Did the Virus Escape From the Wuhan Institute of Virology?
In one of his last acts as President of the United States, Donald Trump has directed the US Department of State to issue a fact sheet about the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of the pandemic. Suffice to say it’s a marmalade-dropper.
For more than a year, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has systematically prevented a transparent and thorough investigation of the COVID-19 pandemic’s origin, choosing instead to devote enormous resources to deceit and disinformation. Nearly two million people have died. Their families deserve to know the truth. Only through transparency can we learn what caused this pandemic and how to prevent the next one.
The U.S. Government does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus, known as SARS-CoV-2, was transmitted initially to humans. We have not determined whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
The virus could have emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals, spreading in a pattern consistent with a natural epidemic. Alternatively, a laboratory accident could resemble a natural outbreak if the initial exposure included only a few individuals and was compounded by asymptomatic infection. Scientists in China have researched animal-derived coronaviruses under conditions that increased the risk for accidental and potentially unwitting exposure.
The CCP’s deadly obsession with secrecy and control comes at the expense of public health in China and around the world. The previously undisclosed information in this fact sheet, combined with open-source reporting, highlights three elements about COVID-19’s origin that deserve greater scrutiny:
1. Illnesses inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV):
The U.S. Government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV Senior Researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.
Accidental infections in labs have caused several previous virus outbreaks in China and elsewhere, including a 2004 SARS outbreak in Beijing that infected nine people, killing one.
The CCP has prevented independent journalists, investigators, and global health authorities from interviewing researchers at the WIV, including those who were ill in the fall of 2019. Any credible inquiry into the origin of the virus must include interviews with these researchers and a full accounting of their previously unreported illness.
2. Research at the WIV:
Starting in at least 2016, and with no indication of a stop prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, WIV researchers conducted experiments involving RaTG13, the bat coronavirus identified by the WIV in January 2020 as its closest sample to SARS-CoV-2 (96.2% similar). The WIV became a focal point for international coronavirus research after the 2003 SARS outbreak and has since studied animals including mice, bats, and pangolins.
The WIV has a published record of conducting “gain-of-function” research to engineer chimeric viruses. But the WIV has not been transparent or consistent about its record of studying viruses most similar to the COVID-19 virus, including “RaTG13,” which it sampled from a cave in Yunnan Province in 2013 after several miners died of SARS-like illness.
WHO investigators must have access to the records of the WIV’s work on bat and other coronaviruses before the COVID-19 outbreak. As part of a thorough inquiry, they must have a full accounting of why the WIV altered and then removed online records of its work with RaTG13 and other viruses.
3. Secret military activity at the WIV:
Secrecy and non-disclosure are standard practice for Beijing. For many years the United States has publicly raised concerns about China’s past biological weapons work, which Beijing has neither documented nor demonstrably eliminated, despite its clear obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention.
Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.
The United States and other donors who funded or collaborated on civilian research at the WIV have a right and obligation to determine whether any of our research funding was diverted to secret Chinese military projects at the WIV.
Today’s revelations just scratch the surface of what is still hidden about COVID-19’s origin in China. Any credible investigation into the origin of COVID-19 demands complete, transparent access to the research labs in Wuhan, including their facilities, samples, personnel, and records.
As the world continues to battle this pandemic, and as WHO investigators begin their work, after more than a year of delays, the virus’s origin remains uncertain. The United States will continue to do everything it can to support a credible and thorough investigation, including by continuing to demand transparency on the part of Chinese authorities.
Stop Press: A World Health Organisation team is currently in China to investigate the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Matt Ridley co-authored a piece with Alina Chan about this in the Wall Street Journal on Jan 15th pointing out that the investigation is tainted from the outset because the WHO will not be looking into the possibility that the coronavirus originated in a lab.
Stop Press 2: China is currently seeing a new surge in cases and is reported to have built a new hospital in Nangong in Hebei province in just five days.
Stop Press 3: If you want to look more closely into the theory that the pandemic began with a leak from the WIV – still regarded as a “conspiracy theory” by Facebook’s “independent fact checkers” – we recommend this piece by Nicholson Baker in New York magazine.
Lockdown? What Lockdown?
MailOnline reports that Health Secretary Matt Hancock was seen out and about yesterday, seemingly enjoying life:
Matt Hancock was seen “covered in mud” while carrying a rugby ball through a London park this afternoon the day after Boris Johnson pleaded with the nation to “stay at home this weekend”.
The Prime Minister yesterday released a video calling on the public to ‘think twice’ before leaving the house as he moved to cool rising optimism amid a drop in daily infections and the vaccination of more than 3.5 million people.
He urged everyone to behave as if they have coronavirus, warning that asymptomatic “silent spreaders” are unwittingly fuelling the crisis and the next person infected “could be you”.
But his sobering clarion call did little to put off crowds who headed to busy parks – including the Health Secretary who was filmed by a passerby casually walking through Queen’s Park in North London while clutching a rugby ball.
In the clip, Mr Hancock, who is not wearing a mask, smiles as a member of the public who remarks at how “muddy” he is.
The witness told MailOnline: “I was there at about 3.30 this afternoon… Suddenly I saw Matt Hancock, he was there playing rugby with his son I think. He walked right up to me and I saw he was covered head to toe in mud.”
While rugby is a favourite of his boss, the Prime Minister, father-of-three Mr Hancock is instead known for his cricketing prowess and plays for the parliamentary side.
Lockdown rules state that people can leave their homes for exercise by themselves, with the people they live with or with a legally-permitted support bubble. Official guidance does not rule out ball sports.
Ministers are launching an advertising blitz to hammer home the importance of sticking to lockdown rules while the biggest vaccination drive in British history paves a path out of the pandemic.
Worth reading in full.
Are COVID-19 Patients in Hospital Really Getting Younger?
Are Covid patients getting younger? The senior doctor who writes regularly for Lockdown Sceptics has taken a look at the data and thinks not.
Recently there have been a series of claims in the media that patients in hospital with COVID-19 are younger than they were in the spring. These assertions have been vigorously contested or supported by contributors to social media, feeding an unhelpful coarsening of debate and distasteful ad hominem attacks.
In my last post I examined one of these claims made by BBC reporter Hugh Pym after a visit to Croydon Hospital. I was unable to find any significant increase in younger patients, either from the latest NHS Hospital data, the ONS death data or the ICNARC ICU audit data to support his assertion.
Having had time to look into the monthly packet from January 14th in more detail, I now examine three other specific claims. Readers may find this information a bit dense and technical, but it’s important to establish whether claims made in the media, which have a substantial impact on public opinion, are backed up by officially published figures. It is only by careful analysis and honest transparent discussion that we can arrive at the truth. No one is infallible, which is why peer review is important.
The usual caveats apply: We can only assess the information the NHS allows us to see in the form in which they present it (which leaves a lot to be desired) – and we have to assume it is accurate.
- On December 31st, a nurse at King’s College Hospital gave an interview to Adrian Chiles on Radio 5 live in which she said there were many more children affected by COVID-19 in the winter compared to the spring. She said there was a “whole ward” of sick children in her hospital and many of her colleagues in other trusts had the same problem.
- An ICU consultant at Queen Mary University, London has said there are more younger people in ICU with COVID-19 compared to the spring.
- In an interview on Sky TV, a doctor from the Royal Surrey county hospital said that the patients with COVID-19 were sicker and younger in the winter than in the spring.
I have examined the available data to see what quantitative evidence from the official figures there is to support these assertions.
Table 1 shows the total number of COVID-19 diagnoses made on children at Kings College Hospital in two comparable six week periods from the spring and the winter. There is no significant difference between the two periods. Twenty four patients admitted over six weeks with short lengths of stay does not constitute a “ward full” of patients.
Graph 1 shows the number of COVID-19 inpatients at two leading children’s hospitals. Great Ormond St in London and Alder Hey in Liverpool. The graph shows that there are fewer children in both hospitals in the winter than in the spring. The overall numbers are low, fewer than 30 at the spring peak, fewer than 20 in the winter. Great Ormond Street in particular has seen very low numbers of children ill enough with COVID-19 to warrant admission this winter.
So, I don’t think the data published by the NHS supports the assertion that there is an increased proportion of children sick with COVID-19 compared to the spring. This begs the question, why did the nurse make such a statement, and does she have convincing evidence to back it up which contradicts the officially published figures?
I did notice that the teaching unions retweeted the interview immediately after it was broadcast. It was around the time when they were agitating for the Government to close schools. Correlation does not imply causation of course, but it does seem a curious temporal juxtaposition.
ICU COVID-19 Age Profiles
Table 2 shows age stratification data from 14,710 patients admitted to ICU in England between Sept 1st and January 14th published in the most recent ICNARC audit. It shows that 8.2% of admissions to ICU in the period were under 40. That doesn’t seem to be an excessive proportion of younger people.
Unfortunately, the raw data for the period up to August 31st is not available on the ICNARC site. However, the same information was used in a recently published paper in Intensive Care Medicine called “COVID-19 in critical care: epidemiology of the first epidemic wave across England, Wales and Northern Ireland”.
In the paper the age groupings were quoted slightly differently to the raw data from the cohort of patients from September to January, so I have aligned the information enabling a direct comparison between the ages of ICU patients in the spring and the winter in Table 3. The only difference is a skew to the older age group in the winter. The data reported in the literature from ICUs in other European countries are broadly comparable with the UK ICNARC figures.
I have not been able to find detailed information as to the age profile of patients in ICU at Barts and the Royal London to compare with the national figures, so it is entirely possible that their local population differs significantly from the national case mix. On a national level there appears to be no significant difference between the age profiles of ICU patients between spring and winter in the figures I have access to.
Searching the published literature on PubMed I can find a couple of relevant papers. Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore noted in the Lancet in April that clinical obesity was associated with younger patients being admitted to ICU.
Another study looked at increasing proportions of younger American patients testing positive for COVID-19 in the community and concluded this was a consequence of increased testing rather than a change in the demographics of the disease.
I wondered whether there might be a difference between age mixes in London compared to the whole of England. Table 4 suggests not. There is a slight skew towards the middle 18-64 band in London compared with the national figures, but London figures comparing spring to winter show the same percentages within each age band; nothing to indicate a major shift to younger people. Readers should note that the lower total numbers of patients in the spring is probably a testing artefact; much more testing is being done now than earlier in 2020, but the age stratified percentages are remarkably stable.
Table 5 is a comparison of the age stratified COVID-19 diagnoses at the Royal Surrey Hospital between comparable six week periods in the spring and winter. The data is contained in the monthly summary of NHS COVID-19 activity published on January 14th. The figures show a slight increase in the percentage of patients over 85 years in the winter compared to the spring. There is no significant increase in patients in the younger cohort 18-64. Unfortunately, the NHS figures do not allow a more detailed analysis of this wide age band, so it is possible that within the 18-64 cohort, the numbers could be skewed to the younger side. Publication of local audit figures would be informative.
The NHS could also be more helpful in their presentation of the numbers. Simon Stevens reportedly told MP’s last week that under 55 year-olds made up 25% of hospital admissions.
That is consistent with the data presented in the 18-64 age group discussed above. He did not comment on whether the proportion of younger patients had changed since the spring. The NHS clearly has the granular figures on age stratification; it would be useful if they could present the data more precisely so the public had accurate figures to compare against media reporting.
Why does any of this matter? If there are a larger number of younger patients in hospital with COVID-19, does that really make any difference, as long as the mortality rate remains low?
From the broader medical perspective it probably doesn’t matter at all, unless there is a significant change in the way younger people need to be managed to achieve better outcomes. If there is new clinical information relevant to treatment, that needs to be disseminated rapidly in the online medical press. I can’t find any such reports in the medical literature over the last two months in relation to younger age groups being affected more by COVID-19 in the winter compared to the spring.
On the other hand, doctors making claims in the media about COVID-19 which cannot be supported by published evidence does matter. In the current febrile climate, where alarmist reporting generates excessive public anxiety and increased social antagonism, it is important that medical professionals are careful only to report matters in the media that can be substantiated – and the plural of anecdote is not data.
Reporting that COVID-19 patients are younger and sicker than in the spring implies that the ‘new variant’ attacks younger people more readily than the previous manifestation of the virus and this clearly generates alarm in the population at large.
If doctors have evidence that COVID-19 is affecting a disproportionate number of young people, then that evidence should be published in the peer reviewed journals via online portals so the whole profession can have a look at it – not issued as ad hoc sound bites to reporters panting for a sensational story or as Twitter clickbait. If the publicly available information does not support the assertion, the suspicion will be that the thrill of being in the media spotlight has got the better of sound clinical judgement.
Confessions of a Psychologist: “I’m Having to Turn Away Grieving Teenagers”
The Sunday Telegraph has published an article today by psychologist Dr Vanessa Moulton who has seen an explosion in mental health problems among teenagers.
