Don’t Panic, Mr Mainwaring
Yesterday saw another Downing Street press conference, with more depressing news. The Telegraph has the story.
The new Covid variant may be deadlier than the original strain, Boris Johnson warned on Friday night, with scientific analysis for the Government suggesting the strain could kill 30% more infected people.
Mr Johnson was told on Friday morning that the first major study of the mutation – which emerged in Kent last month – had found evidence that it is more lethal as well as being up to 70% more infectious.
The Prime Minister faced questions about whether the lockdown could now last longer and said he could not consider lifting the restrictions while infections remained “forbiddingly high”…
Although Sir Patrick Vallance, the Chief Scientific adviser, and Prof Whitty stressed that there was a lot of uncertainty about the emerging research, initial analysis by three universities suggested the new Covid variant could kill between 30 and 91% more infected people than the original strain.
The Department of Health’s committee on New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats (NERVTAG) analysed the data and reported that the Kent variant is likely to kill 1.3% of those who get it, compared with one per cent for the original strain.
The news of increased mortality was based on the conclusions of a NERVTAG meeting, and as ever, it made its way to journalists ahead of the afternoon’s conference. Robert Peston had a briefing from Neil Ferguson which earned him a sharp rebuke from Deborah Cohen:
Naturally, any concern that the new strain is more deadly deserves to be taken seriously, but it soon emerged, with the release of the NERVTAG paper, that the evidence is rather thin. MailOnline reports:
A SAGE warning revealing that scientists are only 50% sure the Kent strain of coronavirus could be more deadly was handed to ministers just hours before last night’s ‘scare-mongering’ press conference, it has been revealed.
Ministers were only informed about the development yesterday morning after scientists on the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG), a subcommittee of Sage, discussed the issue on Thursday.
The group concluded there was a “realistic possibility” that the variant resulted in an increased risk of death when compared with the original strain.
Evidence for increased mortality remains thin – NERVTAG papers reveal that the term “realistic possibility” is used when scientists are only 40 to 50% confident something is true.
But the decision to reveal the new information just hours after learning of the development is a yardstick of how alarmed ministers are.
It came after some critics accused ministers of “scaremongering” by announcing their fears the Kent strain is more deadly at short notice and while admitting in a press conference yesterday that the evidence that it is more deadly is still “weak”…
The report continues:
The SAGE paper released last night after being handed to ministers cited three studies of the risk of death associated with the new strain:
A London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine study that said the hazard of death within 28 days of test for the mutant strain compared with non-mutant strains was 1.35 times higher. This was based on a study of 2,583 deaths among 1.2 million tested individuals;
An Imperial College London study of the Case Fatality Rate of the new mutant strain that found the risk of death was 1.36 times higher. This study looked at all cases of new variant but the total number was not revealed in the papers;
A University of Exeter study that suggested the risk of death could be 1.91 times higher. The papers provided no additional background on the number of deaths looked at during the study.
But the SAGE scientists admit that there are problems with the data of each study meaning they are only 50% sure that the new mutant strain carries a higher risk of death. These include the fact that:
Analysis is based on just 8% of the total deaths occurring during the study period;
Age-matched analysis might be comparing frail elderly people in nursing home outbreaks of the Kent variant, which is more transmissible, with healthier elderly people infected with other strains in the community;
An increase in the severity of infection with the variant would likely lead to an increased risk of hospitalisation, which there is currently no evidence of in individuals suffering from the strain;
Analysis has not identified an increased risk of death in hospitalised cases of the variant.
However, the long time lag from infection to hospitalisation means there isn’t a huge amount of data available on the variant, with NERVTAG saying analyses will become more definitive over the coming weeks.
Worth reading in full.
The NERVTAG paper is available here. This is what the Twitter account Covid Fact Check had to say about it:
Stop Press: The senior financial journalist who occasionally contributes to Lockdown Sceptics has passed on a sharp observation.
For all the hullabaloo about new Kent variant being 30% more deadly, I saw Professor Lockdown quoted in the Telegraph.
“Prof Neil Ferguson, who sits on the Government’s NERVTAG advisory committee, said the latest evidence from university researchers suggests around 30% more people die of the new variant of Covid – but the data is patchy.
‘It is a realistic possibility that the new UK variant increases the risk of death, but there is considerable remaining uncertainty. Four groups – Imperial, LSHTM, PHE and Exeter – have looked at the relationship between people testing positive for the variant vs old strains and the risk of death,’ he told ITV. ‘That suggests a 1.3-fold increased risk of death. So for 60 year-olds, 13 in 1000 might die compared with 10 in 1000 for old strains.'”
This seemed a bit low compared to what Ferguson was saying last March. So I looked up the notorious paper which cites an IFR of 2.2% for 60-69, 5.1% for 70-79, and 9.3% for 80+. A simple average of the estimates comes to 5.5% (a weighted average I imagine would be 3-4%).
Anyway I suspect that after scaring the country into lockdown Ferguson has been quietly adjusting his model. After all, we always knew he had form for making extravagant forecasts.
Stop Press 2: In an interview with Spiegel, epidemiologist Christian Drosten details his concerns about the “British variant”, and says that he is worried about the Summer.
Advertising Standards Authority Forces Cabinet Office to Withdraw Fear Porn
The Telegraph reports that a controversial COVID-19 ad stating that joggers are highly likely to have COVID-19 is to be discontinued following an intervention by the Advertising Standards Authority:
A Government advert that says joggers and dog-walkers are “highly likely” to have Covid is to be discontinued after the regulator said there was no evidence to support the claim.
The Telegraph can reveal that the Cabinet Office has also agreed not to repeat the claim made in the 30-second radio ad – which also warns that “people will die” if individuals “bend the rules” – after being contacted by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
The taxpayer-funded advert was condemned by MPs and public health experts for spreading “false information” and risking “scaring” people into physical inactivity during the third national lockdown.
The ASA said it had received complaints and would “assess those carefully to establish whether there are any grounds for further action”.
A spokesman said: “We have contacted the Cabinet Office with the concerns that have been raised about its claim, in a radio ad, that it is “highly likely” that individuals such as joggers and dog-walkers have COVID-19.
“Our rules require that advertisers hold robust documentary evidence to prove claims that are capable of substantiation. We have received an assurance from the Cabinet Office that the ad will be discontinued by early next week and the claim about individuals being highly likely to have COVID-19 will not be repeated.
“On that basis, as the Cabinet Office has worked with us to swiftly address and resolve this matter without the need for formal investigation, we consider the matter closed.”
The ASA said it was also assessing complaints about a similar ad about supermarket trolleys, as well as a poster about takeaway coffee headlined “Don’t Let a Coffee Cost Lives”, but had yet to contact the Government about those.
According to the most recent official data, one in 50 people in England was estimated to have Covid between December 27th and January 2nd, rising to one in 30 in London, which would mean individuals are unlikely – rather than highly likely – to have the virus.
Under ASA rules, adverts must be “legal, decent, honest and truthful”.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: If you’ve spotted any Government adverts about the virus you think are a bit dodgy, the Advertising Standards Authority has an online form through which it receives complaints about misleading, harmful or irresponsible claims about the current COVID-19 situation.
Stop Press 2: A new Covid advert is being launched. Designed to appeal to a sense of personal responsibility, and featuring numerous close-ups of Covid sufferers and frontline health workers, the advert ends with the line: “Look them in the eyes and tell them you’re doing all you can to stop the spread of COVID-19. Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives.” This campaign might be more effective if the NHS had been more successful at preventing in-hospital infections.
Declining Case Numbers
HSJ reports good news in its update for January 22nd:
The number of Covid positive patients in English hospitals has fallen by 1,101 over the last three days, strongly suggesting that the third wave which has been overwhelming parts of the NHS has peaked.
The national figure for Covid hospital patients has now fallen for three consecutive days since the third wave started numbers climbing on December 4th.
As many as 33,325 Covid inpatients were reported yesterday, a decline of three per cent on the January 18th figure. The fall was driven by a 565-patient reduction in London and one of 460 in the south east, as well as the lack of any substantive growth elsewhere to offset that figure.
London is now 7% down on its peak figure, recorded on Jan 18th, while the south east now has 10% fewer covid inpatients than its peak on Jan 13th. The east region, whose decline has been bumpier, has 5% fewer patients than its peak, also on Jan 13th.
The running seven-day total of admissions of Covid patients in these three areas has now fallen for at least seven consecutive days to January 19th (the latest data available). The south east is at 81% of its peak, London 84 and the east 87.
Elsewhere in the country, Covid patient hospital numbers are marked by a slowing in growth.
The North West, North East and Yorkshire and Midlands all saw their figures grow 10% in the last week, while the south west jumped nine per cent. On January 14th, the corresponding growth rates were 26, 18, 28 and 37%. This change is reflected in small rises or gains in the rolling admissions data.
Meanwhile, responding to the REACT report which suggested increasing infection rates, Tim Spector said that his ZOE app data showed a more positive picture, and suggested infections peaked on January 1st:
Yesterday’s update from the ONS infection survey appears to support a similar conclusion: infections peaked on January 1st. This is not the first time a national lockdown was imposed after the peak in cases:
Why are BAME People More Reluctant than Whites to Have the Vaccine?
Today we publish a guest post by Lockdown Sceptics reader Kit Stocke-Finucane
I’m reluctant to use the term ‘BAME’ not least because there are massive differences within the groups identified by the term, but for the purpose of this note to you I’ll use it.
You may recall a piece Lockdown Sceptics ran in November. In discussing the role of vitamin D in preventing COVID-19, Dr Grimes (et al.) devotes a paragraph to the link between higher levels of melanin in the skin and vitamin D deficiency. But his Twitter feed goes much further and his presentation here on the Amish Inquisition podcast a few days ago goes further still.
