.
This site is very twitchy with people still scared of being called or associated with ‘tin-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists’ while the country continues to descend into utter madness and ruin – deliberately.
There is undoubtedly a kind of ‘revisionism’ going on…how long before it becomes ‘lockdowns are ok…they just were not done quickly enough!
Toby knows what is good for him. Who can blame him? When the government clamps down on us Toby will be right on their side. I’m grateful every day for this platform but the events get sour we will see who is on our side..Not many i’m afraid.
Thats because they are. They may well end up joining the other side…stranger things have happened. After all the alleged ‘libertarian’ Christopher Snowden has recently joined the lockdownisters.
Toby’s a softie.
My very first thought when it came to the idea of only allowed out once a week was that that wouldnt even cover doing my shopping (even though I only have to shop for myself/don’t have any pets). As someone that doesn’t have a car yet (because of not being able to afford one) – I go to Tesco once a week just for the stuff from there and am carrying as much as I can possibly manage just from there. I also need to go to my local wholefood shop and wouldn’t have any spare “carrying capacity” for the stuff from there and so how would I manage to get that as well? That’s before we go into my need/right for exercise and there would be people in a worse situation than myself on that front – eg those living in high-rise flats and the like and therefore unable to even, in extremis, do umpteen circuits of their garden in lieu of having a walk. Yep…I calculated I’d have to do around 25 circuits of my garden and attendant walking up and down my road to get in 3 miles worth of “having a walk”.
I don’t have a car and do my shopping in dribs and drabs because there are limits to what I can carry. As for exercise, I live in a not so good area where the “green spaces” are sorry excuses for parks which despite the council’s best efforts are regularly vandalised and strewn with litter. I got fed up with my area during the first lockdown and vowed Never Again.
They don’t have enough police and the army is minuscule. Plus we’ve seen how the police “enforce” the “regulations” and make things up as they go along. We have to hold our nerve because they’re many of us and few of them. And of course they wouldn’t dare go into places like Tottenham, Edmonton, Brixton – they would get beaten up.
My father in law lives on a South London estate he says the gangs were out in March and have been out ever since , every Saturday night loud music in the park no sign of police ever patroling it
I live not far from the North West London HQ of the Met and despite all the anti-social behaviour here over the summer, they did SFA. There was even a murder 5 minutes from where I live and nothing has been heard about that since.
They only go for the easy targets.
Like women having a flask of tea.
They would rely on people policing each other.
Lets hope they get severely beaten up…only the best for the boys and girls in blue.
Could these stricter measures be subtle vaccine coercion?
I agree, i don’t think these polls are reliable.
Yes you have been a naughty boy, if you carry on I will keep you inside during break time. But no journalist ever says, er! could it be your lockdowns are not working?
I keep hoping for a tipping point. None in site. Things will have to get a lot worse. I just don’t care anymore. My personal Liberty is in my head and anybody that invades that space, in or out of uniform, gets repelled. I will get into trouble. It’s inevitable, but necessary.
With regards to the opening article and Toby’s comments regarding cases, would like to have seen some reference to false positives, multiple tests on individuals etc., some reference to over-inflated figures. Please can we not keep referring to polls as accurate measurements, and if so many people are so pro lockdown why the need fir stricter regulations because of non compliance, surely thats a contradiction in terms. Looking at comments in the DT and even the DM, not seeing vast support, quite the opposite.
Yes, I agree. EVERYTHING is being manipulated at the moment. The rule of thumb is believe absolutely nothing that eminates from the MSM.
I think UK society is now much more fragmented than used to be the case, only certain segments of the population are likely to do opinion polls. I think the current situation indicates that this Government is poles apart from much of the British People. I think it also shows that the appalling covid fear propaganda is failing to get to many people. Unfortunately i think the Gov are now panicking themselves, they have invested so much in this nonsense they cannot afford to be seen to fail. They do not know what to do and so are likely to take the only action they can, which is ratchet up the lockdown, which as we know is like trying to turn of your water supply to solve a gas leak.
The pollsters are also manipulating the cross section of those polled to better obtain the answer they want.