For the first time ever in my 10 years of working as a psychologist, the number of people coming to me for help has surpassed anything I am capable of coping with. I am turning people away every week, something I’ve never done before, because I’m at capacity. I hate doing it, because there are so many who need help, and mental health provision across the NHS and private sector is bursting at the seams, but often all I can do is give them a list of names and wish them well. The worst thing is that so many of them are parents of teenagers who are dangerously unhappy.
Compared to the atrocities people across the country are facing at the moment, not being able to go to school or see your friends might sound like small fry, but it isn’t. I have seen a huge spike in the numbers of teenagers seeking mental health support, and if lockdown goes on much longer, I fear it will only get worse
We talk about loss a lot at the moment – for teenagers, the loss of social interaction is profound, and for many it is having a huge developmental impact. The teens coming through my (virtual) doors these past months have been suffering with loneliness, a sense of crippling helplessness, and a total lack of motivation. All of which adds up to make life feel pretty relentlessly bleak. For many of these young people, what I’m helping them with is a form of grief.
The parents who contact me are so worried, because it can be hard to tell if your 14 year-old is just “being a teenager” or if they are particularly, notably low. They don’t know what to do, and in lockdown there isn’t a lot they can do. They can’t fashion a social life and a sense of structure and purpose where there isn’t one. What worries me is that the teens I see have at least taken that step, or a parent or carer has, of seeking help.
There will be many, many children out there suffering in silence. In many families the adults are having such a difficult time of it that they may not be fully cognisant of how quiet their teenager has become. In many cases a child doesn’t feel able to tell someone they are so low, perhaps because they don’t understand it themselves or feel ashamed. I am currently helping one teenager who had never suffered mental health problems before this past year, but with the loss of his social group, the sense of disempowerment and helplessness, they became so low they started self-harming. It is so devastating to see the effects of this pandemic on young people like them.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Observer reports that a coalition of child experts are pressing for an inquiry into the impact of the COVID-19 response on children’s education, development and mental health.
The World’s Most Powerful Passport
Euronews reports that the World Health Organisation has, for the moment, recommended against vaccine passports.
The World Health Organisation said on Friday it was opposed “for the time being’ to the introduction of certificates of vaccination – so-called “vaccine passports” – against COVID-19 as a condition for allowing international travellers into other countries.
Several countries have already signalled their interest in producing vaccine passports in some form, including Spain, Belgium, Iceland, Estonia, and Denmark.
“There are still too many fundamental unknowns in terms of the effectiveness of vaccines in reducing (virus) transmission and vaccines are still only available in limited quantities,” the committee said in its recommendations…
Nonetheless, the WHO may in time need to change its advice in order to keep up with the politics, according to the Euronews report. Last Thursday, Poland announced that it was going to introduce passports:
The country’s Deputy Health Minister Anna Golawska said Poles would be able able to access certification in the form of a downloadable QR code after they received the second dose of a coronavirus vaccine. The code would then allow the recipient to “use the rights to which vaccinated people are entitled”.
Worth reading in full.
We reported on January 13th that companies MVine and iProov have designed a digital passport app set to undergo a Government-funded trial. Across the pond meanwhile, CTVNews reports that a number of tech giants are joining together to create something called the Vaccine Credential Initiative.
With coronavirus vaccines now rolling out across the United States, businesses and schools are considering how, and what it will take, to safely resume in-person operations.
Some of the country’s biggest tech firms and health care organizations have joined together to help facilitate that return to “normal”. The group, called the Vaccine Credential Initiative, wants to ensure that everyone has access to a secure, digital record of their COVID-19 vaccination – like a digital vaccine passport – that can be stored in people’s smartphones. The records could be used for everything from airline travel to entering concert venues.
The coalition comprises a broad range of health care and tech leaders including Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle, Cerner, Cigna’s Evernorth, health care software firm Epic and the Mayo Clinic, among others…
The Vaccine Credential Initiative wants to create an open-source, standard model for how hospitals, pharmacies and clinics administering COVID-19 vaccines make digital records of immunizations, which can be provided to patients who want them.
Immunizations are typically tracked by writing them down on a paper card for people to store with their important records, and are also kept track of in a patient’s electronic medical records.
But for a number of reasons, the COVID-19 vaccination required developing a different system. For one thing, coronavirus vaccination records will need to be more easily transported if people have to use them to access schools, offices and event venues, making a digital record more practical. They also need to be “interoperable”, meaning all organizations administering the shots should use the same model for recording vaccine credentials.
“It’s not just for health care purposes that you will need this health data,” Paul Meyer, CEO of non-profit The Commons Project, told CNN Business. The Commons Project created an app called Common Pass, where people can store digital records of their COVID-19 test results and, eventually, their COVID-19 vaccination record.
“Now you are going to need either your lab results or vaccination data to get on an airplane, to go to school, go to work, real life, non-health-care use cases,” Meyer said. “And it needs to be in a standard form so when you’re presenting it, people actually understand, ‘Oh, it was the Pfizer vaccine that you got.'”
The COVID-19 vaccination record also needs to be verifiable and secure in a way that was less important for past vaccination records, otherwise, a person could try to fake having gotten the COVID-19 vaccine by using someone else’s record, Meyer said.
Worth reading in full.
Large tech companies storing the private medical data of many thousands of people. What could possibly go wrong? Read more about the Vaccination Credential Initiative on their website here.
Stop Press: Reuters reports that the European Commission is working on a certificate dubbed “Vaxproof”. It looks like they will have until 2022 to get it done, judging from this tweet by journalist Bruno Maçães.
Scottish Churches Fight to Re-Open
A group of church leaders in Scotland, from a range of denominations, have submitted a pre-action letter to the Scottish Government, calling on it to reverse the rules which require their closure. A press release from Christian advocacy group Christian Concern has the details:
Restrictions outlined by First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, on Friday January 8th, without debate, have made it a criminal offence for churches to hold services in-person and, for example, to conduct baptisms in the highest tiers.
The closure of churches in Scotland is unprecedented, with no attempt to close them since the Stuart kings made it a capital offence to meet for worship and listen to preaching other than that of the established church in the 17th century.
The pre-action letter states that the church leaders wish to emphasise that they “fully understand the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic and they appreciate that the Scottish Government is required to make difficult decisions as it seeks to take steps to decrease the spread of the virus“.
However, the leaders say that they believe the Scottish Ministers’ have “failed to appreciate that the closure of places of worship is a disproportionate step, and one which has serious implications for freedom of religion“.
The letter contends that the regulations that came into force on January 8th 2021 are in violation of Article 9, read with Article 11, of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The letter identifies that with suitable restrictions in place, public transport, essential shops, professional sport, and the court system continue to function. Yet, places of worship are closed.
It states that this closure is: “arbitrary, inconsistent and disproportionate when looked at in light of the Convention. The closure of places of worship and the criminalisation of collective manifestation of religion which takes place under carefully and responsibly controlled conditions goes too far.“
Outlining the position of the church leaders on how the separation of church and state is a fundamental feature of the constitution of Scotland, the letter argues that the current restrictions on church activity violates the Act of 1592.
This Act, which gave authority to the church over all matters ecclesiastical, also gave the elders of each church a specific legal responsibility to ensure that regular worship continued.
The press release goes on to describe the dangerous precedent set by the state closing churches.
The Scottish pre-action letter comes as leaders in England and Wales continue to pursue a judicial review over their respective Government’s decision to close churches during the November 2020 Lockdown.
An oral permission hearing is set for Monday January 25th at the Cardiff Civil Justice Centre, which will decide whether the case will go to full judicial review.
During a parliamentary debate ahead of the November 2020 lockdown in England, former Prime Minister Theresa May said of the English Government’s decision to close places of worship:
“My concern is the Government today making it illegal to conduct an act of public worship for the best of intentions, sets a precedent that could be misused for a Government in the future with the worst of intentions. It has unintended consequences.”
When asked in November 2020 how the English Government had justified closing places of worship, chief scientific advisors, Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, said: “We haven’t got good evidence”, “this is not a very exact science at all” and “we don’t have good data to answer that with any degree of certainty”.
Similarly, the Scottish Government has failed to present any scientific evidence to justify church closures.
Worth reading in full.
The Church leaders’ pre-action letter can be read in full here (pdf).
Stop Press: Mayor Sadiq Kahn has called for places of worship in London to be closed, a call which religious leaders have rejected.
Stop Press 2: Christian Concern responded to the Government’s recent call for evidence about the Human Rights impact of lockdown with a submission highlighting the cost to religious freedom.
Back to Normal
Back to Normal, is a public-facing, grass roots group, campaigning to end the lockdown and they are looking for volunteers. It’s spokesman, Geoff Cox, has written the guest post below.
Back to Normal is a growing band of lockdown sceptics from all walks of life who are determined to counter the tidal wave of hysterical pronouncements from the Government and the media. Through small groups of sceptics across the UK, we are delivering our message outside the control of the Government or Twitter or the BBC.
Although we have a website and a presence on social media, we have a deliberately low tech operation and have produced a simple, well worded postcard-sized leaflet, to be hand-delivered by volunteers. Our aim is to distribute one million to houses all over the country. We are on our way and at the last count had reached 235,000.
Currently we also have 100 small, loosely affiliated groups operating at constituency level. We’ve chosen to work in constituencies, mainly because they are well defined and a manageable size, but also because they are the heart of the political process. In time, our volunteers may choose to take a more active role politically – a letter writing campaign to the local press or perhaps supporting one of the new political parties who are making sceptic noises; even possibly standing for election as independents.
Doing something is better than doing nothing: it raises our morale and annoys the Government. Please become a postman and deliver some postcards and let’s get Back to Normal.
You can follow us on Facebook here, on MeWe here, or get in touch by email.
Readers Respond to Ipso’s Ruling Against Toby
As we reported yesterday, Ipso, the independent press regulator, upheld a complaint against the Telegraph for publishing a “misleading” opinion piece by Toby. Ipso objected to his claim that the population of London was approaching herd immunity in July, in spite of the fact that seroprevalence surveys indicated only 17% of Londoners had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, and dismissed the idea that T Cells could provide comparable immunity to antibodies. It also dismissed as “inaccurate” his claim that exposure to those coronavirus that cause some varieties of the common cold will provide some people with immunity to COVID-19.
Toby thinks Ipso has got this one wrong and yesterday we invited readers, particularly those with a scientific background, to send in their comments.
Dr Rachel Nicholl, a Researcher in the Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine at Umea University, Sweden, who recently had a rapid response published in the BMJ in which she hypothesised “that exposure to some of the common cold viruses can induce immunity to other coronaviruses”, sent this response.
Herd immunity is a concept. It has never been proven to exist and there has been no outbreak where scientists definitively concluded that herd immunity was reached. In fact, the sheer logic of it suggests that it is a moveable feast and if we did achieve it one day, we would have likely lost it the next.
Some scientists equate herd immunity with whether R0 (the ‘R number’) is below 1 – see this article in Nature. I believe R0 was <1 over the summer.
My article in the BMJ highlighted the fact that we have some pre-existing immunity (coronaviruses make up around 1/3 of all common cold viruses) and the problems with relying merely on IgG antibodies.
So yes, you got some things wrong in your article, notably your prediction that there wouldn’t be a second wave, but arguably the lockdown and intensive sanitisation contributed to the second wave. Immune systems need to be challenged to be healthy. We need to circulate among people, picking up the odd virus here and there, and collecting bacteria from unsanitised surfaces. This is healthy. Also ‘stay home’ meant we were not going out and topping up our vitamin D from the sun. So our immune systems faced the autumn in a poorer state than usual. I’m not suggesting the second wave would not have occurred without lockdown (there is too much else wrong with our immune systems!) but it might not have been so severe.
Here’s what another senior scientist wrote:
Viruses are killed by T cells. That is what T cells are for. What the hell do they think T cells are for? Antibodies are just markers.
There has been an erroneous assumption that 100% of the population were susceptible to Covid at the beginning of the pandemic. We know this is not true, in part because during outbreaks in spring, when thorough testing was carried out, 50% of people demonstrated immunity by testing positive in the absence of symptoms.
The 17% figure for London discounts all prior immunity. Adding in the 50% figure above gets you to 67% = herd immunity.
Antibodies and T cell responses are wonderfully flexible. They both notice shapes rather than specific amino acids or letters of genetic sequence. When you are matching shapes you get plenty of overlap. Also, our responses to one virus are hugely diverse. We make antibodies to every corner and crevice of the shapes. These shapes will overlap with things we have seen before. They need not only overlap with other coronaviruses. In fact there is excellent evidence that prior immunity came largely from our immune responses to mumps.
Viv Evans, a retired zoologist with a Phd in Cell Biology, sent the following comment:
I’m sure other scientists contributing regularly to Lockdown Sceptics will have pointed out that ‘science’ and scientific research results are not carved in stone, that they change with research and are not meant to be adhered to, like immutable laws, in perpetuity.
It is impossible to predict research results from ongoing, properly scientific studies and it often turns out that an opinion by a lay person is in fact supported by later research.