In his presentation, Dr Grimes explains that early on in the pandemic he and his colleagues identified at-risk doctors and got vitamin D distributed to them. He highlights the sharp drop in numbers of BAME doctors dying from COVID-19 after their initiative.
News-wise, there was quite a bit of coverage back in the spring given to the fact that more, relatively speaking, BAME doctors die (and at a younger age) than their white counterparts. Then there was nothing, until summer when we have failures in Government to push for the protection of BAME pharmacists.
In June, in an excellent letter, a reader of Lockdown Sceptics expressed scepticism at historic racism being behind higher numbers. He ruled out socio-economic factors. He may well be correct, but the Government and healthcare bodies, it seems, recognise sections of the population in the manner it sees fit and when it suits. Because after recognising the problem for BAME people, then letting the whole thing drop very soon after, it is now the case that BAME people are singled out for their non-compliance with vaccine orthodoxy: only 55% of the Asian community would take up the vaccine, they say. It appears BAME people are not only undeserving of vitamin D, research into genetic predisposition and blood groups, or risk-assessments. In addition, we’re now told they lack mental capacity because it is all down to fake news and WhatsApp, apparently, and not because they’ve been condescended to throughout the pandemic, or because of a healthy, informed reserve about a rushed-out vaccine posited as the only way out.
There’s a budget in news stations for this reporting on BAME, there’s a budget in Government to push out the vaccine over other measures for BAME, but no budget for vitamin D or further research to actually protect the lives that are supposed to ‘matter’ so much as to have an expensive fist in fireworks representing them on New Year’s Eve. You can understand why some people coming under the banner BAME get royally hacked off, can’t you?
How Persuasive is the Latest Pro-Masking Study?
Lockdown Sceptics reader Dr Rachel Mann, has drawn our attention to a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society that modelled differing aerosols emitted while talking and coughing, and found “time-of-flight to reach two metres is only a few seconds resulting in a viral dose above the minimum required for infection, implying that physical distancing in the absence of ventilation is not sufficient to provide safety for long exposure times“. The study was also reported in the Guardian.
She writes:
Masks were not evaluated in the study, yet the first study recommendation in the conclusions section was “standing two metres opposite an infected speaker is not safe without the use of a protective mask or respirator”.
Needless to say, this drew my incredulity at such a leap of apparent ‘science’. I emailed the lead and corresponding author and received a response, and quite naturally I have responded again.
In the face of inconclusive evidence of the protective effects of face masks in general population community settings, it’s frustrating that the study authors still seem to feel completely justified in recommending face masks.
Dr Mann emailed the study’s lead author, Dr P.M. de Oliveira as follows:
Dear Sir,
I was most interested to read the paper published today January 20th 2021, by you and your colleagues in The Royal Society regarding the evolution of spray and aerosol from respiratory releases and also reported in the Guardian newspaper this same day. I was delighted to find that your work supports the same conclusion as Fenelly (2020) regarding transmission via aerosol of viruses such as SARS-Cov-2 and other common influenza and coronaviruses rather than the respiratory droplet, which is incredibly important in advancing the body of knowledge with regard to virus transmission, particularly in the current climate of masks, lockdowns and social distancing. However, I wish to draw your attention to the issue of masks, which you mention in your recommendations in the conclusion section in relation to the recent study by Xi et al published in Physics in Fluid in December 2020.
With regard to your recommendation statement in your paper regarding masks and respirators and the statement in the Guardian newspaper that masks should be worn (“We need masks…..”), I wish to draw your attention to the following in the hope that you will clarify your position on the use of surgical masks (if these were indeed to what you were referring to in both the paper and the Guardian news article) as a protection against aerosol transmission.
As you state in your abstract, the size of the majority of aerosol particles are ≈5 to 10 micrometres, the study by Xi et al found a typical 3-layer surgical mask or a zero filtration mask (e.g cloth mask) does not prevent inhalation of aerosol virus particles ≤3 micrometres in size, which is equivalent to ≤3000 nanometres in size. As the size of SARS-Cov-2 virus particles are approximately only 100 nanometres, use of surgical face masks cannot protect an individual from inhaling SARS-Cov-2 virus and therefore, it is unlikely that masks protect the wearer against aerosol infection from SARS-Cov-2. Worryingly, zero filtration (cloth) masks were found to increase deposits of SARS-Cov-2 virus on the face and upper airway. Indeed, the study by Xi et al also reported that when wearing a surgical mask, air enters the mouth and nose through the entire surface of the mask at lower speeds, which favours the inhalation of ambient aerosols into the nose as well as their subsequent deposition in the upper airway.
Given that the Xi et al study was conducted as a tightly controlled experiment and the mask “etiquette” of the general population is sub-optimal at best, it is almost impossible to conclude that surgical masks, particularly ‘trendy’, patterned zero filtration cloth masks, are likely to have a significant benefit in preventing transmission in general population community settings e.g supermarkets and other indoor spaces. Given the size of the SARs-Cov-2 virus, I do feel that it is important in this climate, especially where we have unadulterated social media shaming and blaming of those that cannot wear a surgical mask for disability/health reasons to clarify what you mean by masks. Given that most individuals will likely attribute your use of the term “mask” to mean the common-or-garden ubiquitous blue surgical masks or cloth masks currently seen on every street in the UK (the type as tested by Xi et al), I fear that you should have clarified that at levels of less than three micrometres that surgical masks are likely to be ineffective. In hindsight, it would have been more useful to explain what you mean in your recommendations by using “masks and respirators” (to which masks and respirators are you referring?) and in which context they might be most beneficial. I hope that you will consider clarification, especially in the mainstream press.
I look forward to your response.
Dr P.M. de Oliveira responded:
Dear Dr Mann,
Many thanks for reaching out on such an important issue and for your interest in our paper.
I am dealing with a large volume of emails and, therefore, apologise that my answer for now will be brief.
As widely accepted in the community, scientists expect that virus exhaled is in a wide range of droplet sizes, from hundreds of nanometres to the millimetre size. We know that large droplets quickly fall on the floor due to gravity. From the point of view of transport of the small droplets in air currents, for example, various studies highlight that droplets of up to 100 micrometres could be carried. The debate around the definition of aerosol is, therefore, very important at the moment. It is currently defined as 5-10 micrometres by health agencies, but as I said, most scientists seem to agree this definition needs to be revised. We discuss this in the introduction of the paper.
Now, it has been shown by a number of experiments both in preprint and published papers that even multi-layered cotton masks *may* have some effect in blocking both the emission and inhalation of aerosol. If you refer to the results section of my paper, you will find that because large droplets of the aerosol “carry most of the respiratory liquid exhaled”, they will also, most likely, carry most of the virus exhaled. Hence, even though masks that cannot filter particles at the size of the virus (not as good as FPP2/FPP3, for example), they might still be able to block the dry saliva particles, or aerosols, of sizes in the range of 5-100 nm. I refer you to the work of Professor Catherine Noakes and Professor Linsey Marr, among various other academics, who have and are currently investigating filtration efficiency of masks
I hope to be able to reply to your question in the coming days with more detail.
With best wishes,
To which our reader, Dr Rachel Mann replied:
Dear Pedro,
I note in your conclusions section of your paper that you categorically and unequivocally state “Standing 2 metres opposite an infected speaker is not safe without the use of a protective mask or respirator”
However, in your email response, you state “masks *may* have some effect in blocking both the emission and inhalation of aerosol” and “they *might* still be able to block the dry saliva particles, or aerosols”.
I refer you again to the study by Xi et al.
Whilst I appreciate your response, the use of “may” and “might” does not warrant your study conclusion with regard to mask use.
As a source of protection for primary exposure and secondary transmission the evidence of mask use in general population community settings is inconclusive, with RCT results showing a slight to modest non statistically significant protective effect; study designs at risk of significant bias, imprecision and inconsistency tend toward more beneficial protective effects but are generally not statistically significant.
https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.49.2000725?crawler=true
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/12/e012330
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/m20-6817
As per above, I do not believe that current inconclusive evidence of mask use in community settings warrants your conclusion.
Regards
Rachel
Stop Press: Mask rules appear to be tightening across Europe, following outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s announcement on Tuesday of a new measure mandating that people wear surgical masks or higher-specification N95 or FFP-2 devices rather than simply donning cloth face coverings. The French Government is now recommending that people wear surgical masks in public and scientists in the UK are giving similar advice. The Lufthansa Group has also just announced that it is banning the use of cloth masks on flights from February 1st, with passengers now required to wear “either a surgical mask or an FFP2 mask or mask with the KN95/N95 standard”
Stop Press 2: The Evening Standard reports that London Mayor Sadiq Kahn has called for tougher rules on wearing face coverings outside. They are needed, he said, “where people are ‘cheek by jowl’ in outdoor locations”. He has also revealed concerns at the number of Londoners in public places because the lockdown rules were not tight enough and has apparently stopped walking his dog in the park because it is so busy.
Weimar Court: Germany’s Lockdown Restrictions Are Unconstitutional
A ruling just published by the Weimar District Court has found that the Government’s social distancing rules are incompatible with the country’s constitution. Moreover, through forensic analysis of official data, the ruling asserts that the epidemic situation used to justify the law no longer exists. The case concerned a birthday party with too many guests. 2020news has the story – and we must thank Northumbrian Nomad for the prompt and accurate translation he or she let in the comments yesterday.
A district judge in Weimar has acquitted a man ordered to pay a fine for breaching the Covid contact ban by celebrating his birthday with at least seven other participants from a total of eight households – six guests too many, according to the Thuringia Covid regulation. The judge’s verdict is damning: the Covid regulation is in breach of the constitution and can be appealed against in material law.