He who pays the piper……etc etc
Even if you don’t assume deliberate manipulation, the truth is pollsters don’t have sufficient data to know how to weight categories on this issue. Whereas with political polls we have decades of data about the propensity of one socio-economic group to vote in a particular manner (and can therefore project what shifts mean in a small sample) there is little or no data to group the population for any other question. Political polls group people based on age, sex, race, income group and education – why would those categories necessarily be relevant for attitudes to a virus?
Of course, there are certain beliefs that have been formed (i.e. public sector workers at home on full pay or middle class workers with secure jobs and the ability to work at home are more likely to support lockdown) but those are assumptions and it wouldn’t be safe to assume they are robust enough to scale up to the national population. I suspect some of us here are exceptions to those ourselves.
Interestingly, I have not had a yougov survey for over a week now, since I gave them a strong set of answers on the last survey I did. Definitely choosing the people they poll ‘carefully’.
How often do you normally get them? If that’s an unusual delay and other people have the same experience it would suggest something dodgy is going on.
It always depends on who is paying them to produce what result. If we could crowdfund a poll to say we think the earth is flat, they would poll the right people. LibDems, mostly.
I answer all of the YouGov surveys sent to me but after expressing my anti-lockdown views during the first lockdown I don’t seem to get asked about the government rules just my mental health wellbeing! Cheers YouGov!
Isn’t yougov now sponsored by Bill Gates
Yes – polls are intended to form opinion, not reflect it.
Decision-makers do commission proper private polls, but keep the results to themselves, because information is valuable.
We are in a data-driven pseudo-epidemic (a well known medical concept) arisiing from inadequate testing. There was a big one in the US in 2007. A supposed whooping cough epidemic turned out to be an outbreak of atypical symptoms of the common cold after proper testing. I think there was one relating to measles in the UK some time ago.
There are too many people with a vested interest in the status quo – for-profit testing companies, PPE outfits, bought-and-paid-for scientists, b-a-p-f politicians, Big Pharma, central banksters – for this to change voluntarily.
The measles scare was in the 1990s. It was created because they had shedloads of measles vax that was about to go out of date!
I was doing a shift in the family business on Saturday. One of my customers (a fellow sceptic) was revelling in me that he’d been walking his dog in one of the big city parks here in Liverpool. He said there were people everywhere, barely a mask in sight and zero f**ks given about social distancing.
This was later backed up by other customers who had visited Calderstones, another large park in an affluent part of the city. One told me it was like the football, barely any space to walk on the footpaths. Music to my ears.
“Stay at home, protect the NHS?” We’re laughing at you, Johnson.
Left the UK yesterday, now in Qatar – hotel isolation for a week. Let’s just say terminal 5 was not quiet, my flight busy with most passengers in transit to places beyond Qatar, so not much notice being taken at the don’t travel diktat. Security staff in Heathrow, I have found the past few years to be jumped up little bossy boots, but they excelled themselves yesterday – possibly taking a leaf from plods book to make our lives so miserable we will comply. They all have masks and now glasses closely resembling a cross between Ali G glasses and ski goggles. One even had black sunglasses, black mask and gloves … oh miss toughy. Had a feeling there was elements of intimidation, orders barked or alternatively some couldn’t even bother to speak and just pointed.. Got a full up and down body frisk 3 times, after the X-Ray and standing there just in jeans, jumper and socks – not sure what the point of that was. Final humiliation was that after the final check in through the boarding gate we were subjected to being sniffed by a slobbering hound before boarding-not our bags, us. Now if these were supposed… Read more »
I agree with your description of airport security staff – they are in a menial job probably minimum wage, but put a uniform on them and wow they convert to being in the blackshirt brigade – overly bossy, authoritarian little shits with an over inflated sense of importance. There are a few exceptions but not many in my experience and I guess this whole shitstorm has made them worse. Interesting that T5 was not quiet – I went to Greece in Sep and again T5 was busy and I thought people are just getting on with their lives but I had the impression that no-one is travelling with all the fevered brainwashing. But now with all the tests are a real hassle and I’m avoiding travel at the mo due to this and other crazy restrictions and mask wearing etc. I do believe that they are doing their best to make travel inconvenient, expensive, restrictive and so unpleasant to reduce numbers. They have given no support to the travel/aviation industry. IMHO I think it’s all deliberate to align with their ‘green’ agenda to stop the masses from travel which will be the preserve of the rich. I assume going to… Read more »
This may have been flagged before, but worth a reminder:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/lockdown-zealots-its-you-who-are-the-selfish-ones/
Excellent article – thanks for sharing the link, Annie. Will be sending to others…
Queuing outside a supermarket is “bending the rules”???????