If an opinion piece can be criticised retroactively, the author admonished, the publication made to retract during an ongoing scientific debate, then that ‘judgement’ can equally be questioned, a retraction of it can equally be demanded based on more recent scientific developments. [Dr Evans then included a link to the rapid response in the BMJ written by Dr Nicholl.]
A reader sent in this:
Surely the constant claim from SAGE and Government that having had Covid does not confer immunity is grossly misleading. IPSO says nothing.
As is the claim that people can have Covid many times – without qualifying it by saying if this has happened at all it has been very rare.
A GP in Hereford sent these encouraging words:
Knowing how hard it is to stand up against the orthodoxy I just wanted to encourage Toby not to stop his excellent and brave work on behalf of all free people. I really admire what he is doing.
And regular Lockdown Sceptics contributor Neville Hodgkinson, a former medical and science correspondent of the Daily Mail and Sunday Times, and the author of AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science (Fourth Estate, 1996), sent in this comment:
With regard to the Ipso ruling: leaving aside uncertainties around the science, I’d like to comment on the huge public importance of Lockdown Sceptics in countering the fear about COVID that has been induced by Government policies, a majority of politicians on both left and right, and much of the mainstream media.
It seems to me that “attack dogs” of fear have been let loose in the belief that this is the best way to counter the epidemic. In particular, I have been dismayed at seeing the BBC abandoning its much prized impartiality to become an unquestioning mouthpiece for official policy. The contrast with talkRADIO’s performance is immense.
Of course, people need to know that a nasty and potentially lethal infection is circulating. But exaggerated forecasts, misleading description of PCR test results as “cases”, panic over “new variants”, global death statistics, mask-wearing, social distancing, job losses, relatives dying alone, businesses failing, operations postponed, and almost daily changes of the rules on travel and even going for a walk, all carry a price in terms of increased susceptibility to infectious disease.
Decades of work by Professor Sheldon Cohen’s team at Carnegie Mellon University in the USA has highlighted the effect of social support systems in strengthening immunity to disease, and of stress in reducing it (as a Lockdown Sceptics contributor has previously reported). The team has performed laboratory as well as field work to gain detailed understanding of pathways that link stress, personality, and social networks, to disease susceptibility. Many of these insights arose from Sheldon’s classic work on the role of psychosocial factors in susceptibility to the common cold, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association.
It would be hugely helpful to us all, including the hard-pressed NHS, if government advisors would reconsider current strategy completely. We need measures to enable us to feel more in charge of our own destinies, instead of being herded around – and in some cases frightened to death – like timid sheep.
Stop Press: Mike Robinson and Patrick Henningsen at UK Column devoted some time to defending Toby yesterday. The relevant bit starts at the six minute mark.
Round-up
- “Doctors told to throw away leftover Covid vaccines rather than giving second doses” – The Telegraph reports that medics have been warned they cannot use any leftover doses on staff or patients to give a second dose to those who’ve received the first dose
- “Britain could have more COVID-19 variants as population has greater immunity, Sage scientist suggests” – The Telegraph reports that Sage scientists think Britain could be experiencing more variants because so many people are immune to the pre-existing variants
- “Britain will be able to vaccinate nation against new Covid strains within months after new super-factory opens” – Britain will be able to vaccinate the entire nation against dangerous new Covid strains within four months, reports the Telegraph
- “Is the one shot jab a game changer?” – Ross Clark reports on the promise of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine for the Spectator
- “Suspension of councillor over Facebook posts condemned” – The North Wales Chronicle reports on the case of councillor Gruffydd Williams, Plaid Cymru, who was suspended following the allegation that he shared “false information” related to COVID-19 on Facebook. Cllr William maintains that all he did was to encourage constituents to undertake their own research
- “Young lives have shrunk to the size of a screen” – Writing in the Times, Joanna Williams says that we’ve no idea what damage is being caused by children spending all day online
- “Why the overzealous policing of lockdown is a threat to us all” – Rachel Cunliffe points out in the New Statesman that allowing the police to interpret COVID-19 laws as they please has set a dangerous human rights precedent
- “Lockdown and the unbelievable negligence of Johnson & Co” – David Seedhouse, in the Conservative Woman, calls out the Government’s failure to conduct a proper cost benefit analysis of its many lockdowns
- In science the science is never settled – An old BBC podcast with Clive James about climate science which is very topical
- Lockdown, crackdown and Chinatown: the week in review – In the latest edition of the Bournbrook podcast, Michael Curzon, S.D. Wickett and Luke Perry discuss the latest, disproportionate lockdown restrictions, the censoring of conservative voices by big tech, and human rights abuses by China
- “Rise of the coronavirus cranks” – A critique of lockdown scepticism by Christopher Snowdon in Quillette. Toby is going to write a reply for the same publication
- “We need more scepticism, not less” – A defence of scepticism in general and lockdown scepticism in particular by Candice Holdsworth in Spiked
- “Indonesia vaccine rollout bucks trend by targeting younger generations” – SkyNews reports on the rollout of the vaccine in Indonesia. Rather than vaccinate the elderly and vulnerable, they are targeting the 18-59 age group, thinking this will both cut transmission and enable workers to return to work
- “Review of the emerging evidence demonstrating the efficacy of ivermectin in the prophylaxis and treatment of COVID-19” – Abstract of Dr Pierre Kory’s paper on ivermectin, published in Frontiers in Pharmacology
- “Norway raises concern over vaccine jabs for the elderly” – “Norway has registered a total of 29 deaths among people over the age of 75 who’ve had their first COVID-19 vaccination shot,” reports Bloomberg
- “COVID Hypocrisy: Policymakers breaking their own rules” – An interactive map on Heritage.org detailing the ongoing hypocrisy of U.S. local, state and federal officials who have fallen foul of their own Covid rules
- “Covid and the illusion of control” – A great piece by Phil Kerpen in the American Spectator taking on the idea that humans can control a virus
- “Pandemic Security Theatre” – James Bovard on public health theatrics for the AIER blog
- “Why our liberal elite cheered for this violent mob” – Peter Hitchens’s column in the Mail on Sunday is about how delighted liberals were when protestors in Ukraine in 2014 stormed the seat of Government and the hypocrisy that they’ve now recognised such acts are wrong
- “We are all opening up” – A delightful video from Italy of a crowd cheering a restaurant owner who is opening up. Plenty more on twitter at #IoApro
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Five today: “Schweizerpsalm” by Alberich Zwyssig performed by the National Anthem of Switzerland, “Wake Up and Live” by Bob Marley, “Get Up, Stand Up” by Bob Marley, “Help!” by The Beatles and “Standin’ in the Rain” by the Electric Light Orchestra.
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 bring you Green Unpleasant Land, a recently published work by the Professor of Post Colonial Literature at the University of Leicester who worked on the National Trust report addressing the historic links of its properties with colonialism and slavery, and who is presently in charge of the Colonial Countryside Project at the National Trust. The Daily Mail has the story:
Last week Corinne Fowler, Professor of Post-Colonial Literature at the University of Leicester, published a sprawling 316-page work examining the links between the British countryside, racism, slavery and our colonial past.
Among her startling conclusions? Our cherished national pastime, gardening, has its roots in racial injustice.
Should we be surprised? Perhaps not. The book’s title, Green Unpleasant Land, gives us an indication of Professor Fowler’s thoughts on the countryside…
Professor Fowler insists that our “green and pleasant land”, as the poet William Blake put it, is anything but. Our countryside, she suggests, is a hotbed of oppression, racism and exploitation, and it is time for its dark history to be exposed.
Intriguingly, Fowler acknowledges that her own family had long-standing connections to slavery and colonialism, through sugar plantations in the Caribbean. As she says in the book on this issue: “I make no claim to neutrality… Our relatives either profited from empire, or were impoverished by it.”
The professor also writes that her parents gave her a love of country walking.
She appears to have rambled tirelessly along country lanes finding evidence to prove her central premise: that the British countryside is linked inexorably to racism and colonialism.
“The countryside is a terrain of inequalities,” she writes, “so it should not surprise us that it should be seen as a place of particular hostility to those who are seen as not to belong, principally black and Asian Britons.”
Many great estates were financed by slavery and colonialism, and the origins of gardening were fundamentally elitist: “Knowledge about gardens and plants, in particular botany, has had deep colonial resonances,” she says.
“The scientific categorisation of plants has at times engaged in the same hierarchies of race that justified empire and slave and slavery…”
“Inevitably, then,” she adds, “gardens are matters of class and privilege.”
Racism is ingrained not just in gardening, she believes, but in many of our rural traditions. She cites as an example our nation’s approach to that symbol of rural Britain, the pheasant.
She says that the bird’s heritage has effectively been hijacked by the indigenous white population. We are all in denial, apparently, about its Asian origins.
“This bird,” she writes, “is habitually represented as native to England’s fields, hedgerows and woodlands…” But, she stresses, it “is a global not a local bird”. A clear case of cultural appropriation.
Morris dancing is another source of controversy. “The face-blackening practised by the dancers has become a potent symbol of rural racism.” And, to be fair, many Morris dancing groups have now abandoned the practice.
She is unimpressed by former Tory Prime Minister John Major’s evocative prediction in 1993 that “50 years from now, Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and, as George Orwell said, old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist.” “Rural Britain,” she counters dismissively “…is rarely peaceful. The elderliness of the maids is incongruous with the many itinerant female East Europeans who, before Brexit, picked the fruit and vegetables that grace our tables.”
And there is more, much more, in the same vein running through her book.
As she says, she makes no claim to neutrality.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Spectator US has initiated a new column called Wokeyleaks. It’s anonymous author (pronouns they/them) starts off with a piece on the blurring of the boundaries between social media and social justice.
Stop Press 2: In an article for the Telegraph, Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick has said that he is changing the law in order to “protect Britain’s statues from the woke militants who want to censor our past”.
“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 new piece of research has come up with an old answer: masks could lead to more Covid spread. Medical Xpress reports:
A novel new study suggests that the behaviour public officials are now mandating or recommending unequivocally to slow the spread of surging COVID-19 – wearing a face covering – should come with a caveat. If not accompanied by proper public education, the practice could lead to more infections.
The finding is part of an unique study, just published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, that was conducted by a team of health economists and public health faculty at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine in partnership with public health officials for the state of Vermont.
The study combines survey data gathered from adults living in north-western Vermont with test results that showed whether a subset of them had contracted COVID-19, a dual research approach that few COVID studies have employed. By correlating the two data sets, researchers were able to determine what behaviours and circumstances increased respondents’ risk of becoming sick.
The key risk factor driving transmission of the disease, the study found, was the number of daily contacts participants had with other adults and seniors.
That had relevance for two other findings.
Those who wore masks had more of these daily contacts compared with those who didn’t, and a higher proportion contracted the virus as a result.
Basic human psychology could be at work, said Eline van den Broek-Altenburg, an Assistant Professor and Vice Chair for Population Health Science in the Department of Radiology at the Larner College of Medicine and the study’s principal investigator.
“When you wear a mask, you may have a deceptive sense of being protected and have more interactions with other people,” she said.
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.
Stop Press: Prof Martin Kulldorff has reminded people on Twitter that the lockdown strategy is a form of focused protection – “of affluent professionals, while letting it rip among the working class, hitting inner cities the hardest”.
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…
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
30,000 Italian Restaurants Defy Lockdown Rules / Hugo talks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YZGXNwri0o
Doctor – When Will The Virus End?
https://rumble.com/vcttcv-doctor-when-will-the-virus-end.html
tonyheller
After 304 days of the 15 day lockdown, Democrats no longer want to destroy the economy
304 days ? My main regional hospital has had 195 Covid deaths in that time, 6 in the past 7 days including one sadlidied on Friday.
Woohoi, scary.
Was that deaths from or with Covid?
Local Live online only ever says ‘Covid19 deaths’.
And of course that is a lie, as we all know.
Could the change of mind by the Democrats be due to Biden’s (Joe Brezhnev) election? – If you are in charge of the government then you are now responsible for the economy and the voters will blame you for the results
Yes, that’s it, Democrat governors were getting madder and madder in the hope of being noticed but now that Whitmer’s got the nod (Dem. vice chair) there’s no longer any point.
That’s because there is nothing left.
Pretzel Logic
https://rumble.com/vcv75n-pretzel-logic.html
tonyheller
The virus story becomes more ridiculous and Orwellian every day.
Fascinating. As he says, to believe both of the following
A. Flu has disappeared because everyone is wearing masks
B. Covid is still rife because the public are not wearing masks enough.
Is indeed nothing less than Orwellian Doublethink.
By way of contrast I saw elsewhere
yesterday that Cambodia has had a handful of Covid cases, no deaths but is having a normal flu season.
A Sudden Change Of Heart
https://rumble.com/vcwjvj-a-sudden-change-of-heart.html
tonyheller
Rumble — The press and Democrats have suddenly decided that lockdowns are bad, now that they believe they have installed their Manchurian candidate in the Oval Office, and no longer want to wreck the economy.
Labour operating in exactly the same way.
I thought their leader, one Keir Starmer, was demanding more, faster, harder lockdown (cf neocons after Bsuh started his ‘War Of Terror’).