This is the first time a judge has engaged intensively with the medical facts, economic consequences and effects of specific policies.
Part of the Rechtstaat Principle, the principle of the state acting in accordance with the rule of law, is the imperative of precision in legislation. Laws cannot simply impose across-the-board regulations, thereby affording authorities licence to act according to whim, which would amount to arbitrary rule. According to the Federal Infection Protection Act (IPA), the “relevant authorities” are to impose “the requisite safety measures”. In normal times, this means that spreaders or persons suspected of spreading an infection may be isolated or contaminated areas closed off.
The IPA does not envisage a general ban on contact also extending to healthy people. However – and this is the interpretation made by many administrative courts so far – it may be permissible to go beyond the purview of the IPA in the case of an “unprecedented event” that was so new that the legislator would have been unable to pass the necessary regulations in advance.
The judge rejects this pretext. As early as 2013, the Bundestag had access to a risk analysis conducted with the participation of the Robert Koch Institute, concerning a pandemic caused by a “SARS-type virus”, which described a scenario of 7.5 million dead in Germany over a period of three years, and discussed anti-epidemic measures during such a pandemic (Bundestag publication 17/12051). The legislator was therefore able, in regard to such an event that was considered at least “conditionally probable” (occurrence probability class C), to study the provisions of the IPA and if necessary adjust them. This political failure, as a result of which Germany went into the pandemic virtually unprepared – without legal instruments governing control of the virus, without stocks of masks, PPE and medical equipment – cannot now lead to politicians’ simply closing a gap in legislation as they see fit.
Particularly given that an epidemic situation, i.e., the basis for the expansion of the routine infection protection provisions, simply does not exist (or no longer exists). The numbers of those infected and showing symptoms were already falling in the spring. The lockdown thus came late and was generally ineffective.
At no time, therefore, has there been a concrete danger of the health service’s being overwhelmed by a ‘wave’ of COVID-19 patients. As can be seen from the DIVI ICU register newly established on March 17th, 2020, an average of at least 40% ICU beds in Germany were free at all times. In Thuringia, 378 beds were registered occupied on April 3rd, 36 of these with COVID-19 patients. Meanwhile there were 417 beds vacant. On April 16th, two days before the issuance of the regulation, 501 beds were registered occupied, 56 with COVID-19 patients, and 528 beds were vacant… Thuringia registered its highest number of notified COVID-19 patients in spring at 63 (on April 28th). Thus, at no time did the number of COVID-19 patients reach a level that could have justified fears of the healthcare system’s being overwhelmed.
This estimate of the actual dangers from COVID-19 in the spring of 2020 is confirmed by an evaluation of settlement data from 421 clinics belonging to Initiative Qualitätsmedizin, which found that the number of SARI cases (severe acute respiratory infection) treated as in-patients in Germany in the first half of 2020 was 187,174 – lower than the figure for the first half of 2019 (221,841 cases), even though this figure included those SARI cases caused by COVID. The same analysis showed the numbers of ICU and respirator cases lower in the first half of 2020 than in 2019…
The judgement is powerful:
The judge concluded that there were no “unacceptable gaps in protection” that could have justified recourse to across-the-board regulations. These measures therefore “violate human dignity guaranteed inviolable” in Article 1, Paragraph 1 of the Federal Constitution. This is a devastating accusation against the Federal Government. It is striking how coldly the Weimar judge concluded this months-long discussion:
“A general ban on contacts is a severe intervention in civic rights. It is among the fundamental liberties of the individual in a free society to determine for himself or herself with whom (on presumption of consent) and under what circumstances he or she will make contact. Free encounter among people for all imaginable purposes is also a fundamental basis for society. The obligation of the state here is categorically to refrain from all intervention that purposefully regulates and limits this. Questions of how many people a citizen may invite to his home or how many people a citizen may meet in a public place to go for a walk, play sports, shop or sit on a park bench are categorically of no legitimate interest to the state.”
In imposing a general ban on contact, the state – albeit with good intentions – attacks the foundations of society by imposing physical distance between citizens (‘social distancing’). No one, even in January 2020, could have imagined, in Germany, being prevented by the state on pain of a fine from inviting their parents to their own home without banishing other family members from the house for the time they were there. No one could have imagined being forbidden to sit with three friends on a park bench. Never before in Germany has the state come up with the idea of imposing such measures to counter an epidemic. Even the risk analysis ‘Pandemic caused by SARS-type virus’ (Bundestag publication 17/12051), which described a scenario of 7.5 million dead, does not consider a general ban on contacts (or bans on leaving the home or the general suspension of public life). Apart from the quarantining and segregation of infected individuals, the only anti-epidemic measures it discusses are school closures, the cancellation of mass events and the issue of hygiene recommendations (BT 17/12051, p. 61f).”
Much of the public has now almost come to terms with the new normal. However, as the judge points out, the life that was previously considered ‘normal’ has now been reinterpreted as a crime.
“Although it appears that a shift in values has taken place over the months of the Covid crisis, with the consequence that many people find procedures that were formerly considered absolutely exceptional more or less ‘normal’ – which of course also alters perspectives on the constitution – there should be no doubt that by imposing a general ban on contacts, the democratic Rechtsstaat has broken what was previously seen as a self-evident taboo.
“It must also be noted – as an aspect worthy of special consideration – that the state, in imposing its general ban on contacts with the aim of protection against infection, treats every citizen as a potential threat to the health of third parties. If every citizen is seen as a threat from which others must be protected, that citizen is also robbed of the possibility of deciding what risks to take – which is a fundamental freedom. A citizen’s choice of visiting a cafe or a bar in the evening and running the risk of a respiratory infection for the sake of social interaction and pleasure in life, or of exercising caution because she has a weakened immune system and therefore prefers to stay at home, is removed under the provisions of a general ban on contacts.”
The report goes on to detail the judge’s consideration of the collateral damage of lockdown:
The judge also considers the collateral damage of the lockdown rulings, which is now becoming ever more massively apparent.
1. Profit setbacks, losses incurred by businesses, traders and freelance professionals as direct consequences of the restrictions imposed on their liberties;
2. Profit setbacks, losses incurred by businesses, traders and freelance professionals as indirect consequences of lockdown measures (e.g. losses to suppliers of directly-affected businesses; losses resulting from the breakdown of supply chains leading, for example, to production stops; losses resulting from travel restrictions);
3. Wage and salary losses from curtailed hours or unemployment
4. Bankruptcies and destruction of livelihood
5. Consequential costs of bankruptcies and destruction of livelihood
Northumbrian Nomad’s translation of the report from 2020news report is worth reading in full.
The text of the original verdict is available here.
Lockdown Scepticism: The Case for the Defence
In a new piece for Spiked-Online writer and freelance journalist Harrison Putt has issued a rallying for lockdown scepticism. Criticism of the Government’s authoritarian policies is as important as ever he says:
Last Sunday’s papers launched what almost seemed like a coordinated attack against people who dare to question the conventional wisdom and, increasingly, the religious tenets of the pro-lockdown mainstream. The Observer invited Conservative MP Neil O’Brien to brand vocal opponents of mandatory house arrest as dangerous loons. Meanwhile, in the Sunday Times Dominic Lawson attacked healthy scepticism of the Government’s efforts to fight the virus, implying such objections were motivated by capricious disregard for the elderly and blind trust of “pet experts”.
Lockdown sceptics like myself, now routinely slandered as ‘Covid-sceptics’, have taken a serious kicking in recent weeks. But we should avoid self-pity, not least because one can already picture how the likes of O’Brien and Lawson would respond: “The sceptical cranks think they’ve had it tough? Someone should give these Covidiots a tour of London’s overwhelmed hospitals, not to mention its morgues.”
They would not be wrong to point to such realities. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the number of deaths in England up to 25th December 2020 was 70,000 more than the five-year average, a rise of 12.3%. While hospitals avoided being overwhelmed during the first wave, they have since come under considerable pressure, especially in London. Still, none of that justifies slandering critics of lockdown as a homogeneous crowd of deluded cranks who reject ‘the science’. Supporters of the Government’s destructive measures would do better to address, with intelligence and good faith, the strongest arguments made by those of us who oppose them.
But the remarkable levels of conformity in parliament and the media mean that O’Brien and Lawson feel no obligation to do so. Instead, bar the occasional good point, they prefer to set fire to a battalion of straw men.
O’Brien has fun combing through predictions made by lockdown sceptics that did not materialise. Toby Young, editor of the Lockdown Sceptics blog, is singled out for saying: “There will be no ‘second spike’ – not now, and not in the autumn either.” Young has since graciously admitted that this summer prediction was mistaken. The same cannot be said for Neil Ferguson’s insistence, a full week after Sweden’s daily deaths actually peaked, that fatalities there would continue to “increase day by day” – not to mention Chris Whitty’s presentation of a graph projecting 49,000 daily UK cases by mid-October (there were actually around 15,000).
Worth reading in full.
Postcard From Paraguay
Today we publish a postcard from a reader in Paraguay. The country won renown for locking down hard and fast after registering its first cases of COVID-19, but it is not likely that they will do so again:
The mental atmosphere in Paraguay at the moment is close to what I had hoped in vain it would be in Britain by now. That is, while there are still some restrictions, life is more or less back as it was the last time I visited in the carefree days of January 2020. People don’t talk much about Covid, they don’t obsess over numbers of cases or deaths, and nobody swerves off the pavement to walk past you. Masks are mandatory both indoors and (since December) outdoors, but compliance outdoors is reassuringly low: under the nose, under the chin and dangling off one ear are all common sights, and away from the city centre and main streets, entirely naked faces are tolerated without comment…
Why didn’t Paraguay re-enter lockdown when cases and deaths started to climb in July? Basically, it couldn’t afford to. Paraguay is still a fairly poor country with only a rudimentary welfare state, a small tax base, many small family-owned businesses (it’s a remarkably un-globalised place) and a large informal economy. After a couple of months of copying the full lockdown policies of vastly wealthier countries, for many Paraguayans it was a choice of returning to productive activity, or collapsing into poverty. Their president and health minister surely wanted to continue with the restrictions, but public pressure to reopen was strong enough to force their concession.