Ironic given we’re forced to queue due to the need to have fewer people in the shops. Just shows these people have no idea how real life works.
DELUSIONAL ARROGANCE.
Came across a fellow unmasked person in a shop yesterday, battling a drone behind the counter insisting that “the law doesn’t count now as we are in crisis and shouldn’t work together to save the nation”. Politely helped the guy out explaining to her that yes, exemptions do count, and no, they do not need to be justified in a shop”.
It blew over quickly, and was reasonably amicable, but as I stood there next to the stranger talking to the assistant I realised that for the first time I was in a majority. Of three people sure, but I had the force of numbers actually on my side. The isolation of not wearing a muzzle, of being against lockdown, means that outside of friends, sites like this, and obviously protests, you are always alone, so this small moment felt fantastic.
Please, anyone who hates masks but puts them on for an easy road, I get it. But please, the more of us that make a stand, the easier it will get.
“the law doesn’t count now as we are in crisis and shouldn’t work together to save the nation”
Rather terrifying sentiment actually although I wonder if it was “should” rather than “shouldn’t” – even if the law doesn’t forbid something the crisis justifies bans and restrictions. Cynic though I have been for a long time, even I have been shocked by how amenable many Brits are to tyranny.
Sorry, predictive typing. Yes should read “should”.
NOW will you believe that the country’s going to hell in a handcart?! 🙂
Come along to the Brighton KBF group danny. Meeting like-minded folk is a key benefit.
There are none so isolated as those who wear masks.
I am glad things worked out OK.
Which shop was that? The employee is opening their employer up to legal action under civil law ( fines up to £5000 / £9000 depending on actions) by even querying a customer for not wearing a mask. The only people allowed to query are police officers, PCSOs, TfL officers and indivduals designated by the Secretary of State for Health.
https://laworfiction.com/2020/09/face-covering-some-pretend-law/
The site has some useful paperwork to support things if needed.
FWIW my local Sainsburys play announcements notifying customers about people who are not able to socially distance or to wear face masks. They are very considerate in that respect. It certainly avoids them falling foul of discrimnation/privacy laws
Here is a link to that loveworld video and the OFCOM notice of sanctions against them.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Agv7JEO8MngCij_-MctNYo0coRCi?e=qPB0eO
The notice is dated April 2020 and contains a transcript of the show.
So how did these guys know in April 2020 the vaccine, vaccination passports, HCQ etc was coming?
I think it was at the back of the minds of many.
Not in the general public nor in the media.
Which country was he talking about, sounds very familiar with the Canadian leak papers
Sorry, couldn’t copy image
blob:https://dailysceptic.org/7839dac4-ec98-45e6-b992-6a0bc314c17b
Ignore;another failure
The open letter to the FBI et al is worth downloading and saving to any sceptics computer/phone.
What response it will receive I know not but Imperial College will not be best pleased among others.
If the US Federal Government takes as much notice of this as it did of Sepp Blatter then maybe something will happen?
I think the FBI might be a little busy in upcoming months if what was posted in the comments section last night with regards to election fraud proves correct. So might a lot of other European law enforcement agencies for that matter.
Oh they won’t be worrying about election fraud it worked and they got away with it. No they will be after Trump supporters and other dissidents.
How to conjure up a spike in hospitalisations and Covid deaths in the S/W ?
Transfer ill patients from hospitals in the East of England is how.
Yep, it’s happening in my hospital.But will the local scaremongering “Somerset Live” and “Devon Live’ look at that before they write their multiple doom-laden headlines every day?
Stay safe; stop the spread.
The current febrile atmosphere and the further threats to our freedom seem very much orientated aroud the NHS. The ruling Junta are terrified of the public seeing the sainted and worshipped NHS fail under their watch. And so if you are the Government you do not know what to do? and so you turn to lockdown even though lockdown is a bit like turning off the gas when you actually have a water leak, pointless.