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. If they open too quickly, how will they convince people to take the jab?
They may find, and we may too, that many of the people who believe in being locked up, will not believe that it is safe to come out. I hope I am wrong, seems like the Italians have rediscovered hospitality.
WMA Declaration of Geneva
The “Modern Hippocratic Oath”
Adopted by the 2nd General Assembly of the World Medical Association, Geneva, Switzerland, September 1948 and amended by the 68th WMA General Assembly, Chicago, United States, October 2017
The Physician’s Pledge
I WILL RESPECT the autonomy and dignity of my patient;
I WILL PRACTISE my profession with conscience and dignity and in accordance with good medical practice;
I WILL NOT USE my medical knowledge to violate human rights and civil liberties, even under threat;
I MAKE THESE PROMISES solemnly, freely, and upon my honour.
Seems the medical profession has abandoned the Hippocratic oath!
Quote:
” Many people think that doctors still swear the Hippocratic Oath. It is not compulsory but in fact many medical schools now hold a ceremony where graduating doctors do swear an updated version. The British Medical Association (BMA) drafted a new Hippocratic Oath for consideration by the World Medical Association in 1997 but it was not accepted and there is still no one single modern accepted version.”
https://patient.info/doctor/ideals-and-the-hippocratic-oath
My bold.
Presumably, Josef Mengele ALSO swore the Hippocratic Oath, and look what a great humanitarian he turned out to be.
Hypocritic oath would be more appropriate
I did not read Your comment before I made mine to the same end. But it has to be obvious by now that this is so. Maybe the Cuban doctors are the only ones that abide by Hippocrates’ rules.
It doesn’t matte what oath they have sworn or not sworn, doctors are still up to their armpits in the corona swamp.
The Hippocratic oath has long been replaced by the Hypocratic oath.
Unfortunately the medical profession has en masse violated the Hippocratic oath.
I can imagine that many people will never trust a medical practitioner again. Ever.
And what about the SAGE behavioural psychologists arguably breaching their Code of Ethic by promoting fear as a tool to gain compliance.
Dear, highly respectable lady, pray tell us all about life in the Red Zone.
All ours are grey.
Yes, do throw a light on the subject.
Some feedback to the BBC on a ‘more or less’ episode recently: I listened to the podcast of ‘More or Less’ for 14 January and have a number of concerns, which I would be pleased if you could consider: i) You compare the first wave of COVID to the second wave in terms of deaths, and quote headline figures of peak announced COVID deaths of 1,325 on 29 December and peak by date of death 795 on 6 January. However, these figures should be ‘sense-checked’ by comparison to total deaths. If you look at total deaths by week (source: ONS), the average week in April over the 5 years 2015-19 showed 10,344 deaths in England and Wales, or when adjusted for 2020 population and age around 11,100.The worst two weeks of April 2020 showed 22,351 and 21,997 respectively, an ‘excess’ death rate of around 11,000. The corresponding figures for December are 10,998 average weekly deaths for 2015-2019 (excluding Christmas week as the figures lose two days of reporting that week), 11,878 adjusted for age. The worst week of 2020/21 in December/ January showed 13,011 deaths compared to an average for that week of 11,548 (unadjusted) or 12,472 adjusted, an excess of 539. (Christmas… Read more »
Dear Sane Person
We are unable to consider your comments, as BBC rules forbid any interaction or communication with sane persons on any subject whatsoever.
Yours faithlessly
BBC
I was very disappointed by the insipid nature of this latest More or Less programme, more a programme of accepting the official stats rather than challenging them. As you discuss above the statistic that I cannot get my head around is the deaths within 28 days of a +ve covid test figure, although it seems to be this figure that is driving the panic and hysteria. A figure that we, of course, did not have back in April.
Looking at the current NHS/Gov dashboard
I just do not understand how the powers that be can just carry on with 2 such apparently different death totals, unless I have misunderstood something (quite possible) then we are using the very inflated 28 day death figure to drive public health policy decisions?
Both figures are massively overstated. You need to look at excess deaths which is around 500-750 per week.
Which is easily explainable as deaths caused by lockdowns. Admittedly more analysis required of split between underlying causes. Some would argue that even if respiratory illnesses are higher than normal, the fact that most people are choosing to wear a dirty piece of rag across their airways, means that more respiratory illnesses and ultimately deaths are inevitable.
i just listened on my morning walk. i had two main concerns.
They talked about cases and whilst they did mention that this was where a test had shown a positive, they gave no context about numbers of tests and the fundamental issue of whether any of these people who had a positive test was actually ill, was asymptomatic or was a false positive, and so consequentially it was meaningless.
Same issue with deaths. Again they said that it was a death within 28 days of a positive test but again did not quantify this with whether the person was actually ill with covid, or was asymptomatic or not . So again meaningless
they don’t quantify the death figure- when they show the figure on screen (BBC) it is labelled “death for any reason with a covid test within 28 days”.
Meaninglessness has become the basis and framework for almost all human endeavour – as in the attempt to escape an unreal problem causing very real problems that in turn are misinterpreted to cascade as a new world illusion that will run a while as the destruction of the old and the basis for redistribution of priority and therefore wealth and power. Almost all of of ‘lockdownsceptics’ joins the mainstream in the chewing over of meaninglessness as if telling it it is not true will be heard and change the mindset in invested self-illusions. We can only accept truth in our own hearts – but will always find some relational exchange and synchronicity in such restored alignment because we are relational being. Fact 1 – the method and means of the asserted discovery of Sars-Cov-2 are highly questionable and relate more to computer modelling of preselective bias than any empirically isolated and identified entity or object. Fact 2 – no study has investigated this reconstituted ‘Platonic’ ideal of a virus as a cause of any disease. Fact 3 – no one actually has any samples of actual Sars-Cov-2 for the purpose of such research. Fact 4 – the PCR testing parameters… Read more »
I dearly hope there are few sceptics that still have a TV licence. No one should complain about the [B]olsheviks [B]roadcasting [C]ommunism while continuing to fund their psychological warfare.
Great analysis. I’ve felt similarly annoyed and vexed this evening after reading this piece in the telegraph. Almost a third of recovered Covid patients return to hospital in five months and one in eight die (telegraph.co.uk) From the article: Research by Leicester University and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found there is a devastating long-term toll on survivors of severe coronavirus, with many people developing heart problems, diabetes and chronic liver and kidney conditions. Out of 47,780 people who were discharged from hospital in the first wave, 29.4 per cent were readmitted to hospital within 140 days, and 12.3 per cent of the total died. The current cut-off point for recording Covid deaths is 28 days after a positive test, so it may mean thousands more people should be included in the coronavirus death statistics. ——— Not wishing to play the man instead of the ball, let me do a little of both. Study author Kamlesh Khunti, professor of primary care diabetes and vascular medicine at Leicester University is said on google to be not only working in research and advisory – but he’s a Director of the Centre for Black Minority Ethnic Health as well as a Director for UK National… Read more »
Please everyone on Twitter look at the disgraceful and unlawful tweet of Simon Hoare MP and the comments below it. At least majority are condemning it. But his comment is a hate crime against people who cannot wear masks. It is also inaccurate. To back himself up suggests the exception card is made by amazon when it is the image from the government’s own web site. The most alarming comment I saw was one that claims non masked people are being called “rat lickers” – a term used for “people who licked rats during the plague in order to spread it” (as if!) We must all lodge formal complaints and ensure Simon Hoare is made to resign. It is EXACTLY the same as him writing inflammatory comments to incite violence against someone who is gay. Do you need “proof” you are gay? Do you need a doctor to “declare” you are gay? Please everyone, let’s mount a campaign to have this man removed from public office. Mask bullying and hate crime is getting out of control.
You go down the Twittersewer, you encounter Twitter rats.I don’t know how you can bear it!
It’s awful but I have to keep up with what is going on out there as I am documenting this whole catastrophe. There is a sinister pattern growing. I have a strong sense that the lockdown pushing and mask bullying memes are originating from a source determined to destroy the country. They are being picked up and spread by virtue signallers and the brainwashed, including MPs who are desperate for popularity. Normal human beings without a specific aggressive agenda do not think up such vicious and damaging concepts on their own without a push. It’s good to see that the majority of comments are taking him down, and I think/hope the truth about masks will spread faster than any virus or viral memes.
You’re right. I salute all the brave, decent folk who fight back. I closed my Twitter account because the stuff coming from anglophobe Welsh lockdown fanatics made me feel physically sick.
thank you . the masks are the one thing i hate the most.i never ever have worn one outside and rarely go anywhere that says have to wear mask.adn do my best to get away wihtnot wearing one there too. it is sinister what has been going on you a re right, and welocme back form 2 week break!
Always have positive body language and go about your business with head held high…
Stay strong, Sam. I assure you there are some really great minds doing everything they can to bring a stop to this horrible policy… be brave and never let the mask bullies upset you.
The rat in Twitterati.
I have a strong sense that the lockdown pushing and mask bullying memes are originating from a source determined to destroy the country. Almost. The truth however is much worse. Anybody who has paid attention to global affairs and the hands that stir them up for the last twenty years alone, knows that this is the final battle to return to the ‘master and slave’ world of old. In way too many ways truly ‘biblical’ – as those ‘masters’ hide behind the “in god we trust” mantra and are therefor nothing but a Kast of Pied Pipers, easily subdueing the broader mass of populations the globe over. The most disturbing fact in all this is the hypnosis like belief that “they wouldn’t do that to us” – while it is done to them 24/7. Obedience has its roots in religion and therefor, where there is religion, there is the greatest obedience to the god-like corporatists’ political rulers. In comparison, indigenous populations the world over had only allegiance towards Nature – the same entity that was and still is to be defeated, subdued and exploited at will by religious man. That the hyper rich billionaires who are the string pullers of… Read more »
Yes, we may be living in the Book of Revelation.
Totally agree about the hypnotized as well. Very frustrating to deal with.
Close to my sentiments.
Common Purpose??
It’s possible that some of those people are being paid to do it.
Rat lickers is an invented phrase, medieval people did not know plague came flea infested rats.
Anyone wanting to spread it would have licked his dog.
The Black Death had nothing to do with rats. It was not the bubonic plague.
My point still stands
Eh, I thought it was? Serious question.
Somebody made this point last summer, and I was surprised too, so I looked into it.
There is a very convincing theory that the Black Death was an Ebola-like haemorrhagic fever. But also some evidence that yersinia pestis DNA has been found in victims. So as far as I can tell, it’s not settled.
OK, interesting thanks. I hadn’t heard of that – always ready for reinterpretations of history based on weight of evidence.
There can be no “weight of evidence” from the mid fourteenth century.
DNA analysis is evidence.
I know it is. But you will need to be a little more specific. What DNA evidence?
Here:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2011/10/12/scientists-sequence-the-full-black-death-genome-and-find-the-mother-of-all-plagues/
in teeth apparently
By the way, I am not arguing. There are many persuasive arguments in the BMJ article. But then there is the DNA evidence.
I find it all fascinating.
also, the English sweating sickness….what the heck was that? Some theories are a hantavirus, but who can say?
One thing is for sure, coronaviruses are no Black Death.
Interesting read! Thank you for sharing
There can still be evidence, and you go with where it points you. If there’s no weight of evidence how can we say it’s bubonic plague?
First time I’ve heard this hypothesis – I’m not saying I’m going with it just that I’ll keep a look out for it and weigh the evidence as it appears to me. It’s all we can do, and we are Sceptics after all …
FFS it haappened in the mid fourteenth century. This is fake news!
Another theory suggests that the plague was caused by
space debris. Why not? We live in space.
No. It was not bubonic plague. This is clear if one compares the contemporary accounts with what is known about bubonic plague. The assertion that it was bubonic plague was invented at the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth century and has been repeated as fact for a hundred years. Here is a brief explanation: https://pmj.bmj.com/content/81/955/315
Yes it was.
Ok thanks, just read the abstract and will look at more fully later. I’ve long wondered why so many people survived the ‘Black Death’ – say 60-70% in England. This suggests some prior immunity. I don’t know if this is more common with viral rather than bacterial diseases.
IT WAS. Serious answer.
I have read some very interesting stuff that challenges the bubonic plague idea. Time Team (I think) did a fair and reasonable programme on it that comes up quite frequently on Freeview,
Yes, and Tony Robinson of Time Team and Blackadder fame also believes that Edward IV was illegitimate.
In many respects, all monarchs were illegitimate.
Don’t talk crap. Yes it was!
I suggest you might like to exercise some scepticism and read the reference I provided a link to, or for a more detailed account see Susan Scott and Christopher Duncan (2004) Return of the Black Death, which provides a comprehensive refutation of the claim that the Black Death was bubonic plague.
Indeed. No-one can possibly know for certain at this historical remove. The exact nature of so-called Spanish ‘Flu, a mere 100 years ago, is still the subject of debate.
The Black Death could not have been bubonic plague. The evidence is overwhelming.