What’s more, everyone I speak to on the topic says the same thing: that Paraguayans won’t accept another lockdown. This may sound like hot air, to be wafted away if and when a fresh spike of infections triggers panic again. But aside from the anti-lockdown force of economic necessity, for the older generations (including my husband), enforced restrictions and curfews are disturbing echoes of the country’s long, brutal military dictatorship under Alfredo Stroessner, which only ended in 1989. The echoes were particularly sharp when members of the armed, balaclava-clad, paramilitary police motorcycle unit Lince (‘Lynx’) published videos of themselves humiliating groups of young men who they had caught breaking lockdown, forcing them to do press-ups, or march and repeat boot-camp chants with their hands on their heads. Public opinion was predictably divided, with the usual contingent pleased that “covidiotas” got what they deserved; but the majority was rightly appalled by the sneering cruelty of the Lince officers.
Furthermore, Paraguayans are quite used to defending their liberty since the country’s return to democracy, with multiple attempted coups and seizures of power coming up against strong, and sometimes bloody, popular protest. Most recently, in 2017, a large group set fire to the building that houses the country’s Congress, in protest against an attempt by the president of the day to pull off a familiar trick in Latin America: circumventing his one-term limit by changing the constitution. He failed.
Worth reading in full.
Dr Clare Craig Rebuts Neil O’Brien’s Smears
Dr Clare Craig, a regular contributor to Lockdown Sceptics has written a stout rebuttal to Neil O’Brien MP following his tirade against her on Twitter. It’s a defence both of lockdown scepticism and free inquiry, and it’s worth clicking on this tweet and reading the full thread.
Round-up
- “Inflation is the easiest way out of this – just don’t expect the Government to admit it” – “The UK Government borrowed £34.1 billion in December,” writes John Stepck in Moneyweek. Realistically, there is only one way to pay it back: inflation
- “Fixating on the R number isn’t real science” – Writing in the Times, Ed Conway reminds us that the R number is just an educated guess
- “Children did not play a key role in spreading coronavirus during the first wave of the pandemic and are ‘unlikely’ to have boosted infection numbers, study finds” – Mailonline reports on a new study which suggests that children are not the vectors of transmission once feared
- “Screens can’t replace schools” – Schools are closed again and, writing for the Conservative Woman, UsForThem’s Christine Brett thinks that the focus on screens and free school meals misses the point. Children learn through personal and social interaction and they need to be in school
- “The conceivable inconceivable: COVID-19 and Giving Up Who We Are” – Omar S. Khan’s latest article is based on his conversation with Sinéad Murphy, a regular contributor to Lockdown Sceptics
- “Sensationalist headlines spread Covid panic and lead to bad decisions” – William Wellesley tears into to the media’s Covid sensationalism for CAPX and suggests a post pandemic inquiry to consider whether it has acted responsibly
- “James Bond film No Time to Die delayed again over Covid” – The Guardian reports on the worst news of the day
- “People have to got to rise up and bring it down!” – Desmond Swayne on talkRADIO says the idea people will accept endless lockdown restrictions and “go on living like troglodytes is absurd”
- “Libertarians in a Pandemic” – They might have some good ideas after all, says Jacob Grier
- “I’m glad to be living in India at this time” – Writing in the Deccan Herald, Sharrell Cook say she is glad to be living in India. Why? Because the country has defied the “dire predictions of death, despite lifting the lockdown”, it has pioneered early treatment protocols, including ivermectin, and it has not closed itself off to the world
- “How to get a free bag of marijuana with the COVID-19 vaccine” – The New York Post reports on a new incentive to encourage young people to take the vaccine
- “With Trump out of the way, suddenly we’re hearing good news about COVID-19” – Now Trump is gone, America is hearing that things are heading in the right direction. A coincidence perhaps, but Ryan McMaken is sceptical on the Mises Institute blog
- “Joe Biden challenges Americans to ‘mask up’ for first 100 days – video” – Masks will be a key part of President Joe Biden’s first 100 days, reports the Guardian
- “Americans are fleeing lockdowns, when they can afford it” – Writing on the AIER blog, Jeffrey A. Tucker notes that Americans are forsaking locked-down cities like New York, San Diego and Chicago and heading for the freedom of cities such as Phoenix, Dallas and Denver
- “Teaching the poor to fail” – A new documentary by Sophie Rochelle Sandor, investigating how the state school system holds the poorest children back, featuring Katharine Birbalsingh, Theodore Dalrymple and Toby
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Six Today: “Only a Fool Would Say That” by Steely Dan, “No Way Out” by Jefferson Starship, “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits, “Isolation” by Alter Bridge, “Who Knows Where The Time Goes” by Sandy Denny and “Bubbles in My Beer” by Bob Wills.
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. We have a team of moderators in place to remove spam and deal with the trolls, but sometimes it takes a little while so please bear with us. You have to register to use the Forums as well as post comments below the line, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.
Sharing Stories
Some of you have asked how to link to particular stories on Lockdown Sceptics so you can share it. To do that, click on the headline of a particular story and a link symbol will appear on the right-hand side of the headline. Click on the link and the URL of your page will switch to the URL of that particular story. You can then copy that URL and either email it to your friends or post it on social media. Please do share the stories.
Social Media Accounts
You can follow Lockdown Sceptics on our social media accounts which are updated throughout the day. To follow us on Facebook, click here; to follow us on Twitter, click here; to follow us on Instagram, click here; to follow us on Parler, click here; and to follow us on MeWe, click here.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, the news that the three wise monkeys, a Japanese pictorial maxim, have been cancelled by a group of academics at the University of York. The Daily Mail has the details.
They’re a cultural trope that have been used to symbolise the proverbial ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’.
But it appears the three wise monkeys have been cancelled after academics at the University of York decided they are an oppressive racial stereotype.
Organisers of a forthcoming art history conference for the university have apologised for using a picture of the monkeys in promotional material and have pulled the image from their website to avoid offence.
“Upon reflection, we strongly believe that our first poster is not appropriate as its iconology promulgates a long-standing legacy of oppression and exploits racist stereotypes,” academics wrote in a statement seen by the Times.
It continued: “We bring this to your attention so that we may be held accountable for our actions and in our privileges do and be better.”
The three monkeys are depicted as having one with its eyes covered, another with its ears covered and another with its mouth covered.
The image became popular in Japan in the 17th century before spreading to the West.
It is associated with the Tendai school of Buddhism where they are perceived as helpers for divine figures.
But a spokeswoman for the University of York said academics were concerned the image could be insulting to ethnic minorities.
“The Japanese symbol of the three wise monkeys was used to represent a postgraduate conference about the sensory experiences of the body, and it also appeared on a document that asked for submission of research papers to the conference on a range of areas, one of which included papers that represented black, indigenous and people of colour,” she said.
“It was considered… that a monkey, which has been used in a derogatory way in the past, could cause offence in this context, despite this not being the intention of the organisers, so the image was removed.”
The image was used on a call for submissions page for the online conference Sensorial Fixations: Orality, Aurality, Opticality and Hapticity.
Experts in Japanese culture last night hit out at any suggestion that the monkeys could be insulting.
Lucia Dolce, who has been studying Japanese Buddhism at the School of Oriental and African studies at the University of London for 20 years, told the Times: “The monkey is a sacred being. They are vehicles of delight.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Mail‘s Guy Adams has written an amusing piece about Leicester entitled “The University of Woke“.
Stop Press 2: In his latest piece for Breitbart, James Delingpole takes issue with Boris Johnson’s recent assertion that there is nothing wrong with being woke.
Stop Press 3: A Lockdown Sceptics reader has sent in a new example of the woke language in action.
“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.
The Great Barrington Declaration
The Great Barrington Declaration, a petition started by Professor Martin Kulldorff, Professor Sunetra Gupta and Professor Jay Bhattacharya calling for a strategy of “Focused Protection” (protect the elderly and the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with life), was launched in October and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it ever since. If you googled it a week after launch, the top hits were three smear pieces from the Guardian, including: “Herd immunity letter signed by fake experts including ‘Dr Johnny Bananas’.” (Freddie Sayers at UnHerd warned us about this the day before it appeared.) On the bright side, Google UK has stopped shadow banning it, so the actual Declaration now tops the search results – and Toby’s Spectator piece about the attempt to suppress it is among the top hits – although discussion of it has been censored by Reddit. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job.)
You can find it here. Please sign it. Now over three quarters of a million signatures.
Update: The authors of the GBD have expanded the FAQs to deal with some of the arguments and smears that have been made against their proposal. Worth reading in full.
Update 2: Many of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration are involved with new UK anti-lockdown campaign Recovery. Find out more and join here.
Update 3: You can watch Sunetra Gupta set out the case for “Focused Protection” here and Jay Bhattacharya make it here.
Update 4: The three GBD authors plus Prof Carl Heneghan of CEBM have launched a new website collateralglobal.org, “a global repository for research into the collateral effects of the COVID-19 lockdown measures”. Follow Collateral Global on Twitter here. Sign up to the newsletter here.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many legal cases being brought against the Government and its ministers we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
The Simon Dolan case has now reached the end of the road. The current lead case is the Robin Tilbrook case which challenges whether the Lockdown Regulations are constitutional. You can read about that and contribute here.