If you take a simple look at the figures, there are 32294 ‘covid’ patients in hospital, that represents 0.048% of the UK population, ot to put it another way 66177000 (99.95%) people in the UK do not currently have serious ‘covid’. So it is not surprising if people do not really get the need to lockdown. The 0.048 % figure represent 1 in 2200, so if in your local area of 2200 people, 1 person has serious covid, you would hardly think it was a serious problem.
But I am afraid the ruling Junta are so spooked about the NHS that things are going to get worse.
Of the 32,994, many are there ‘with’ COVID as opposed to ‘from COVID’. Critical care occupancy in London as at 3 January was around 300 higher than the same time last year – that’s 1 in 30,000 of London’s population.
I agree Steve that this has always been about “saving the NHS” but I wonder whether this also gives this government the excuse to “reform” it at the same time. Governments have known for a long time that the current model is unsustainable and I for one would be glad to see it reformed. Let’s put in more front line workers and get rid of a lot of the management tiers and quangos.
I laugh about the wonderful NHS and protection. I am sorry why is it my job to protect you. Aren’t you meant to be protecting me? We have spent billions of pounds and still you can’t cope. We closed down schools and still you can’t cope. We shut down pubs, gyms and restaurants and still you can’t cope. We are all fucking stuck indoors and still…… I just wonder! Just saying! Perhaps the NHS is not fit for purpose? Gasp!!!
In the NHS we are currently being asked to make plans and a “wish list” in each department for the NHS 2030 vision. It seems that money is being given to us, with very many strings attached, with a view to “transforming things” by 2030. Those of us who’ve been around the block in the NHS have heard these types of initiatives umpteen times over the years, and they never go anywhere. We asked for the usual basics – sufficient staff, clinic space to see patients (which we don’t have at the moment, hence the difficulty seeing people in outpatient clinics even though we want to) etc etc but all they want is for us to “work differently” and use less qualified people to do very specialised work. Trying to provide a safe and effective service is a constant battle against management diktats these days.
Looking at the DM Online article about further restrictions, there are over 10,000 comments and the top rated ones are very sceptical.
It reads like this comments page, perhaps not as well informed.
A post from Spectator Jean • 11 hours ago Dr Roger Hodgkinson has ruined the vaccine party and made most people look stupid. He spoke at a Medical industry conference in Canada today. What he said was unexpected. Here is a summary of what he said: 1. There is nothing anyone can do to stop this virus which is NOT on the same scale as Ebola or SARS. 2. It should be treated as a normal flu. Back to chicken noodle soup, vitamins (especially Vit D) and protect the care homes. 3. Lockdowns and mask wearing and the whole vaccine business should STOP TOMORROW. To continue is crazy, outrageous and cruel. The effect that these stupid measures are causing mass Job loss, depression and mental and physical health problems in all ages. 4. Mask wearing is absolutely no ruddy use. None whatsoever. People are acting like lemmings. 5. It is an airborne virus so 2m social distancing rules are based on medical fraud. 6. Give the elderly in care homes high levels of vitamin D. This has been found to prevent and cure covid in the vast numbers of cases. No need for vaccines! 7. He is in the covid testing industry… Read more »
Dismal headline from the Daily Mail today:
Is lockdown about to get TOUGHER? Matt Hancock refuses to rule out curfews or closing nurseries | Daily Mail Online
I can’t see how this will change health outcomes or even be effectively policed for that matter.
Do they not risk a collapse in public consent now?
I think by all practical measures there has been a collapse in public support. I think this is why they are behaving so desperately.
There is certainly a discrepancy between what the polls say people want and what people are actually doing. I suppose it could also be down to society splitting into two distinct camps, not exactly zealots vs sceptics, but people who just want to get on with their lives but don’t necessarily think too deeply about COVID (the ones we see out and about) vs the terrified.
I predict that the ones who just want to get on with their lives will win it for us in the end. Maybe I’m too optimistic.
People aspire to a national lockdown, ie they want to be seen to do the right thing and ‘save granny’ but they cannot quite face up to the sacrifice required. It makes them normal, not cruel or selfish.
Pretty much. It’s another thing that the so called behavioural experts have failed to take into account. Leaving aside the fact that lockdowns have been a failure in disease control, another reason that they simply cannot work is that the people imposing them have failed to take human nature into account.