You’ve obviously made a considerable emotional investment in your hypothesis. I’m put in mind of what Thackeray said about Macaulay.
A lot of the plague and Spanish flu narratives which appeared on Facebook at the start of the scamdemic were fake and were shown to be but still got shared as if they were true – what this shows is that this was very carefully planned with all the disinformation and propaganda in place ready to circulate to the masses to mind-fuck us – and it’s worked so well that a lot of otherwise smart people are unpersuadable that the government is not acting in our best interests- even the current level of censorship of news of dissent in other countries doesn’t bother them .. it feels too late to help the unpersuadable
The best example has to be WikiFake. The efforts of the hyper rich psychopaths is to cut the strings to the past. Wasn’t it Marcus Garvey who said that “A people without knowledge of their past – is like a tree without roots.”?
What is going on is a depopulation program and it has been planned to the minute details. That Nature always has the last word – because homo sapiens is anything but the master of the universe – should go without further discussion.
How long until people will be able to follow H.G. Robinson’s final walk into a euthanasia center to be converted into Soylent Green?
I would rather have a 4 legged rat than the 2 legged one like him and the rest of the collaborators and sheep.
Plus, the four legged rat is smarter and does not denounce you like the two legged cretinous version. Actually, to call these decrepit people a rat, is an insult to all rats – not only because I am a metal rat…
Its a slippery slope when you start playing that game.
Can you explain? Do you disagree that mask bullying can be construed as hate crime against a person with a protected characteristic? Even if the bullying is aimed at a person not wearing a mask on some other grounds, it implicitly impacts people who do not wear masks on grounds of a disability that is a protected characteristic.
I disagree with any concept of hate speech or crime, some ones motive is irrelevant, if they’ve committed a real crime. Hate speech is another man’s free speech!
Unless some one incites violence against mask refuseniks, then they have a right to say whatever they like regardless of how intolerable we find it. That’s the cost of free speech!
I disagree with any concept, of “protected characteristics ” its not democracy if some people have greater rights than others.
So no one should be mask exempt?
No one should be forced to wear a mask, but even if my opinion were the opposite, i should have the right to express my opinion.
Of course. We should all have the right to free speech. I know this government doesnt think so but then they are globalist puppets who do not respect our Human or Civil Rights and for some peculiar reason think we are their serfs!
Well explained. Thank you!
We may have found the first thing we agree on.
I am also very wary of the ‘hate speech’ laws. Nevertheless, in this case CivNotCov has my full support, and I think we should all be supporting those who are fighting on Twitter — this must be extremely exhausting, but it is vital.
Since Hate Speech laws exist, then let’s use them. Also in this case, simple laws against incitement to violence may be sufficient anyway.
Crucially, the virtue signallers must be told loud and clear that they are the ones who are hateful. I reckon deep down they know they are.
So, great work, CivNotCov.
I think you may have imbibed the ‘hate crime’ rhetoric and normalised it uncritically, CNC. It is the language of the activist SJW infesting our institutions.
So no one should be mask exempt?
I’m not happy with the way the Equalities Act has been used and fear that it is going to be used to shut down discussion on a wide variety of cultural issues . That being said, I think it should be weaponised to the advantage of anti-maskers.
Voicing your objection to an act of Parliament is totally acceptable. Holding a political view is acceptable. But, at this moment in time, the LAW does state that it is a crime to discriminate against anyone upon certain grounds. Or to incite people to do so. This MP’s language is clearly abusive and incites hatred towards groups of people (for example those suffering anxiety, claustrophobia, PTSD) on the grounds of their particular condition or situation. I think he should resign for this.
You may hate the law, that doesn’t mean hate should be against the law.
If you brake the law you’re classed a criminal, fair enough. You’re trying to conflate illegal with non crime hate speech.
Its a faux pas.
i think everyone should be mask exempt . i despise the masks and masks rule more than anyhting else. and enforced vaccine no way will i get a vaccine and the vaccine passport we must stop it
If you read the guidelines, everyone IS mask exempt. They just need to choose to be.
I’m not shutting you both down, here, btw. I’m listening. I want to learn. But do you then disagree with the Equalities Act? Are you arguing that people exempt themselves purely on basic human rights grounds (“you cannot make me do something that causes me harm”)?
I abhor bullying & harassment, i judge people by their character & actions. But you can’t prevent discrimination & prejudice with legislation, these are part of primitive human nature. To our ancestors it was the difference between life & death.
Controversially there are evolutionary & ecological explanations for inequality, i’m not saying we should remain cave men, technology has helped overcome physical constraints of the sexes.
But equality is a myth, people aren’t equally empathetic, equally greedy, equally driven to succeed, equally charitable etc. Whilst as a society we should support & protect the weakest, Socialism is only sustainable with authoritarianism! Authoritarianism always slides into totalitarian tyyranny. Dictatorship by the privileged minority at the expense of the repressed majority.
“But you can’t prevent discrimination & prejudice with legislation”
You can’t prevent murder, robbery, etc with legislation. That is not the purpose of the legislation. It is to provide some degree of remedy for the injustice done by the defendent.
The government’s intransigence is causing many of us harm.
Mask wearing can be exempted if you feel ‘severe distress’. Anyone knowing the science must feel distressed and you decide, not a doctor or expert. And the government website says you don’t need a card or disclaimer. Anyone asks you and tell them they are committing the crime of harassment if they do it a second time. If they persist, video them.
Appropriate (sounding) surname though, yes?
Hoare by name.
Whore by nature.
Is he descended from the Hoare bankers ?
I’ve just fired off an email letting him know what I think of him.
Where do you think it would be most effective to direct our complaints?
Twitter?
The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards?
https://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/standards-and-financial-interests/parliamentary-commissioner-for-standards/complaints-and-investigations/
The Conservative Party?
The police?
(or all of them?)
i cant understand twitter. tried to find the comments that are condemming it but couldn’t . is ok is time waster – twitter
I sent him the Dr Ted Noel video exhaling billowing vape through a mask
Thin ice Boris? Saturday afternoon Otley town. We had a tremendous snowfall on Thursday and freezing temperatures on Friday which turned the snow to thick ice. I didn’t get my usual daily walk until Saturday and the pathways were still ‘dodgy’ with melting ice and slush. I was amazed at the number of people who were out and about in and around town. Hundreds of them. Singles, couples, families, dogs. Some had walking poles, many had big boots and thick jackets and scarves. It’s a long time since I’ve seen as many folk buzzing around. Has the lock down been lifted? Did I miss something? Here’s my observations from a one hour walk. *Busy traffic. *Lots of laughing and chit chat. * No Covid dancing. *only saw FOUR masked people which as a percentage doesn’t register. *Greggs doing a good trade with three unmasked people in when I passed. *Corner chippy open and two unmasked folk inside getting their chips. *In keeping with my experience of the last year, NO policemen in sight. I read all sorts of horror stories about aggressive police brutality but in my town they’ve all gone AWOL. * Called in at my favourite bakers (Teales)… Read more »
Wonderful report though the people out and about would be self selecting Covid doubters while lockdown zealots will be hiding behind the curtains, except for one M Hancock.
True of course but Harry does seem to have encountered a fair number of them which is a very pleasing sign.
Good, let them hide if it makes them happy.
Of course the Covid thickos are still shielding, but that’s not the point. It is great that so many people are ignoring the endless nonsense that pours out of Johnson and his corrupt government.
Three cheers for Otley!
Sturgeonia would benefit from an Otley lesson!
Yes I dont see much sign of that in shropshire….still mainly masked zombies outside there. I went in a bakers which allows two in but the masked young woman waiting outside would not come into the shop as I was unmasked. Still swervers outside too.
When I was one and twenty I heard a wise man say …
I wish such an outbreak of common sense would happen in Newmarket also, still far too many zombie maskers and swervers here.
What a wonderful complement your post was to my morning coffee. Glad to see that there are pockets of resistance springing up everywhere!
Great report. Shows that the cracks are getting wider and the more this spreads, the more the government’s days are numbered.
Excellent news. This gives me hope people are waking up.
You have brightened my day. Thank you.
I would so love this to be true but have started doubting all posts that when I like them jump by 9 points – I’ve noticed this happens a lot on this site and I’ve taken to only trusting the comments that jump by 1 – the problem is what is there to doubt in your post except that you seem to be advocating something which will probably be banned soon – talking to people on the street 🤦♀️
I don’t really understand your reply Jos.
Edward Curtin has recently written a piece for ‘Off Guardian’ which he prefaced with the words:
‘We now live in a screen world where written words and logic are beside the point. Facts don’t matter. Personal physical experience doesn’t matter. Clear thinking doesn’t matter. Hysterical reactions are what matter. Manipulated emotions are what matter’.
From my point of view my post was based on my ‘Personal physical experience’ which to me is what counts. Make of it what you will.
I don’t have any objections to your post – I just don’t get why the system of upticks on this site are heavily weighted in favour of certain posts (x10 in some cases) – just check if you don’t believe me and if anyone else has noticed this and has an explanation for it I’d love to know.
jos- they jump because when you place your vote or up/down tick it refreshes the page resulting in the new total of all ticks since you last refreshed. Nothing sinister or any manipulation.
But it refreshes every time I press any of them and some are just 1 – why wouldn’t it refresh each time?
I think that an individual’s display of the like/unlike scores is only updated when he/she goes to register a vote. Pretty sure it is simply a postponed update.
I think that the post counter needs more RAM.
Sadly the High Peak escaped both Otley’s snow and its outbreak of sanity…
Swerving and cringing away can still be encountered here as we found yesterday.
The snow can melt away within hours or days but some of these people will stay terrified forever.
AG
He is conferring with Merkel on a daily basis. The more it becomes clear that lockdowns only work to worsen the overall situation – the more drastic, draconian and prolongued the lockdowns will be. It is fascism by any other name.
Which town M8? I was watching long-tailed tits myself in a tree with a treecreeper on the trunk. Ilkley.
Sorry M8,missed the Otley at the beginning – both on the River Wharfe. Meinen Gottellgriever.
Hi Bungle…We’ve now got Otters in the Wharfe just outside of town. Passed by a decent crowd a week or so ago all staring and oohing and aahhing and they were otter watching. Never seen them myself but with my daily walks it’s only a matter of time, We’ve also got salmon and sea trout running the river even to the extent where we have two specially constructed fish passes where they can negotiate the weir.
Even in Lock down hell there’s always something to brighten the spirits 🙂
Pretty similar story further down the Wharfe here in Wetherby, must be something in the water. Everyone is walking around with takeaway coffee, drinking it by the river, in the town square etc. It’s the only entertainment to be honest but people are giving it a go.
Great oop north. Lewes is like the Marie Celeste. They’re all hiding below decks reading their Guardians. Or Observers.
WTG Otley!!
The people of Otley do seem to like getting out and about. I remember when the Tour de France started in Yorkshire a few years ago and the crowds in the town were absolutely heaving when the cyclists came – I doubt many (apart from my dad who dragged us along to the event!) were particular cycling fans!
I was one of them and I’m not a cycling fan!
Boris should go for a skate on the Thames.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/mind/confessions-psychologist-having-turn-away-grieving-teenagers/
Despite being retired, this is what I’ve found to be one of the most distressing consequences of the madness foisted on us by affluent, securely placed movers and shakers: the sheer wanton devastation wreaked on the lives of the young, who bear one of the heaviest burdens.
Many youngsters were already facing significant challenges before lockdowns materialised: mickey mouse degree courses, lack of decent secure employment opportunities, student loans, social media distortions and propaganda, porn creep resulting in normalisation of violent and coercive sexual demands, lack of apprenticeships lack of affordable housing.
I get really upset about this, as I watch future generations’ hopes and prospects sacrificed on the altar of the Safety Cult.
When I was young, somewhere back in the Neolithic, young people were expected to be headstrong, rebellious and insubordinate. I was considered weird at university because I preferred peaceful study to going on demos.
Times have changed.
I disagree I actually think the opposite is true, since the 50s young people have lost respect for the experience of its older generation.
Part of the problem is because youth has been over indulged with privilege & wealth & perhaps to much freedom to dismiss or over rule traditional cultural values.
Not sure I agree actually. I don’t think young people have lost any respect for the older generation. What I think they are fighting against is what I call the demonisation of youth and young people. Headlines in the MSM have referred to them as ‘scum’, ‘yobs’ and other such attributions. The education system has you labelled very early on. If a Teacher doesn’t like you, that’s it. You will never, whatever you do that is good or any achievements gained, you will never escape the label education has given you (Jimmy Boyle has written quite lucidly about this). There are many parents out there that are actually quite contemptuous of their children, many children are subjected to what I would call emotional abuse in that everything they do is wrong. Just look around you every day I see parent’s really shouting at their children in the street (even when they aren’t doing anything at all), in supermarkets and out and about. It’s not just once a day or once a week, it is a bigger problem than you think if you look around you. I think our young people are actually more moral and more sensible than some of… Read more »
You’re comparing the last 70 years with historical cultures, its like comparing apples & oranges.