Then there’s John’s Campaign which is focused specifically on care homes. Find out more about that here.
There’s the GoodLawProject and Runnymede Trust’s Judicial Review of the Government’s award of lucrative PPE contracts to various private companies. You can find out more about that here and contribute to the crowdfunder here.
And last but not least there was the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. A High Court judge refused permission for the FSU’s judicial review on December 9th and the FSU has decided not to appeal the decision because Ofcom has conceded most of the points it was making. Check here for details.
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. Samaritans is available round the clock, every single day of the year, providing a safe place for anyone struggling to cope, whoever they are, however they feel, whatever life has done to them.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. Doing these daily updates is hard work (although we have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending us stories and links). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here. (Don’t assume we’ll pick them up in the comments.)
And Finally…
The genius that is Remy of Reason TV, has an entertaining take on the legislators who socially distance themselves from their Covid rules. A must watch.
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.
Vive la resistance!!!
I enjoyed a convivial evening with some friends from (our lockdown sceptic) church last night. Good food, squashing together around the keyboard, playing silly games, conversing over a shared interest.
I say this not to show off or make people jealous or whatever, but because I highly recommend getting together with other people, whether an official anti-lockdown group, or friends with a shared interest, be it church, tiddly winks or simply people you know who do not consent. This is the best tonic to the blues that many of us are feeling, this is what makes us human.
We must keep old normal life, real life going in any way we can so that there is something left to salvage when all this is over Keep going, stay strong, support each other!
If this is a war, we are the resistance, and defeat is not an option.
Hear, hear! Good start to the day, Hugh.
The Great Reopen UK businesses are asked to open – please share
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCGI4kurfbY
https://t.me/thegreatreopening
30th January there is a call for British pubs, restaurants, hospitality to reopen. Just like Italian restaurant and bars are doing
Who’s prepared to fight for their livelihood?
More importantly who’s going to get off their backsides & support them?
You want your pubs back, your social lives…take them!!!
#Reopen #Pubs #restaurants #
Do you want to defeat Johnson & Hancock? Here’s how, in 70 seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_mGaBvT0JA&list=WL&index=36
Google is ‘holding a gun to our head’ by threatening the removal of the search engine in Australia
Sky News Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ6CClY4Tt8
There is another way forward, DuckDuckGo.
Biden Invites China Into US Energy Sector
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shDqFGPPmnk
Mahyar Tousi
I have been using it. It’s easy to use.
Ivermectin success is being suppressed by the vermin since January 3rd
Please ask all you know to forward these links and even print flyers to place in any sane businesses.
The question needs to be asked ; why is the UK refusing to use a proven medication with NO side effects that has been safely used for many years, but continue to push a vaccine that has had NO reliable testing and has already caused deaths and incapacitations ?
https://www.e-bmc.co.uk/
Now even the US has approved ivermectin
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/miraculous-ivermectin-approved-for-use-in-the-us-for-the-treatment-of-covid-19
It should be noted that even India is now far ahead of the UK in treatment of the mythical COVID ( aka flu ..) virus
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/india-develops-covid-treatment-kit-for-less-than-3-per-person-with-miraculous-ivermectin
And the definitive opinion that should be followed;
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/former-pfizer-vp-no-need-for-vaccines-the-pandemic-is-effectively-over
The scamdemic was over the minute the governors and mayors and other politicians in charge encouraged the riots back in May
Joe Biden Takes the Throne – Trump Is Finished!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTvBnU0Ed8A&list=WL&index=33
AwakenWithJP
1.68M subscribers
First They Came For The Conservatives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOXQZPu8S1U&list=WL&index=28
FACEBOOK shuts down Socialist Workers Party in Britain
Tony Heller
98.5K subscribers
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
– Winston Churchill
Wannabee Dictator
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbmqAstdk7U&list=WL&index=36
Yes, we need all pub, cafe and restaurant owners to come together and open up. We are ready to take a table and to stand by the resistance needed to oust the this bs. If Italy can do it so can we.
good evening – Katie Hopkins – Gyms PROTECT the NHS
15,424 views•23 Jan 2021
Katie Hopkins. Full interview to follow. My love to gym owners and gym bunnies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wK1qxf2oU4
In the U.K. they are all locked down
The reason gyms and hairdressers are closed is because Boris doesn’t go to either of them
Couldn’t agree with you more! We’ve got friends coming over to snowshoe on Sunday. Being outdoors with them is legal, but once we invite them inside we become law breakers. We’ve got no neighbours so there’s not any risk of getting caught, but it just feels good to socialize and give the government the middle finger. So yes, stick with like-minded people and family members who aren’t nuts and stay human. Normal is the only way I’m willing to behave. Stay strong and socialize whenever you can!
Snowshoe? Sounds lovely, though I guess it could describe quite a lot of places in Canada! Then again, parts of the UK have been a bit “Canadian” just recently – brrrr….
I’ll tell you what triggered my latest rant though. I was so upset to read Poppy’s post and what her BF has been going through. So many victims, so much hurt, we need to resist however we can. The victims of lockdowns are in my thoughts (and prayers).
Mine too. I have a meeting with my MP this week and I am going to read out to her some of Poppy’s post from here.
Good luck with that.
Fake news about Covid-19 – History Debunked
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INAF45WpVzU
The British government has been rebuked by the Advertising Standards Authority for spreading fake news about the Covid epidemic.
More cracks appearing. Great!
My blood boils when I read the stories of suffering. I said to my husband last night that I’m ashamed of our generation (we are in our mid-50s) — we’ve left our parents to rot in LTC facilities and screwed over our kids. By “we” I of course mean those in our generation who are pulling the strings — I don’t mean to disparage those of us who are middle-aged sceptics. We’d go back to normal in a heartbeat if given the opportunity and would never have implemented this insanity.
If you’re Canadian, you have to find ways to embrace winter! We’ve cut trails on our property and the snowshoeing is amazing. It’s invigorating and it’s great for both mind and body. When we can lure people to come over and make it a social event, it’s even better.
We did this last weekend with friends… just sat around a kitchen table for a few hours. We have “zoom fatigue”. We literally cannot look at friends and loved ones on screens anymore. The human connection has revived us. We are now house hunting on Saturdays for human connection. Most estate agents will remove masks when we explain we find it hard to understand masked faces. It’s literally saving us!
I’ve never actually used zoom.
Perhaps I should try house hunting. Maybe in Westmorland…
You have never zoomed… that’s why you are able to stay human. It is dehumanising! Terrifying that all school children are now placed in front of a screen all day every day. Absolutely chilling! While the teachers unions have enabled teachers (I’m sure many are furious) to sit at home on furlough or teach to a camera while babysitting a classroom of children also glued to screens and plugged into headphones. We have to save humanity!!
These things really shouldn’t be a part of teaching.
I am a teacher and I absolutely agree. I hate all of the technology.
Everybody looks ugly on zoom, even people I like such as Neil Oliver.
That’s exactly what a zoom call is, dehumanising. My 12 year old grandson loves playing football, he is in the local team. As most forms of excersise is now banned in Scotland his team leaders trying to keep in contact with the young players set up a regular zoom meeting.
I set him up on my tablet and left him alone. When I checked in on him, he was playing on his phone while some players and team leaders struggled to keep conversation going. The following week I made excuses for him, I couldn’t put him through that torture again.
Yesterday a couple of lads from his team were in the play park next to my house, he went off to see them and as I watched these children play, laugh and run about, what struck me the most was my grandson smiling and talking, this doesn’t seem much but he’s such a deep wee soul and doesn’t smile much anymore but this proved to me, how very important this physical interaction is to him and zoom calls just lead to him going deeper into himself and being with his peers physically brings him out of his shell.
I am so happy for you and him we have to keep this going
I truly hate zoom. I make all manner of excuses to get out of zoom church activities. It just feels all wrong. Yes, it’s fine to chat people who live far away, but in the same town you could see in person, no way.
I loathe Zoom with a passion. Ditto the other alternatives. We do (I organise) no church Zoom activities – never have. We meet on the Lord’s Day, and on Wednesday – it’s surprising how many who turn up with masks will then break the law by hanging around afterwards…. 😂
Imago Dei – it shouldn’t be hidden, and neither should it be pretended that pixels are the same.
I have never used Zoom or Skype, refuse to. Face to face contact is the way to go. I now just ignore all these silly rules.
Same. I just cannot do zoom or any other replacement activity our evil government has given us to let them off the hook for destroying human interaction.
Until early last year you had child experts and educators bemoaning about the amount of time children spent in front of screens. Now where are they?
Happy to sacrifice child development on the altar of Covid and the Church of the NHS I suspect.
Exactly!
We’re going to Essex next week househunting 😉
I would love to sit round a table with friends like in the days before the PTB decided to destroy our way of life to make way for their own warped ideological purposes. Unfortunately, old friends are fully signed up to Lockdown and won’t hear of it, and family is too far away.
Excellent that sounds great
Dead right we have the kids and partners around a few times a week for dinner, still visit relatives and have done since day one. Just common sense if anyone is unwell don’t come if fine your welcome.
Hugh, good to hear. I have just sent a private message to you. I would be very grateful if you respond; many thanks in advance!
excuse my ignorance but how do you use PM on here please?
I mentioned ‘tiddly winks’ to a lady I met walking by the river. She came round, we got tiddly and then had forty winks together. Almost felt human again.
Haha love it
Well done. We have consistently ignored the command to salute with the arm at 45 degrees, and have always welcomed anyone in.