They continually blame the ‘rule breakers’, yet almost everybody is a ‘rule breaker’ in one way or another with regards to lockdowns and social distancing, whether willingly or not. It’s because the policy is incompatible with human nature and cannot be sustained over such a long period.
So what do they propose? They propose that the police get up close and personal with people doing things like sitting alone on benches, which is unnecessary close contact and a breach of their own disease control protocol. It just cannot work.
Replying to myself here as I can’t edit my post anymore.
I wanted to add, that what they’ve done is devised a behavioural policy that does not take the nature of the people responsible for following it into account. They may not like the fact that people bend and break their rules, but whether they like it or not, people are always going to and they cannot control that. It’s impossible.
It’s the same with every set of rules, whether in industry or in public life. If you devise a policy which fails to take into account the nature of those expected to follow it, it will either fail or lead to outcomes that you did not plan for. I think that’s what’s happening here. I’ve seen bad managers go down the same road.
Also, non-compliance is being interpreted as an ‘evil’ when really it should be seen as a ‘signal’. When shock ads, makeshift mortuaries and pleas to ‘save granny’ don’t work it’s not because we are a cruel or hard people. It’s because we feel the price we are paying to save our vulnerable and old has a limit, one that was breached months ago. The government risk mass non-compliance and when that line is crossed this whole thing is over. They need to devote all resource to vaccinating those who want it so that the fear is taken out of all this and the testing can stop.
Yeah absolutely. Nobody (well no-one I know anyway) wants to kill a granny.
Those who suggest that anybody does is either using emotive language to try and manipulate (and many are), or they are so out of touch that they think that human beings can be directed to behave as predictably and uniformly as water flowing through a pipe. Well they can’t because as you say, everybody has a limit and everybody has different interests. It’s not evil it’s normal.
Those who genuinely believe that lockdowns can work don’t seem to acknowledge that human beings behave very unpredictably. They see us as drones moving around in a perfectly orderly system. It’s just not like that, they need to accept this or they will continue to fail.
Ah yes, but which granny do we want to kill? So its okay for the granny with cancer, heart disease, lung and liver problems dementia and depression to die? But hey we saved the one with covid. Oh wait, no we didn’t, they all died because we chucked them out of hospital back into care homes!
Indeed, the whole ‘strategy’ is nonsense if the aim is to ‘save lives’.
absolutely: the divide is between the terrified [which could be further subdivided into the terrified of covid/the terrified of the slide into global totalitarianism – in other words, sceptics and zealots, both a minority, are paradoxically on the SAME side] vs the ‘normies’ who really don’t give a shit and don’t think deeply about any of it – these are overwhelmingly the majority – so I guess it’s a battle between the 2 minorities for control of this group
Definitely. It’s a battle for the middle group. The middle group is naturally inclined to want to resume normal life, so we have an advantage in that regard, hence the recent attempts to ramp up the fear and ‘crack down’. They aren’t cracking down and pumping out propaganda to frighten or influence us sceptics, they are well aware that they won’t change our minds.
They are trying to pull the middle group back their way, because that group is getting bored of this.
I think there are actually 3 camps. The genuinely scared shitless who willingly comply. The stupid, uninformed, who want to get on with their lives but reluctantly comply. And us, the free thinking, freedom loving, independent minded, sceptics, who will NEVER comply.
Well it’s true that ‘hardcore’ sceptics like us and frightened lockdown zealots are also two groups, but neither is probably anywhere near a majority.
The ‘compliant middle’ comply up to a point with the ‘easy stuff’ like masks in shops, but how many of them have genuinely had no social contact for months or stick closely to social distancing rules etc? In my experience not that many of them, even though they might occasionally pay lip service to how bad the COVID is and are somewhat wary of it when they remember to be…
Look at the comments there. Further restrictions are not popular.
Yes. I wonder whether this was a sounding out exercise. We are at the limits now.
You couldn’t make it up.
Around 30-40,000 excess lives lost in a year, around 7,000 people under 75, in a country of around 60 million (England and Wales).
A government that has starved the health service of cash over the last 10 years, and now it is too weak to handle demand, so curtails nearly all movement including kids going go school, despite any evidence this has any effect. Peoples lives are wrecked, especially the poorer in society.