You sound perhaps a little bias but I suspect there is something in what you say about the present.
My point being as you’ve highlighted there’s a growing division between generations there’s prejudices on both sides. Pre 1900s the younger generation accepted they had to earn respect of their elders & willingly gave respect to the experience of their elders, age was actually a hierarchy & youth had to go through a right of passage.
It’s a different world today young peoples expectations are higher in many respects things are to easily obtained with little effort. That’s not to say life is better now, modern living comes with a lot of stress & anxiety. Historically people didn’t have the luxury of worrying about their identity.
Online abuse of the young is becoming even more prevalent and not coincidental in what is going on imo
I see a lot of scepticism in the young, and they will challenge the globalist reset bollox in innovative and outside the box ideas.. remember the 60’s?
They UK young didn’t have tv in the 60s. No squealy infanticising series like “Friends”. They hung about outside and talked to each other.
That isn’t a new thing. I grew up with all sorts of emotional abuse and I’m over 50, and my husband was neglected and beaten frequently
I had it easy, the previous generation of teenagers had done my revolting for me and I was able to wallow in the privilege of youth with ease.
Eric Hobsbawm wrote (“Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century”) that the generation gap between the children of the 1960s and their parents had little if any historical parallel, or words to that effect. In his view, obvs.
Mental health experts in general have really shocked me in their silence on this issue. To a certain extent, it should be no surprise that loons like Ferguson push their agenda of total lockdown and dreams of 0% infections, because that is their myopic obsession.
But why have psychiatrists and others in that field said nothing about their speciality, and deferred to the “science” instead of fighting their corner? Today I see that a TV shrink who has been doing just that, alone, has now been fired for daring to speak up. Where are the rest? Shameful.
Quite agree; a virtual omerta now seems to protect covid/ lockdown orthodoxy.
Modern omerta = PC
Yes; it’s significant that as the Woke-left- complex insists on the demolition of all hitherto commonly accepted social, biological, national and rational norms, they simultaneously erect increasingly draconian, bewildering and frankly sinister linguistic barriers.
So, open borders, biological fact little more than an oppressive social construct, demolition of neighbourhoods, livelihoods and street architecture all sanctioned if done in the name of whichever cause happens to be at SJW poll position, accompanied by impromptu cancellation of standard vernacular usage and persecution of dissenting voices by means of cancellation, pile ons and no platforming.
Now the shrill demands for the indefinite continuation of stringent and crushing lockdown measures, bullying of lockdown protesters and the implicit and complicit support of the MSM, means that we are being manipulated by a thoroughly dystopian orthodoxy; a greedy cult .
The pro active destruction elements all stem from the Frankfurt School which thinking has been in place since the 1930s.
Founded in Frankfurt but fled to the USA because Hitler wasn’t too keen.
I’ve read a few articles about them recently; it’s ironic that they fled Hitler’s persecution only to propound a form of creative destruction which has now found a way to flourish.
Are they satanists? It’s strange that the company Rishi Sunak owns is called Theleme
Sounds like the Satanic occult philosophy Thelema
I read recently that the founder of Websters Dictionary warned of the danger that the US constitution would not be destroyed by violence (openly) but rather dismantled linguistically, gradually.
Certainly redefinitions of terms are playing a crucial role everywhere now (racism, pandemic, herd immunity, and many more)
You’re right but why? I can’t understand what would motivate a billionaire to destroy all joy in the world for more money – they don’t need more as they could barely spend in one lifetime what they already have.. something that lockdown has taught me is that apart from paying bills all I need is food and freedom. I don’t care if I never shop for anything ever again, even if I never get to travel abroad again.. I just want to be able to go out and see a world in which freedom has replaced fear and people smiling, laughing, hugging each other – not much to ask, is it?
Because it’s not about money, it’s about resources. Money will soon be extinct. A new value system is on its way (once they’ve successfully wrecked the current one).
Apparently it is.
The SJW-Woke have rewritten Mao’s Little Red Book.
I think its because almost all the mental health and counselling ‘industry’ has been taken over by the woke PC brigade who have all revelled in lockdown for various reasons. I am afraid ideology trumps any alleged concern for the victims. My partner is a counsellor with 30 years experience but operates independently of the ‘industry’ for that reason. She thinks they are all shockingly compromised.
Just look at what has happened at the Tavistock. Tells you all you need to know.
What about the Tavistock?
I think that is the point. They are silent because they are afraid of being fired. The (self-)censorship is the problem.
Personally, I reckon we (Western Europe now) are possibly in a worse state than, say, Czechoslovakia in 1980s. Very few people were actually in prison (Havel and a handful of others, sporadically). It was quite sufficient that people were afraid of losing their jobs/privileges. The advantage of 1980s CzS was that hardly anyone actually believed the state propaganda. Whereas now…
I’m afraid it is & always has been a class war, lockdowns are for the protection of entitled liberal middle class, whilst invariably the essential workers keeping the country from sinking take all the risks, these will be the people hardest by lockdown consequences .
Its the same with the scandalous housing crisis in the UK privileged liberal middle class with 2nd & 3rd homes lobby government to protect the property marketing leaving the majority working class living in unaffordable concrete rabbit hutches (If they’re lucky).
The story is the same in every part of modern life, entitled middle class driving the political narrative to protect their privileges. Identity politics & deviant social conduct are both a distraction from real life issues & a covert attack on traditional conservative values notably Christian values & nuclear family.
I’m neither religious, conservative or have children but still respect & value our countries cultural traditions.
Exactly; I’m the same: childless, atheist but increasingly concerned at the way our traditions, and wisdom, restraint, decency and rationality have been abandoned.
You allude to so much of the sickness of today’s UK, and wider Western society. And this has been a quarter of a century or more in the brewing. The middle class and liberal elites have got wealthier and wealthier (and stupider and stupider), whilst vast swathes of society have been left behind. I posted yesterday about how every so often societies have to re-invent themselves, cast off the old putrid worn-out practices, and move on. But such transitions are almost never painless – witness civil wars or, on a smaller scale, the UK in the late 70s/early 80s. Maybe we’re going through such a transition now and things will come out better in the end, and this is a sort of crucifixion and rebirth – like the American Civil War or the English Civil Wars. Or maybe as a society we’re going under – although if it is I’m not going down with it. I’m what you might call middle class (only have one home though), and am a natural and instinctive conservative – but what I’ve seen over the last years of the ‘entitled liberal middle class’ enriching themselves at the expense of the working classes (for want… Read more »
Don’t take me wrong, Colonialist Christian Conservatives have historical wrongs to answer for, some issues raised by today’s post modernist liberal left are valid lessons we should learn from! I disagree with their methods addressing them.
Obviously not all middle class liberals are nihilistic hypocrites! I consider myself a classic liberal, liberty at the core of my principles.
But when having a debate you unfortunately are required to use blanket terms to describe where things are going wrong, in general terms it is the inequity of wealth & privileged influence (who you know, not what you know) of the middle class, that drives the political narrative.
Where did the chorus of outrage come when G. Brown tried to abolish the 50p income tax rate ( to the detriment of the lowest paid) ?
Middle England.
I think I may have been a Whig in a bygone life and have always believed that Liberty is the breathe of life.
I’m politically homeless now – well not exactly: I now believe in the destruction of the Conservative Party. Britain needs an actual conservative party, and the only way to achieve that is to get rid of the current imposters. I say that as a former Conservative voter.
Our society has been going very wrong for a long time now, and the required re-balance – necessitating as it does the confrontation with and dismantling of embedded self-interest – isn’t going to be painless.
A sort of Great Reset, but not how the current perpetrators envisage it.
I’m with you on this, I have no real political allegiance to any party. The Tories are all just neo-liberal globalists, labour neo-liberal left globalists, the Lib Dems, illiberal anti-democrats, SNP, pure evil etc etc.
We’re headed for a reimagined capitalist communist tyranny a.k.a. China.
We aren’t going to let that happen. Don’t give up the fight.
🌟🌟🌟
Had to ask Mrs TJN what that meant, but it seems good … Ta.
It looks soviet related LOL
I heard rumours of a battle behind the scenes of a “war for the soul of the Great Reset”. That there were two groups battling it out for the same sort of reset, but one would be libertarian, the other would be dictatorial.
If true, I really hope the right one wins.
Not me. I hope that they both fall on their faces. I don’t to be reset by anyone, no matter what their politics.
Propose a new Great Reset. Good idea. The complete opposite of Schwab’s.
Well said. It’s the cosy middle classes who are benefiting from all of this – pampered and cosseted all while being served by an army of low paid workers who are keeping the engines stoked.
They think they’re saving lives and doing good but in reality perpetuating this evil and actually are the government’s most vocal enforcers.
They’re OK for now but they shouldn’t get too complacent as the day of reckoning will also come for them.
I suggest they read up on what happened to their counterparts in France after WW2 and Germany after reunification. Not to mention a basics economics textbook.
Hint: it won’t end well for them.
I know a road which is a kind of mini Hampstead stuffed with the woke liberal middle classes. They have posters in their windows saying things like ‘staying home for Britain’ and ‘you should be at home not reading this poster’. Since when has being a lazy bastard sat on your arse been something to get all smug and self satisfied about? Of course they are quite happy for the lower orders to work in food processing and delivery to keep them going. I wonder how long they would support lockdown if it actually applied to everyone including their food suppliers.
It’s the smugness and entitlement which I cannot abide.
It’s that sense of entitlement that gives them the erroneous belief they hold the moral high ground are always right, It’s what facilitates things like pandemic lockdowns.
Their entitled attitude is why stuff like trump & brexit happen. Who would vote for a narcasist like trump who really only puts trump first or brexiters who really are only interested in enriching themselves, otherwise.
I’ve encountered neighbourhoods like that during my daily exercise. The “Staying Home for Britain” poster wants to make me puke.
As Mr Bart has suggested, perhaps those who are so keen on lockdowns would be happy to be either taxed twice or 100% to support those who have been impacted financially, medically and psychologically by what they call for.
After all we’re all in this together right?
Over 18
s to be vaccinated by end of June says the Gatesowned Sunday Telegraph today. They really really really want us all to take this vaccine!Well, I won’t be taking it.
Neither are 40% of LA Fire fighters apparently.
They of all people will know about risk assessment.
Hi there! Are you actually a teacher? Could you give us some info about what has been happening?
If we can extrapolate from what is happening in Norway, the recipients (at least those in the most vulnerable category) of the vaccine have a one in a thousand chance of dying. One would have thought this would have given the authorities pause for thought and suggested to them that it might be better to observe standard practices for the testing of vaccines and health products so as to ensure safety.
You are not allowed to extrapolate – only SAGE can do it for their modelling. Exterminate!
They must be an unhealthy lot those Norwegians, none of our 2 million vaccinees have died yet, apparently.
Well our lot would say that, wouldn’t they?
Yes. There is no way I am taking it
Totally anecdotal.
Close friend of friend, late sixties, healthy.
Had the vaccine. Five days later, he died.
Just a unfortunate coincidence, we know they’ll be told.
It’s just three weeks to flatten the curve….
“Now you are going to need either your lab results or vaccination data to get on an airplane, to go to school, go to work, real life, non-health-care use cases,” Meyer said. “And it needs to be in a standard form so when you’re presenting it, people actually understand, ‘Oh, it was the Pfizer vaccine that you got.’”
Not saying this guy will have his way but how the fuck did we get here?
By being weak as shit.
Socialism, it’ll end up as pesudo-communism, like China’s capitalist corporate mafia regime.
Chinese Mafia.
The vaccine passport movement is going to tie itself into knots. Are all vaccines equal. What are the powers that be going to do with people using the Russian/Indian/GodKnowsWhat vaccine if it’s not registered in your country?
Are they going to say: so sorry, only Pfizer, Morderna, Astra vaccines allowed? Are people with a history of severe allergic reactions to vaccines going to be banned from travel? Third world countries flight bans as they can’t afford to vaccinate their populations?
These vaccine passport pushers have their work cut out for them.
Any vaccinne will be accepted. Those with severe allergies won’t be exempt. As we have seen they couldn’t care less about exemptions for masks on planes. I think the third world will be able to vaccinate as the banks will lend them the money. Those that can’t get vaxxed tough luck. These creeps aren’t doing this for humanitarian reasons.
“These creeps aren’t doing this for humanitarian reasons.”
Indeed, it’s just the opposite.
I think part of the plan is to get The West to pay for vaccinating the Third World which will be a massive transfer of wealth not to them but to Bill and Melinda.
That’s only part of the plan. Gates was brought as a eugenicist and is a self confessed depopulator. This is his once in a lifetime engineered opportunity.
Engineer Bill.
They don’t need the money.
By ignoring the clear indications that this was the destination all along.
Question: What are the Vaccine makers stating about the length of time their products give protection against symptoms? Is it 5 months or 8 months? I want to know how often they recommend boosters. It’s being pushed as a silver bullet /one off jab.
Nothing. Because they can’t possibly know.