The main inhibition is those who – for the best of reasons – wish to be cautious for our sake.
As I’ve said before, we are told to cough into our elbow and then we are also told to bump elbows. Strange…
Thank you for posting, Hugh. Important court hearing on Monday for a judicial review regarding restrictions on worship in England and Wales. https://christianconcern.com/cccases/church-lockdown/
But England churches can all open?
Well done. We must stay alive by whatever means and keep our friends alive too despite what the state is trying to do to us!!!
Sounds wonderful thanks for sharing.
I long to meet Christians who are not hard core Covidians. All churches closed for safety. When and if we get out of this safety dystopia, it will take me a long time to forgive the Church.
I am thinking about setting up a network of Christians for mutual support
We have a small prayer group. Sadly, it has to be on beastly zoom because we are far apart geographically, but we are together in our concern for the victims of the current lunacy and our rejection of Church cowardice.
Great idea. I’m grateful to whomever provided the link to the irreverends podcast which has been on my headphones when I go for a walk. I’d never have found it otherwise.
Lockdown Stories: I contemplated suicide | 20-Jan-21
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtlq8arl4jo&list=WL&index=42
A talkRADIO listener has said she contemplated suicide because of the stress the lockdown.
Speaking to Julia Hartley-Brewer, Sarah Banks from Derbyshire said: “When Boris first announced the lockdown I went into a panic state. I have childhood trauma, and anything that makes me feel out of control triggers that.
“In the first few weeks we muddled through. Things started to get worse for me. I was spiralling out of control to the point where I walked out of the house with the full intention of taking my life and not coming home.”
Ms Banks said her children were happy to return to school but her eldest child struggled after two pupils tested positive in her school bubble, meaning she had to isolate.
She added her family have only seen her mother-in-law through a window since March: “We bought her an iPad but the home haven’t been able to find the time to connect that to the Wi-Fi.”
Time to get over the trauma then.
Awareness of mental health issues is great, but the idea is that you then take time to fix them. Or you make changes to avoid that issue affecting others. Not expect the rest of the world to change to fit around you.
You don’t “get over” trauma. You can learn to manage the damage but it takes a long time. Suggesting that someone “gets over” trauma usually comes from someone who has such deeply buried trauma, they are terrified of being made to face it. They have buried their trauma so they want others to bury theirs. We see a lot of these people in positions of power, because power gives them the false sense they have “overcome” the trauma. Hitler was famously bullied by his father. How different the world might be today if he’d had help confronting and managing his pain rather than trying to “get over” it by gaining the power to inflict pain on others…
“Not expect the rest of the world to change to fit around you.”
As with masks and lockdown????
That’s a major mental illness.
“Not expect the rest of the world to change to fit around you.” You mean like peope who think the rest of the world should lockdown to deal with their fears.
On a separate matter, if there was an award for the most insensitive post on LS, you would win outright.
Lucan has to be 77th Brigade.
You make a valid point, perhaps it didn’t come across as intended, for that I think you may have been harshly judged. You are right, no one has the right to expect everyone else to surrender their freedoms to pander to their fears. Or indulge others by facilitating their fantasies. I note the majority of sceptics are socially conservative, their old normal was hell for some more naturally introverted people, yet before cv19 socially conservative people imposed their social rituals on society and ostracised those who felt uncomfortable with them! Touche. As a libertarian with a introverted personality, I have no issue with some of cv19 mitigation measures, some are common sense, eg large social gatherings etc. & i feel some sceptic complaints border on trivial, sometimes you have to make compromises at exceptional times, whatever your opinion on cv19, it was an unexpected event that required some urgent intervention. WHAT I OBJECT TOO IS ANY FORM OF COMPULSORY ENFORCEMENT, COERCION OR MANDATORY GOVERNMENT DIKTAT. This medical problem became a political crisis the moment government interfered allowing technocrats to take our freedom for their safety! Any mitigation should have been advisory with government increasing capacity. Now this mild medical issue… Read more »
Is 40 down arrows a record? Should I congratulate you for most unpopular comment. 😅
Probably what he wants.
Time to go off duty corporal.
“Havent found the time” – how shocking – what is that Home trying to hide?
Furious MP SLAMS https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/svg/1f1ec-1f1e7.svg “Failed Lockdown” Destroying Great Britain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXLyXqYyhPc
I love Desmond Swayne MP
If only we had 360 Desmond Swaynes instead of the current dross in Parliament.
China’s Takeover Of The UN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbqMRbBFVCY
Mahyar Tousi
I think it’s time to stop whining about the PRC. Their role is of interest, but this has been a western foot-shooting exercise.
China never twisted any arms, what this highlights is the wests drift into dictatorship, would politicians of the 50s 60 or 70s followed chinas lead?
The Clown Show Begins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zPNgt2GWwg&list=WL&index=29
Tony Heller
Excellent video, thanks!
Most people haven’t a clue about how percentages work. The only message they’re capable of getting at the moment is ‘just go on being terrified, it’s always a good reason when it’s got “per cent” tagged on to it.’
As I never listen to government propaganda, I didn’t know that they were trying to stigmatise us dog-walkers.
But it makes sense. Joggers project an image of aspiring healthiness, which the medico-Fascists obviously loathe. But joggers don’t stop to talk. Of all groups, dog walkers are the likeliest to stop and chat, both with other dog walkers and with people at large. We carry the deadly bacillus of sanity.
Bouncy energetic dogs must help in this spreading of happiness, I mean the virus, too.
When we had our two spaniels taking them walkies always took 10 times longer than it should have because of all the dog owners we would meet on the way. Those were happy dayz!
Always happy to talk to a happy dog and owner when out walking. I had no idea how these simple pleasures are so important to me.
‘aspiring healthiness’ – yes, they are determined to keep on breathing!
I had no idea about the ads but have noticed a lot more dog walkers the last few days. We all chat to each other and all unmasked and old. The only masked one is my 30 year old neighbour.
Of all the mad things we hear now, and have got used to hearing, to a degree, this was amongst the most stupid and actually made me laugh. And I’m not doing too much laughing these days.
Just back from walking my three dogs…..
There was a horrific quote from a Government advisor on the BBC website about ‘ we need to reduce mobility’. It made me think of old people losing the ability to walk, people developing claustrophobia and people shut in their houses contemplating suicide. That is what not getting out and about does and that’s not including things like obesity and heart disease. You’d think they wanted to kill us all.
The best thing all of us can do to “reduce pressure on the NHS” is to keep up our physical and mental health. This cannot be done by staying at home.
Call just went out from No 10 for more pooper scooper snoopers…
Straight away you see the agenda.
The new variant is more deadly and more transmissible…fatality could be 1.3% as the original variant is 1% deadly (already disproven is it not).
The answer? More lockdown ofcourse. Now even more strict.
This is what they want
The answer is always more lockdown….just like with an abuser where the answer is always more punches in the face.
You are absolutely right! The brain washing techniques used by the government are exactly the same as a coercive/abusive relationship. there is a name for it; Neural Linguistic Programming. That’s why there are behavioural psychologists like the Marxist Susan Mitchie on the SAGE group.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/FgSALTfZCT0/
Parliament made coercive control a criminal offence, but not when it is perpetrated by organisations. Why the exemption?
Let’s get some sanity back into our lives. So many are suffering from misery, depression, unemployment, kids’ education being ruined, financial troubles, boredom, undiagnosed cancer, basically the loss of nearly a year of meaningful life. 67,000,000 meaningful life years lost, and that’s just in the UK And for what ? Why are the sheep volunteering for slaughter ? Over the course of 2020, there were 54,000 excess deaths in total from 14th March to 1st January according to the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, and that includes the effects of lockdown and people being terrified of using the NHS because of the scare campaign by the government. So 54,000 people, under 0.1% of the population, died more than would have if there were no COVID and no lockdown. Of these, around 20% or 10,000 were under 75, that’s around 0.02% of the people of this age. So we locked 60,172,000 under 75s in their houses to avoid 10,000 deaths, which happened anyway ? What were the government thinking ? And we stopped millions of children going to school, when the ONS tells us that 20 people under 20 died of COVID in the whole year. They say it would have been… Read more »
Superb post as ever Laurence. This says it all.
Thank you, very much appreciated.
Do you want to defeat Johnson & Hancock? Here’s how, in 70 seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_mGaBvT0JA&list=WL&index=36
Please send this to your MP. OK, s/he is almost certainly a useless, brainless, spineless sheep, but even so…
All politicians should have to live in a council block. And send their children to the sort of schools that they propose to impose on others.
I suspect that what we are seeing is the power of group think. And of patronage.
We are seeing the use of induced Fear as a propaganda weapon.
Yes that is exactly so. We are in a war being waged upon ourselves by our own government.
Thank you very much for taking the time to do the analysis and put this study together. I shall be making use of the results.
Excellent succinct post.
Thank you very much.
What’s it about? Follow the money – the imminent collapse of the dollar now bolstered by more money from outside the US flowing their way through zoom, Amazon, Uber, Netflix and most of the vaccine suppliers that might have gone to local businesses without the virus (see Offguardian). The end of the financial year might just mean the end of covid19 unless it didn’t work in which case we’ll get covid21 caused by the adverse reactions to the vaccines .. we’re just pawns in a game and of no real consequence to the players.
I totally agree but my view is that this is a world takeover by Bill Gates and his cronies. Bojo and other governments are getting instructions from him
They’re clearly getting their instructions from someone. Gates is implicated up to his neck but is also too obvious. The real puppetmasters have the power to stay invisible.
Digging further… Average UK life expectancy = 80 years / 4160 weeks. The equivalent of 16,105 individual lifetimes are thus condemned to be lived without basic freedoms, rights, pleasures, security, health assurances and /civil liberties per WEEK of lockdown.