A hospitalisation rate lower than in previous years but a critical care occupancy slightly higher (see yesterday’s post) once the huge increase in older people is taken into account.
NHS staff self-isolating and not attending work on the basis of the most dubious tests riddled with false positives.
And, to cap it all, an opposition leader who, instead of blaming the government for needlessly destroying the lives of the people, supports these insane policies and asks for more.
What is wrong with Boris and Keir ?
In a word:
Evil.
The government has NOT starved the NHS of cash. Go read the NHS budgets. They go UP every year.
What has happened is allocation of more and more money to middle management. So it’s a bung for all the “important” managers but sucks resources from other places.
Wish I could double double up tick your comment!
It was explained to me years ago: the money is handed to the NHS administrators, and administrators spend it mostly on administration not front line services.
From the US but highly relevant:
Growth in numbers of administrators and physicians 1970-2009
Growth in salary costs of administration and physicians 1970-2009
The data only goes up to 2009, so it is undoubtedly worse now. We definitely have a US-style health care in these respects.
Absolutely there is a lot of money sloshing round in the NHS. It just doesn’t go where it’s needed or worthwhile, hasn’t for years.
This is not true, we the NHS have set up a group to investigate this claim, it is made up of senior consultants paid a £1000 a day. We also have ten new diversity officers to make sure they all are aware of their pronouns. This group will be supported by 25 senior managers from each area. We are setting up a new computer system run by a senior manager and a new group of programmers to analyse the data. Thus we will show there is no waste in the glorious NHS.
Keir? He is looking a bit wan these days.
It does make you laugh. Lockdown has now been proven to be a complete failure when asked to go up against WINTER; a season where a lot of people like staying indoors anyway.
But what of those clowns, those chin scratchers that feigned a degree of informed knowledge back in December? You know the ones – Matt Hancock keeps their area Tier 2 and they – after careful consideration – think ‘well, I would’ve put us in Tier 3, just to be safe’. The jokers never envisaged a Tier 4 or beyond, just striking a slightly more cautious (and therefore virtuous) position than the government. A government who are also completely winging it. Laughable.
These are the individuals that need to be derided. Absolute whoppers of the silliest kind.
When MH put West Suffolk in T2 it had the third lowest rate in the whole of England.
They have to keep changing the rules every few weeks to keep 1984 Health Act loophole open. The laws are all based on ‘severe and imminent’ issues. Something that happened 9 months cannot be considered imminent. The CFR has dropped from 20% to 2% (give or take) but the ‘cases’are going up / new infectious variants, etc, etc keep it ‘severe’ and ‘imminent’. Hey presto, random changeo, permanent lockdown.
Errr… I thought the meeting was top-secret?
Shhhhh, we will be talking quietly! 007 eat your heart out!
My rights and freedoms are not to be granted or taken away by the government in some bizarre attempt at managing demand in the health service. I have never accepted lockdown and never will. I will never vote for the Conservatives after doing this to me and I will never vote Labour because they wanted to go further. To hell with them all
Opting out isn’t an option.
The trouble is who would you vote for? I am really left with going down the Peter Hitchens route of spoiling the ballot paper and just writing none of the above.
I expect that come the next election many on this site will find themselves in that position.
The words of the old song keep coming up in my head these days;
‘I hear the voices of those that’s gone on before
and i don’t feel at home in this world anymore’
we need another party – reform, brexit, whatever
I don’t care about its manifesto as long as it includes ‘we shouldnt have done lockdown and wont ever do it again’ – preferably for the May elections (if they go ahead)
do you really think we’re ever going to get another election? I don’t. they will realise that they don’t even need to pretend any more that they are the servants of the people , and will quite openly acknowledge their true masters
Yes talk of delaying elections until September is so obvious. The ‘crisis’ will be back by then.
Was looking forward to Nigel saving us, then he suggested putting fucking Tony Blair in charge of the vaccine. WTF?
Useful – Farage showing his true colours.
Its game over for him.
I spoiled my ballot during the last London mayoral elections. If enough of us did it, they will have to do a round 2.
I will never vote Conservative ever again. And if Labour, the Lib Dems and Green think they’re going to get my vote they’re sorely mistaken.
A plague on all their houses.