One angle I never see discussed, is the potential for the vaccine to be less than effective at stopping transmission. The astra jab is only 60% effective, apparently. So will those who have had the astra jab be second class citizens in the new vaccination order, with their jab not being acceptable?
Where is the data for 60%? Everything I have read says vaccines have not yet been shown to stop transmission.
Exactly. How on earth are they actualy measuring this?
This has been discussed at length and there is no evidence as yet that they will have any effect on transmission or that they will save lives, though there are strong indications that the vaccines will actually cost lives, or to be rather more blunt they will kill people. Take no notice of the claimed effectiveness, that is simply statistical sleight of hand.
Give them a few more years.
Yeah so what’s the point. There is a lot of information out there advising this is a human experiment and they don’t know what the long term side affects are.
The point is lots of money for Big Pharma. Plus the mRNA delivery mechanism is a dry run for its use on all medicine. These medicines can then be described as ‘personalised’ and hence untestable. That will allow them to skip the expensive Phase II and III testing. Even without formal legal immunity, there will be no possibility of class actions against them, only individual actions, which can easily be ignored (effectively).
Don’t they just? All that vaccine passport talk is definitely worrying. It’s a case of “Over my dead body” would I ever take that vaccine – and I mean that quite literally (just checked my supplies this morning – to ensure I’m clear where I have two portable barbecues to use indoors if need be and got a decent carbon monoxide detector for checking purposes of ppm level).
You’re planning to roast yourself on a barbecue? Why? And at that point, why care about carbon monoxide?
Posting again, for those who have not seen it yet. Petition against ‘vaccine’ discrimination.
https://stopmedicaldiscrimination.org/home
Eliza,
Please don’t do that. I will be resisting until the last moment too, but even if the ‘Vaccine’ is eventually forced on us, we can still keep fighting to get rid of it.
I think there will be enough resistance to make it impossible to enforce it. But it is going to be a struggle.
If the vaccine is forced unto us, there will be no point fighting to get rid of it. The deed will have been done.
Yes that is the way it will be. Most people seem blissfully unaware that the Covid event, as a whole and the vaccines in particular, is about genocide.
Nope. Why should I for something with a 99.98% survival rate?
Exactly. I wonder why they are so desperate for everyone to have it???
hmmmm i wonder that too – they seem to have lost the plot and sense of perspective on all this. By all means vaxx the elderly/vulnerable and allow the rest to carry on. But i fear more sinister undertones.
Because the vaccines are very likely intentionally harmful. The Covid event has been engineered to bring about a massive reduction of global population and this will be achieved through vaccination.
Money; the huge, never-ending profits from vaccinations. Risk-free for all involved except those vaccinated.
It’s much worse than that. It’s about depopulation through vaccination.
They can get f_____ !
My thoughts exactly
Excellent. The more people that take this vaccine, the less likely it is that they will attempt to force me to have it.
The vaccinated will begin to die off as the months go by, so it would become clear that the unvaccinated have not been affected similarly affected. On this basis you can be very sure, that they will do everything that is possible to jab everyone of us with their poison. Accordingly I would not exclude the bastards making vaccination compulsory.
Tell the Telegraph to buzz off.
The US State Department factsheet would be more accurately labelled as a speculation sheet. The production of this making stuff up and pretending it is serious factual material of substantial foreign and domestic policy importance as the current president is about to leave office is not unprecedented. In fact, it is precisely what the previous president did in order to cause his successor serious problems, hamper his foreign policy, and undermine his legitimacy. That was of course the infamous 6 January 2017 intelligence report that pretended that Russia had stolen the election. It was amateurish and absurd, but nonetheless effective for that. https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf The State Department factsheet looks like nothing so much as a copy of the Obama administration’s closing play, which was so effective. Whilst I doubt the State Department factsheet will have anything like the same damaging impact, it cannot but harm relations with China, which is in no one’s interests.
Not made up this is the CCP Virus and the US authorities have obtained lot’s of information from China to strongly suggest what happened. Biden will take the China coin as he always had whatever.
There is an easy explanation for the rather bland speculation sheet.US is part of the problem.Everything points to a lab leak from an incompetent lab doing US sponsored research outsourced from the US military backed corona virus research. Most of the US scientists involved in the UN investigation are themselves involved in this highly unethical work on coronaviruses.They have investigated bat corona viruses more akin to a person looking at a gas leak with a lightened match.
China and US are both responsible for this.MSM will do everything to stop this but an avalanche of infornation is finally slipping trough.
Exactly. Uncle Sam subsidises the Wuhan lab (and who knows what else?) I remain to be convinced that the U.S. Deep State isn’t in some way complicit in this business.
Both the Russians and Chinese suspected that might be a possibility. They have discounted it in this case, but have embarked on a programme of building large isolation hospitals ‘just in case’.
Here is a map of countries hosting one or more DTRA labs.
http://www.jar2.com/Files/Ukraine/1-3_small.jpg
There are now 11 individual labs in Ukraine alone.
http://www.jar2.com/Files/Ukraine/Biological_Warfare/1-19-768×513.png
It is suprisingly common for new outbreaks of disease to occur in close proximity to the labs, especially in Africa.
The US has been collecting ‘Chinese’ and ‘Russian’ DNA for some time now. Is the mass testing for covid cover for another DNA grab?
Outbreaks of respiratory infections seem fairly common in the Fort Detrick area.
News items in the Stourbridge news: Local police chief who looked all of 35 warned people if they attended an anti lockdown protest in Birmingham that, they “could be arrested” and on another page: “Can you sack an anti vaxer”.
Land of hope and glory, eh?
Unless there has been a big change with the latest Coronavirus regs, these regs give little by way of powers or arrest. With many of the previous demos people have been temporarily arrested to enable their details to be taken they are then un-arrested and released. If you are issued with a Fixed Penalty Notice, you can send it back and demand a court case at which point it mostly disappears into the CPS black hole.
The Police are acting as if these Coronavirus regs give them sweeping powers when they do not really do this, I suspect that one reason we are seeing so many of these Fixed Penalty Notices not coming to court if they are rejected is that if they came to court and then failed to make a prosecution the Police could be warned to back off, as it is they can scare people with FPNs like a Mafia protection racket.
nothing to do with the police accidentally deleting all those records the other day then
Yes; such IT incompetence couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch!
It is most certainly a lie. It is impossible that such records are not routinely backed up. There should be a criminal investigation done by the … sorry forget it.
Meh, I got arrested on 28th November, plod has done nothing since. Bring it on.
Good for you, I have been arrested 4 or 5 times over the years, it is no great deal especially when innocent on all occasions.
Co-operate with the duty sergeant but nobody else until you see the duty Solicitor.
Did he say they would be arrested if they attended a BLM protest by any chance?
Claims relating to ill effects of the virus on children appear to have originated, in the main, from members of public sector trade unions.
Until health and education are removed from the stifling effects of public sector bureaucracy, incompetent public sector management, ownership, this country will continue, ever more impoverished, sclerotic, unfree, paranoid and illiberal, on down this erratic and embarrassing path; a socialist democratic state pontificating mawkish special pleading polemics through the state broadcaster to an increasingly uninterested world.
Most modern British state institutions are now unfit for purpose. Add that to the increasingly woke corporations and it all amounts to a wonderful country to live in!
Blackpool Gazette: Blackpool business group’s delight over Supreme Court insurance win.
https://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/business/blackpool-business-groups-delight-over-supreme-court-insurance-win-3102371
The Spectator: Francois Balloux: ‘Proper investigation’ into Covid’s origins is needed | SpectatorTV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv9Xbm9MVt0
A straw man, covid didn’t cause this shit show, politicians did.
We need a free, fair, independent, impartial, objective, public inquiry, but I wont hold my breath in hope, hope is just delayed disappointment.
Agreed, whether Covid is accidental, deliberate or natural is largely beside the point.
It is the reaction to it that is the problem.
It has always been purely political, first to bash China for its mishandling of the outbreak whilst it was largely in China, then as excuse for long planned political action (Dark Winter, etc) once it appeared in the west. The western politicals (the real ones not the selected puppets elected in ‘free and fair’ elections) have been trying for several years (zika, 2009 flu, etc) but the outbreaks failed to gain traction.
Definitely and the sooner the better
Minutes from NERVTAG, the group that provides ‘the science’ for SAGE (and home to the Mad Modeller) indicate they are expecting a public enquiry so suitable ‘guidance’ documentation has been provided to members. The Public Inquiry will be of very limited and precisely targetted remit, led by a ‘Safe Pair of Hands’.
Executive summary preview:
Mistakes were made. Lessons have been learned. It is time to move on.
You read it here first.
It tells you how far we’ve fallen as a nation when Matt Hancock is not only confident enough to enter a public space, but he can do so and not be savaged by a rabid mob. Shameful.
That was my initial thought. The public haven’t got a clue no wonder he’s smiling.
He thinks it’s because we think he is ‘Mr Vaccine’ the tosser.
Agreed, I feared for his life when I saw the headline picture , sadly I was wrong, he was in no danger.
He probably has a couple of Personal Protection Officers closeby.
I have seen Matt Hancock out and about round here as I have Jeremy Corbyn and while I loathe and detest both men for different reasons, I would not call them out during their free time. There has been too much doorstepping of prominent people by the MSM in recent years particularly those seen on the “so-called right.”
I am more than happy to challenge these people in other circumstances.
I’m sorry – who are you? They’re ruining our lives – knowingly judging by their smirking Andy duping delight shown during interviews – and you’re worried about disturbing their afternoon walk? This is the problem in this country that is insurmountable- the forelock-tugging fearful masses
Indeed. We’re conditioned and socialised to be deferential.
This fucker is out and about playing ball with his kid ,smirking whist telling every other fucker to stay indoors.. !!!
Would other circumstances include your face under their boot?
My surprise, like other’s, is that someone didn’t take him out, not call the cunt out.
I am looking at any means for a passport to a ‘free’ country. Unfortunately this is incredibly limited at the moment. Brexit couldn’t have came at a worse time or i’d be trying Sweden.
But where would you go that’s any better?
Texas
Despite all that’s happening in the US, i’ve always liked the idea of southern states, its bloody warmer & in past times greater freedom.
Perhaps the Australian outback living like a hermit, you’d have to be, to tolerate in Oz’s neo-liberal political ideology.
For some reason i’ve always fancied living in a desert.
You are in a culture desert right now.
Local buses are still carrying adverts for the local rep theatre pantomime, December 18th to Jan 15
‘Book In Bubbles’.
‘Book in bollocks’!
Independent Texas, I guess you mean.
Have they been subjected to the same level of propaganda though? I feel this is just an inherint flaw in the human nature to be extremely gullible and led by fear.
It does seem like we in the UK have been blessed with too much peace. We have a naive population that generally believe their government has their best interests at heart.
British are a nation of serfs always have been, we still worship monarchy ffs. (yes i know Thailand has royalty)
I’ve always liked the idea of knowing who is going to be head of state for the foreseeable future, tends towards stability.
If Blair had installed a republic we might still be labouring under President For Life John Prescott.
Even dictatorship has its attractions, Saddam created stability LOL, Gaddafi gave everyone a free house LOL! Putin is fighting the good fight against the liberal agenda LOL.
But to be honest i value freedom over security, but a republic constitution can provide both as long as politicians honour the constitution.
Gaddhafi was removed because he wouldn’t institute a Central Bank. Google pictures of Libya before and after his toppling. The place was almost a paradise (as long as you kept out of politics).
Even Saddam’s Iraq was better than the theocracy/chaos that now exists. Likewise the experiences of women in Iran under the Shah, compared with now.
“Likewise the experiences of women in Iran under the Shah, compared with now.”
I have been to Iran, and the women are DDG. There are regulations on clothing styles, including for men, but they know how to exploit them with devastating effect. In Tehran, there are shops selling women’s clothing of styles that would have any western father saying ‘you are not going out dressed like that!’
Under the Shah, people also had to contend with the CIA-trained Savak.
Latin America, Tanzania and other african nations.
A poll done for the Sun by YouGov finds that 52% of respondents think the police are not tough enough in enforcing lockdown. Some points:-
1.YouGov’s role appears to be feeding back to the government what it wants to hear. 2. A simple majority in a properly constituted democracy cannot just vote down the rights of a minority: freedom of speech, freedom of association and the right to protest. It is fallacious to argue it can. See J.S. Mill,”On Liberty”. 3. If you had commissioned a poll in pre-war Germany about the conduct of the government, you would have found widespread support for Nazi policies.
If the Sun and the government think a crude poll of an ill-informed public is a sound basis to proceed, we are in dangerous waters indeed.
That means, even by dodgy YouGov standards, 48% of us disagree with the government. I would reckon that 10-20% is sufficient to mount an effective opposition.
‘Revolution is always the kicking in of a rotten door’. – JK Galbraith.
There was a lot of public support for Hitler, some of it under reported in the same way that people would hide their intention to vote Trump or Leave.
Hitler was telling Getmans what many of them wanted to hear.
Supposedly 3 million men joined the SA (Brownshirts) by 1933.