Or, put another way.
The UK government is sanctioning over 2.000 equivalent lifetimes EVERY DAY to be lived deprived of those same basic liberties we previously took for granted.
Excellent
Absolutely superb.Spot on.
I hate to admit it, but I am starting to buy this conspiracy
theorystuff. The great reset, or some version of it… folks like James Delingpole seems to have gone off the deep end and now swim exclusively in those conspiratorial waters. Toby and us sceptics occasionally dip our toe in, but most remain in the shallow end. At which point should we start looking elsewhere for explanations? Or perhaps it will be too late by that point..As Ivor Cummins repeatedly says in his videos: Why are they doing this?
To die of Covid is, by and large, to die of old age.
GREAT post. That sums it up very well. A key part of the psy-op is to make people think the only way to think is how the government tells people how to think and that NOBODY thinks any differently. I think in reality many people are now being forced to question their reality and are confused and conflicted because what they thought about the world is being massively challenged. The Corona Project is a long standing plan, to use a naturally occurring virus to trigger a fake global pandemic in order to be a catalyst for massive social change. To enable a global transition into a new economic and political system. All the rest of who benefits is obvious, they knew the corona bomb was falling and got ready. It’s a global script. A business plan. This is why it looks so stupid and ridiculous, this is why it is so damaging, this is why the one-size-fits all approach is being used. The script was written by people who are really bad at writing scripts. People are just starting to see this scam with their own eyes, despite the constant barrage saying there is only one way to see what… Read more »
“The second ‘wave’ is a ripple.”
Which is why I am disturbed when I see the term used here (and ‘cases’ and ‘infections’ as substitutes for ‘PCR+’)
“possibly well meaning doctors and scientists like Whitty and Vallance.”
I find it difficult to accept that Messr’s Witty & Vallence should be described as well meaning. Both men are well qualified both professionally and intellectually to know that when they stand up at the press briefings they are pedalling bullshit and snake oil.
Whitty’s body language often makes it clear that he’s lying and uncomfortable about it.
He’s often distanced himself from Vallance’s assertions too.
Vallance seems to use the same botox as Hamcock.
It’s the PCR test stupid
The PCR test is just one of the means.
If this is the dreaded ‘second wave’ then what wave number for colds or flus are we on?
What wave number of death from cancer are we on?
It’s a ridiculous wording designed to keep you scared. And guess what? It’s working!
I’ll grant them the second season. Wave is just silly.
Each day a new spin on the lies, throwing the public off the scent. You can see what they’re doing! When sceptics start digging up the truth and putting it out there, the ‘convenient’ scientists throw out some new data and fear mongering for us to latch our jaws into and start chewing away at. It’s almost like we’re all being played.
I hope it is not my tax £ that is paying for the “security” for the likes of ferguson, whitless and valance,
You’ll be glad to know it isn’t. Your tax doesn’t pay for anything and hasn’t since at least the 1930s – probably before.
Taxes for Revenue is an obsolete concept in a modern financial system. That at least should be clear from the last years activities.
The security firm went doing anything else. So we either pay them to do nothing, or pay them to do something.
With luck, not for much longer
So let me get this right…
The UK is said to be the most compliant with govt over reach also the first country to offer a vaccine, and vaccinate so many, yet the virus mutated more here…
Hmmm if only there was some link…
“A SAGE warning revealing that scientists are only 50% sure the Kent strain of coronavirus could be more deadly was handed to ministers just hours before last night’s ‘scare-mongering’ press conference, it has been revealed.”
This reminds me of the weather forecasts that the Met Office used to put out when they didn’t have a clue what the weather was going to be like tomorrow. There will be a 50% chance of rain, translated as, it may rain, but there again it may not.
File under totally useless information.
If I toss a coin, I am fifty percent certain it will land heads.
“Believe me madam, there’s no hurricane coming tonight.” Michael Fish, October 1987.
Ouch!
“…believe it kills 30-91%| of people”?! Surely not, even given that some people’s numeracy is abysmal.
Or “the science”.
Someone really does need to tell them there’s no such thing.
Chilling how our language has been completely infiltrated. Before 2020 there was no article before “science”… it was just “science”… an evolving, ongoing study of the world that should – by definition – be regularly reviewed. Now it is “the science”. They once burnt people at the stake for denying “God’s truth”… it’s scary!
That isn’t true. The way Covid is discussed in public is exactly the same as climate change.
There is such a thing. But it’s not an immutable body of knowledge – it’s a process of rational thought that has a serious evidence-based methodology.
I think the problem is with the word ‘the’ – there is only ‘science’ not THE science: it’s not a monolith
Or the 1/3 people don’t have any symptoms advert.Very misleading.
It should say 1/3 people who have Covid don’t display any symptoms which is very questionable anyway.
… or 1/3 of people claimed to have ‘Covid’ actually don’t.
Clearly the scaremongering wasn’t working and they needed to up the ante.
It’s got to the stage now where they are not even pretending they are doing anything other than reading the tea leaves.
Vitamin D might protect against the virus. No we can’t issue it to everybody as a precaution even though it is cheap to do that.
Slight variant in virus may hurt some more people – in winter in the cold and dark after being depressed for months. Maximum precaution and panic!
It’s not even emotionally consistent now, never mind logically.
This pathetic ‘government’ does absolutely nothing to help the public. The only thing they know is how to lie.
I do remember reading that they were actually going to issue vitamin D supplements to the vulnerable. Sadly, it was only a pathetic 400iu.
Gaurdian helping the GReset with:
Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/22/electric-vehicles-close-to-tipping-point-of-mass-adoption
According to zap map there are 60 individual charging points in the city of Edinburgh in total. Six zero. 550,000 people live in the city of edinburgh.
The council voted to ban fossil fuel vehicles from the city centre area prior to covid84. The council has delayed that city change until 2022 because of covid84. There is not an inner ring road around the city, there is not an outer ring road around half the city.
So electricity is made by magic, without harming the environment?
Academics, yes Them, suggest five cars can be charged from each lamp post. Not a joke but a proposal.
Alternatively your electric car can be kept at Park and Rides at the edge of the city, you take the bus from your city centre home to the outskirts to pick up your car. Again, not a joke, a proposal.
This is where those plastic cones and painted lines of covid pavement widening in every town is leading.
Do the five cars at the lampost have to be stacked on top of each other?
And cobalt batteries are ever so environmentally friendly too lol.
Powered by the same magic that keeps Santa going all night.
Absolutely. We get ours directly from the outlets 😜😜😜😜😜
I observed earlier this week that in the Derby Arena lower car park there were about 30 cars, but all of the 5 or 6 electric charging points were unoccupied.
So Neil O’Brien MP, the smug, odious c**t who has been using his Twitter platform to attack lockdown sceptics or “Covid sceptics/deniers” as he likes to call them. Can nobody see the game here? An absolute no-mark of an MP (I never knew he existed) clearly given a small team of tech archaeologists to trawl through the past tweets of people like Clare Craig, Toby Young and Julia Hartley Brewer, using these tame “gotcha” attempts to destroy their credibility in public. These attacks are becoming more unhinged, personal and threatening, and its all intentional. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s been given access to 77th Brigade operations as he is a focal part of the asinine trolling that most of us social media users have had to endure. What I am accusing Neil O’Brien MP and the government of is simple – this man has been given a specific mission to attack prominent sceptics online. He is not “high profile” so as such, he and the government feel that he can act with impunity and get away with these cowardly tirades. He is an attack dog, nothing more. I wonder how faithful he will be to this role when the… Read more »
I suspect, along with the 77th Brigade, he is also involved with the Integrity Initiative.
And J-TRIG.
Have you heard Neil O’Brien in his interviews on radio. He really loses it calling presenters stupid. When you are losing the argument resort to these tactics. I’ve had the same with climate change for years. I’ve watched the enormous amounts of money wasted on lame projects, usually paid to friends in high places. I stopped getting involved. Brexit was another story I got challenged on. Again if you look into the background of MPs and associates that were remainers, often you find the reason.
He sounds like a self absorbed politician (even by their standards) but unfortunately with a large majority so he is safe.
Another PPE degree so no doubt well versed in science.
Probably doesn’t think he’s essentially promoting censorship.
If you have to censor people then you’ve already lost the argument.
Bob Ward of Grantham Institute is an excellent example. Grantham who funds it made his pile selling US wood pellets to Drax.
Things I know for absolute certain, no matter what ANY politician, doctor, journalist, friend says:
1 human beings need constant connection with other human beings in order to survive and thrive
2 putting anything over your mouth and nose inhibits your ability to breathe normally
3 natural immunity to a virus is always better than artificially induced immunity
4 no healthy human being should ever be incarcerated for 14 days against their will if they have committed no crime
5 if someone is not displaying any symptoms of a disease, they are a healthy individual and no test in the world should be used to suggest otherwise
6 children have a fundamental right to play with each other, especially outdoors when weather permits
7 anyone who disagrees with the above points should ask themselves whether they GENUINELY disagree or have been LED to disagree.
Let me know if you disagree… and why.
hear hear
So, as a matter of policy, lockdown care homes. Deny the residents access to their relatives; indeed anyone except minimal support from staff for essentials. And when they die of isolation, loneliness and depression call it Covid 19.
I know… I have a family member in one. Agoraphobic so would not even consent to being brought outside when outside visits were briefly allowed in the summer. A brainwashed friend has a mother locked down in a home… furious that “rule breakers” and “vaccine refusers” are the reason for mother’s decline in health. Those of us who understand MUST survive this no matter what it takes, we have to live to tell the tale of what was done.