I’m afraid to say I voted for that shitweasle Khan out if old aligences. Never again if we ever get the chance.
That’s why the elections should go ahead if only to tell that shitweasel that he’s been weighed on the balances and found wanting.
Never again for any of them…I can never forgive this.
I suppose you could go live in the woods- off grid and below the radar. Not everyones cup of tea though.
Unfortunately there does not seem to be a mainstream party that is obviously against lockdowns.
If there are elections in May (and it is a massive if, considering these bastards want to suspend democracy) who can we vote for to protest at how our freedoms have ben stolen? – should we just spoil our ballot papers ?
If May’s elections are postponed, it will give opposition parties longer to get their ducks in a row. That’s good.
However I doubt the idiots in government have thought of this aspect to postponement, they’re too busy patting themselves on the back for saving us all from a deadly pandemic.
Handjob was genuinely shocked that people think of him as the architect of lockdown and misery and not the saviour with the jab.
Local elections are not so ‘mainstream party oriented’. Chance of one or two sensible candidates, surely ?
I think you will never be given a chance to vote again. Democracy is dead.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/10/london-hospital-trust-cancels-urgent-cancer-surgery-covid-barts
Cancer patients now abandoned; desperately ill and despairing sufferers consigned to NHS limbo.
Probably our fault because we had a coffee on a bench…
And I went out twice the other day!
KILLER! 😂
Will I be tarred and feathered? The way things are going now,will my plea of necessity count in my favour?
You will be locked in your room and made to watch Julie Andrews running over an Austrian mountain on a loop. The hills are NOT alive!!
They are alive with the sound of covid!
Think you should be made an example of. Perhaps the stocks, people could arrange their exercise period in turns to ridicule you, as long as they are local and not carrying a cup of coffee.
Perhaps people could hurl their discarded muzzles at offenders rather than dropping them randomly in the street (aka careful disposal of potentially toxic medical waste).
Went to upvote you, and could not bring myself to do so. So horribly true.
So true; and look at the poison denunciations and ad hominem attacks levelled at Professor Sikora recently.
One of our leading, most respected oncologists denounced by the likes of Owen Jones:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-censorious-war-on-lockdown-sceptics
I keep recalling the plight of young father Sherwin Hall, who died aged 27, having fallen victim to the suspension of specialist cancer treatments ‘because of covid’.
He spent months begging for a scan,knowing full well that he was seriously ill, only to have the diagnosis finally confirmed ,after which treatment was cancelled.
all the deaths will be marked as COVID too as they will manage to test them somehow before death. Coughing due to lung cancer is a well known symptom of COVID don’t you know
Can you imagine what sort of utterly sick medic us going up to a dying patient and sticking a swab up his nose and down his throat just to get another number for the covid score. There should be a whole new level of hell for these fuckers!
Wouldn’t it be illegal/unlawful to deny anyone a place at a FE college on the basis of not having had a vaccine? these vaccines are experimental.
Private operations. They can exclude who they like. Just like Twitter.
Not if all of them do it.
Yes if all of them do it. Just like in the USA where all of the private companies are excluding people they don’t like.
Look at what is actually happening.
FE Colleges are publicly funded. And i don’t think it would be lawful for Tesco to operate such a policy.
Yep. Carrying out a function of the state,therefore Human Rights Act etc applies.
isnt it discriminating against people with allergies who cant take it?
Are they private – I thought they received money from the government
FE colleges get funding for 16-18 year olds, some sort of levy payment for apprenticeships and hardly anything at all for adult learners. So yes they are funded by the government not private.
This isn’t something I’ve heard about at work (I work in an FE college) just about the desire to test the students & staff though tiis is only to be strongly encouraged not mandatory.
From ‘Die Losung’ (Brecht)
After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers’ Union
Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could only win it back
By increased work quotas. Would it not in that case be simpler
for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
And saying he incited the crowd. If you actual listen to his speech he did none of that. There was a rally at Capitol Hill afterward. Brandon Straka (Walk Away) was slated to speak at it. That is what Trump was referring to.
Plus bombs were laid at various buildings DURING his speech.
So much disinformation as usual
Well they have not told the truth for four years why start now. Did you hear sleepy Joe slurring his opinion? So this is the best you have?
Yes indeed.