Men willing to publicly be known as Nazis and wear a uniform to back it up.
Let’s hope the mask wearers don’t escalate in their views and apparel.
It would have a funny side. What would their uniforms look like?
Pathetic cheap sky blue tabards from what I’ve seen around here.
The SA were in many places enrolled as auxiliary police after the Nazi takeover in 1933, so the attraction was power and perhaps some money although I don’t know how much they were paid. Not all were particularly political – after the Nazi takeover and the banning of rivals quite a few had come over from the Communist paramilitary Red Front Fighters’ League – enough so that there were worries that some SA units were “beefsteaks” – brown outside, red inside. Not all of the Communist paramilitaries had been particularly motivated by politics either – a lot of youngish men were looking for a fight without much of a need for a political motivation.
I’m triggered by your post,
Sometimes the rabid calls for greater use of extreme violence by police on the “criminal class” that many ‘liberal’ DM & Sun readers is incredibly chilling at times.
What’s the point of law, judiciary & enforcement if its more brutal than the conduct of criminals, this point merges well with my comment on the class war below.
All this talk of digital passports does raise the question of what do do about people who do not have a smart-phone? I am old and curmudgeonly and do not want to talk to anyone and nobody wants to talk to me, why would I need a phone? Apparently around 50% of over 65’s do not have a smart-phone. Will there need to be a paper system for the non phone users?
Also, where poor people do need a phone they sometimes share one phone between several people, will you be able to have several people’s digital I.D. stuff on one phone?
And when your phone gets stolen by drug dealers who need a constant supply of ‘clean’ numbers to stay ahead of babylon.
“The COVID-19 vaccination record also needs to be verifiable and secure in a way that was less important for past vaccination records, otherwise, a person could try to fake having gotten the COVID-19 vaccine by using someone else’s record, Meyer said.”
That’s a problem the creeps are discussing.
The Mark of the Beast will solve the problem.
In the absence of the BCG scar that many of us carry perhaps a tattoo could be used to mark the vaccine compliant giving them access to enhanced citizen rights.
Some people bit a whopping. CG scar, others like me got nothing…
Tattoos heh? Apparently this guy thinks that would be an excellent idea.
Technology for catagorising those in the Programme and keeping track of them supplied by IBM.
Yes, you can see it unfolding before our very eyes. 666
I am 61 and have never had a smart phone. I just dont like them …all that sliding of your fingers on glass. They need charging every day too and they are an awkward shape to carry. I like buttons to push and only need a phone to call and text. I am not remotely interested in any other purpose.
Good question
I’ve now been told of two nursing homes in the city that had previously been clear coming down with Covid at or around the same time that vaccinations started.
Those reporting this have not themselves implied a causal link and neither do I.
I believe (although I have no proof) that the vaccines are a disaster in the making.
Enough issues are filtering through to suggest this but cognitive bias has kicked in and they are typically being ignored or rationalised as anti vaxxer hoaxes.
I hope I am wrong.
If I right then I believe it will take a very long time for the truth to come out. It does not fit the narrative that everyone wants.
I totally agree and why the big push to vaccinate everyone? They don’t do this with the flu vaccines.
There has been talk that having the flu jab and then catching Covid can lead to complications. Neither of us has ever had the flu jab and for the first time ever have received 2 letters from our GP asking us to make an appointment for one! We thought this was decidedly unusual behaviour from our GP particularly as its been impossible to get an appointment for the last 9 months. Needless to say should we receive a letter about a Covid jab that will also be binned.
I presume they receive money for each vaccination done.
£10.00 above the going rate for the normal flu jab.
Yes that is apparently true. I’ve seen a figure of 10 to 15 pounds per jab mentioned.
Spot on.
yes they have lowered the age range to 50 for the flu jab this year. I received 2 texts and replied to go take a hike (well slightly politer to not bother me again). I’ve never had the jab and never had flu, and i fear any connection between that and the virus – i’ll rely on my immune system.
You are right it is a massive disaster in the making. Norway has just ceased vaccination of its older, vulnerable citizens due to a high number of deaths. Deaths seem to follow post-vaccination, more than we think. It’s just massive denial by Big Pharma. However, the message is getting through from Countries that take the lives of their citizens seriously and actually care about their citizens. Here, we now know our Government couldn’t give a damn about the British People and neither can Starmer and his now Conservative Clone Labour Party.
I have been asking for a few days – with no response – whether vaccines were rolled out earlier or more widely in London than elsewhere -so as to account for the fact that London seems to have had more infections in the period covering Christmas than anywhere else.
Logically this should lead to fewer vaccinations in London. It suggests London is furthest over the hump & more people already have immunity due to prior infection.
Israeli figures show that around 100 people vaccinated went on to contract Covid post-vaccination when they did not have it before. I think there is definitely a causation it’s just that the drug companies will not admit to it neither will the NHS.
I fear this is getting worse. Just had a Waitrose delivery. Normally the drivers seem pretty sensible and not in masks etc. This guy was fully masked up with one of those super tight ones that he thinks will stop viruses sneaking round the side of. Not sure how he thinks air gets in and CO2 gets out but I guess each to their own. Normally, the guys put your bagged delivery on the door step. This guy left the bags in the trays outside the house. Then instructed me very strictly not to touch the trays. This was such a dystopian horror at 7am that I mentioned that the science does not really support viruses spreading by me touching his trays. I did not touch the trays. Clearly, given the way he was wearing his mask, I really should not have bothered but it was early. He basically replied by saying that he is the one risking his life by doing this. That’s really how he sees it. I thanked him and wished him “Stay Safe”. I guess that if restaurants and schools are shut for “safety” reasons then one can see his point! Especially if he watches the… Read more »
There will be no future from which to look back from -a society this paranoid about social interaction will not survive.
Something will replace it. Let’s try to ensure the new version is better- even if it consists of only ourselves while all the rest cower in the coal-hole.
They will look back on us in the same way we look back on witchunts but at least witchunters had ignorance as an excuse.
Ignorance in what way? I think Covid-fanaticism and witch-hunting mania are different manifestations of the same kind of deliberately-induced mass-hysteria.
Risking his life?
Are Waitrose paying danger money?
I hope you didn’t tip him as he sounds a self righteous young fellow.
Still have them in my local Waitrose. It’s actually a sane branch.
I agree with you. If I get the chance to talk to anyone when I am out and about I try and suss out if they share my views. Sadly a lot of them don’t but others are receptive. I think we just have to continue trying to persuade people of the truth.
Have had no problem with the Waitrose delivery men Some maskless and those who do wear lower them to speak to you.
I have many of the same feelings myself. I have had a couple of people with true terror in their eyes when they see me. I tried to reassure one that I did not have any disease but that seemed to make them worse! They shrank away from me as they might if I was a knife wielding maniac. I have to blame the scumbag media for brainwashing people like this but also the individuals have to be held partly responsible too. They could have tried doing some research and not just believed the BBC…or after 10 months noticed that the ‘death industries’ (funeral directors,grave diggers etc) are no more busy than usual for the season.
Strangely enough, here where I live is the epitomy of sane – I haven’t come across any ‘pavement jumpers’, cringers, wide-berthers. In fact, people are chatting together in the street, little or no social distancing evidenced. Police cars have been seen out and about but they are just allowing people to get on with their lives and their business. We are very lucky with our Chief of Police here – a sane and sensible person and a sane and sensible council too.
I think because everything is low key here, people are just acting sensibly and normally.
Oh no not the dividers!!!!!!!! Forget the machetes …those dividers!!
“For the safety of all our customers and staff, please strap a snot and sweat soaked rag to your face, touch it constantly, and then touch all the goods that other people have to buy. Thank you for shoping safely at Waitrose”.
You should have offered him a tip. you know: filthy dirty actual cash. A tenner, in pound coins. I bet he would have forgotten all his nastiness then.
And you should report him for his comment that it’s him risking his life, when you are the one more at risk (hence keeping him in a job by getting deliveries).
These people need kickback.
Re-posted with correction.
From the main text about vaccine Passports.
Polish Deputy Health minister says the (QR) code will allow the recipient to “use the rights of those who have been vaccinated”.
Welcome to Social Credit.
For those unfamiliar with this Dr Vernon Coleman has made a welcome return to outline it on YouTube, 15 minutes.
Regarding the comment in the section on ICU admissions that “There is a slight skew towards the middle 18-64 band in London compared with the national figures”, the population of London is heavily skewed to this age group compared to the country as a whole, so the skew in ICU admissions is unsurprising.
And the London ICUs are admitting people from other regions.
Nope, they are sending their covids down here to the S/W.
Well, not the ICU patients.
Time we started looking out for a commodious island as the sceptics’ New World.
They do exist.
Its got no trees, its a damp woolly maggot ridden desert.
But Shetland wants independence from it!
LOL You have no idea how right you are.
If we accept that there are now three groups
1) the unconvertible zealots and the terminally frightened
2) the “bit fed up but going along with it” (the vast majority, I think, and born out among my own wide circle of friends and acquaintances)
3) us
Then we should take encouragement from the fact that, from now onwards, virtually no-one is going to go from group 2 to group 1.
The only likely direction of travel for Group 2 is towards our own position, and it will grow and grow as it starts to dawn on people that, despite the vaccine, we are never going back to normal.
Take heart, and fight on!
My hope is that as the weather brightens, lovely sunny morning in N Devon, people will get the urge to get up and travel especially with half term and Easter coming up. I think it is your group 2 that will want to break free as we head into better weather.
It’s a lovely day here in Yorks. Going out for a walk this afternoon, will be interesting to take the temperature.
Agreed, I think the first appearance of decent spring weather will be a useful indication of where things are going. Though I go out every day, some people are quite happy staying at home semi-hibernating when it’s cold and damp outside. When good weather comes along, even those people will feel the urge to get out, go places and do things.
The thing is though if group 2 get a vaccine and that allows return to ‘normal’ with masks and distancing I don’t think they’ll care. As long as they can their pint in the pub.
They will not be able to compute the shit sandwich they’ve been served. They’ve gone on this long asleep.
Businesses will start to care, as the numbers won’t add up.
I don’t disagree KH.
I’m not so sure. There seems to have been a steady conversion of people leaning more towards the ‘zealot’ group as a result of the constant MSM coverage of how the hospitals are under pressure. That seems to be enough to convince many people that we are living in end of days and lockdowns are completely justified. The negatives of lockdowns are just not on the table and probably won’t be until the end of February at the earliest.
The problem with reversing the prevailing narrative is we in group 3 can’t speak to anyone in group 2.
I’d love to educate some thickos in the local pub.
The vast number of people in group 2 is an epic embarrassment to our species. If anyone with a strategic, critical mind ever gets into power, their first priority should be the make sure our education system teaches people not to be sheeple.
It has gone beyond silly in the past few days. Police in newly marked out corona virus regulations enforcement vans. People wearing masks to go for a walk in the country. A masked couple pressed themselves into a hedge with their backs towards me as I climbed up the hill past them yesterday.
The fear can only be maintained for so long. Even with fear of death people will get weary of staying scared (I hope!)
I thought the same in March but here we are…
Yes I have had the ‘pressed themselves into the hedge’ experience. I suppose the best thing to do is just to laugh at them…..its pointless trying to engage with them…they just respond with pure terror. There is no hope for these people.
You bet! I’ve rolled my sleeves up ready for the big fight!
We’ve moved on, Covidology is the new religion, The NHS is the established church which must be revered and protected at all costs, the face-mask is the crucifix symbol of your support for this cult, the vaccine is the sacrament, twitter is the Spanish inquisition where dissenters are torn asunder and SAGE is the source of all authority on all of this.
And Chris Shitty is the Pope?
Anti-Pope.
The Heart of Darkness.
Utterly brilliant!
Exactly!!! Don’t forget the BBC as the spreader of this Gospel of Covid and the NHS.
People have simply swapped an old religion for a new one.
No – satanism is the new religion
To my astonishment, the majority of the churches have been taken in by this panic. It has looked to me for some time as resembling Paul’s prophecy in 2 Thess 2 of a “great delusion/deception” accompanying a falling away from the faith. .
Most Catholic Churches and the hierarchy are Vatican II Libtards. Anglican Church is not Christian imo, but an adjunct of the BBC. Our Catholic priest openly and proudly proclaims that he reads and believes the Guardian. So yes most will be Covidiots.
Many churches also rely on state money. They are in essence state employees. If they don’t comply, they don’t survive. For example, any large renovation project is partially funded by the state.
Are lockdowns simply too evil for the general public to question?
https://muchadoaboutcorona.ca/simply-too-evil/
A Canadian perspective.
Canadians in general, some exceptions, are good sheeple. If the CBC (equiv to the BBC), told them to eat dog shit which stops ‘CV 19 transmission’, most Canadians would be outside on both knees, bread in both hands, complying. Critical thinkers….not. I know because of extensive experience and family. They don’t question, they bleat.
And I grew up thinking all Canadians were like the Forest Rangers.
Oh, Bevis! And I though you were so butch……!