I understand that some Nazi concentration camp victims survived because of their burning desire to tell the world what had been done to them.
Our bodies are not threatened, but our souls are. We are surrounded by zombies with dead souls, spiritual Musulmänner.
Keep that burning desire.
I understand their logic if that’s the case – but I’m just not convinced the majority of people will do anything other than turn their faces to the wall and just look blankly at us for explaining to them that not everyone is “having a good War” and the vast majority of us are having a darn awful war and it’s worse for some than others. The comfortable/unthinking Covid believers don’t want anything upsetting the mental state of selfish little them. Some of them will do their darndest to tell us to shut up/to block their ears/etc in order not to listen to us telling it like it is.
The problem for them is that there will be no evidence to support their faith.
Yes we must. We are war now
ah, I see you’ve read ‘If This is a Man’ too! – strange, I’ve been interested in the accounts of concentration camp survivors, survivors of totalitarian regimes, all my life, now I wonder – is it this lifelong study which enables me to recognise it when I see it, or perhaps am I just a person with a hammer to whom everything looks like a nail?
The death camps were surely the stripped-down essence of totalitarianism, which has nothing to offer anybody except death, or the power to inflict death on others.
What we have now is a grotesque new version, in which bodies are secure and well-fed, but souls are systematically starved and killed. Obviously you’d have to be insane to prefer the concentration camp version, but the new version is, in its way, just as corrosive of civilisation. Both versions demonstrate that there is no limit to human corruptibility, which is what totalitarianism both feeds and feeds on.
One reason why I try to be a Christian is that Christianity acknowledges the infinite corruptibility of Man, but insists that it is redeemable by the infinite goodness if God. Non-Christians will find other approaches.
It seems my mother in law has taken to the bottle. She gets an endless supply of Baileys which she puts in her coffee, but she’s been overdoing it and they have had to take her bottle of Baileys away from her which I think is a damned cheek. She’s 97 FGS isolated from her friends and family that’s the only joy she’s got left!
I cannot even begin to comprehend any moral justification for this deprivation.
How can anybody here disagree? We’re human. We’re sane.
I know WE are, Annie. But we are outnumbered and I’m scared! They are taking bigger and bigger lies to ensure that anyone challenging them is vilified. Prominent people must be too scared to challenge… it gets worse and worse!
Eventually the lies will be so gross that even the zombies will notice. Hang on in there.
Thanks Annie, every time I feel hopeless I come here. This community has literally saved me from losing my mind. So grateful! We must have a big LS party when this is over.
Yes I like that idea
Lies such as the Kent variant, for example?
The Kent variant has veracity. Unfortunately it came from a lab testing a dying patient (kept alive with family agreement for the purpose) creating a mutation by using vaccines on their ineffective immune system. The information is all traceable online. It seems journalists are simply not interested.
There are thousands of variants. Mutate is what viruses do – and Sarscov2 has had over a year to get on with it.
I agree. The lies are already so ridiculous that people are seeing through them.
I feel the same. I try to remain positive as I don’t want ‘them’ to win and take that away from me too. I will admit though, I am scared of where they will take this and if in the very near future, it will become ever impossible for me to see my grown up daughter who lives 120 miles away. Of course I will do everything in my power to continue to see her, but I think, it is this thought that really terrifies me
same here. my grown up children live 200 miles away. it has crossed my mind that I will be plotting a back route which I will cycle by night, spending the days sleeping in the woods….
That sounds like a nice thing to do. Well worth doing even if there was a covid meltdown.
Well done friend – a simple list often helps.
100% agree. How could any sane person not?
The Covidiots ie zealots are not sane are they?
No they are certainly not!
They have literally been scared witless.
Spot on!
couldn’t agree more my friend. ironic isn’t it that a year ago nobody in their right mind would have predicted that they would ever hold any other view!
The horrific lessons of the Romanian orphanages, has obviously been forgotten or ignored. These children were so damaged from emotional/physical neglect, the majority would never make it to adulthood. A newborn baby, not shown any physical affection or nurture, will not survive much past their 6th month! Damage from Loneliness is equivalent to smoking 60 cigarettes a day!
No one here will disagree. But how can we convince the majority out there otherwise? I have had constant clashes with friends, family and supermarket guards over masks, PCR testing, lockdowns and vaccine efficacy (not against in principle, but serious doubts how effective this one is). Any ideas how we can loosen the grip the MSM and government have over the vast swathe of ordinary people in the UK and beyond?
We can’t give up. Double down on the ethics. Just keep saying, “I can’t support something that is so unethical.” When they trot out the propaganda about all the covid deaths, look at them, puzzled, and say, “But destroying the lives of healthy people is MUCH MORE unethical, wouldn’t you agree?” We have to reach them through these chains of brainwashing madness…
Seven hundred upticks if I could do it.
Do it over an extended period of time and you habituate shallow breathing even when you don’t wear a mask. After all, the mask exemplifies the fear of breathing in and out properly.
Reading this last night. Written in 1889. Very prescient. (No prizes for identifying it :-).
Let’s get on with it.
“We are creatures of the sun, we men and women. We love light and life. That is why we crowd into the towns and cities, and the country grows more and more deserted every year. In the sunlight – in the daytime, when Nature is alive and busy all around us, we like the open hillsides and the deep woods well enough: but in the night, when our Mother Earth has gone to sleep, and left us waking, oh! the world seems so lonesome, and we get frightened, like children in a silent house. Then we sit and sob, and long for the gas-lit streets, and the sound of human voices, and the answering throb of human life. We feel so helpless and so little in the great stillness, when the dark trees rustle in the night-wind. There are so many ghosts about, and their silent sighs make us feel so sad. Let us gather together in the great cities, and light huge bonfires of a million gas-jets, and shout and ring together and feel brave.”
From one of my all-time favourite books.
Nature for me. They can stuff their gasjets.
I don’t want a prize but would like to know. It might get me to start reading, an occupation Einstein said was overrated.
Clue: JKJ afloat
Imagine Blobjo, Shitty and Valium together all paddling madly to keep their sinking, cobbled-together raft of lies and hyperbole afloat….
Please, don’t even mention them alongside J, George and Harris, whom I love like brothers.
If you haven’t yet read ‘3 Men in a Boat’, you have a real treat in store (‘3 Men on The Bummel’ is not too shabby either!).
And never confuse your cushions with your Kusses.
More project fear.
Takes me back to the immediate post 9/11 where each day was another elevation of the danger level from “possible” danger to “imminent” to “help help there’s a bearded man eating hummus looking at me”.
Only difference then was the level of dissent and rational protest. The anti-war movement. Investigative journalism. A small but influential group of refusenik MPs. Huge swathes of the young, the students, the old militant 60s demographic, all challenging the narrative.
Now? Silence.
Judging by the replies to Peston’s tweet, the only people in the entire country who trust Neil Ferguson are the complicit media and the people who make the rules.
What a shambles.
Generally avoid Peston. Did catch him the other week in a powerfully incisive interview with Vallance where he asked him the question we have all been wanting to know. “What do you do to relax and unwind in the evenings?
By the way, the answer was TV box sets. My money had been on drowning kittens in a sack, but there you go, it’s why Peston gets the big bucks.
🤣 🤣 I would like to drown Vallance and Whitty in a sack, I doubt I am alone in that thought.
Exactly – it’s nothing to do with the virus, it’s about control. Having cut carbon emissions by 7% in 2020 by ruining foreign holidays and destroying small businesses already, they need to do it again in 2021 – shut down aviation altogether? I hope not.
I saw a headline a couple of days ago saying we will not meet our emissions target for 2030! I say fxxk the emissions target I’m not staying at home so Bozo and his elitist mates can brag that we met them!
cutting carbon emissions is also a lie. the global warming hoax was a precursor to the global killer virus hoax. it’s not about any of those things, you have to scrape away the veneer of lies before you get any kind of glimpse into what’s really going on
Yep just change virus for terrorism for climate change. These three things are totally interchangeable as key drivers for social control. All of them, deep state holograms used to terrify humanity into compliance, bit by bit.
The Totalitarian Tip-Toe, Problem-Reaction-Solution.
The planet is greening up nicely with the extra carbon. A bit more and some of the deserts might begin to disappear.
7% cut in carbon = 150m at risk of death because of extreme food poverty.
It’s almost reminiscent of the scene from The Hunt For Red October where Jack Ryan is trying to figure out the conundrum “How do you make people want to get off a nuclear submarine?”
The massive increase in air travel is blamed by most climate zealots for playing a considerable role in the so called “climate emergency” (yes, I am a sceptic). When the Icelandic ash cloud hit Europe in 2010, the six days when almost all air traffic was grounded, the skies cleared considerably, which is what they would love to replicate. You can almost see those in the WEF asking themselves a similar question.
“How do you make people NOT want to fly anywhere any more?”
I believe that they found their answer.
These podium corona briefings from the Prime Muppett and his henchmen would be laughable if it wasn’t for the deadly seriuosness of their consequences. Can anyone really believe what is being said? Even Bojo didn’t sound convinced by what he was saying and I am willing to bet “the Science” will not be validated viz. this new variant lethality; they even couched what they said with caveats about it. Blatant scaremongering and so irresponsible in tax payer funded functionaries but sadly likely to be taken in by the majority. My wife saw bits of it on the news. Whilst I railed at the tv set and what was said she felt differently. She said something along the lines of: “It makes me afraid not to believe what they say” and it would make her more anxious to live otherwise than in accordance to government diktat, I suppose. Clearly, I have failed as a sceptic in convincing my own household of the justice and correct basis of our cause! She, with my daughter, wants me to be vaccinated. I am holding out on a “wait and see” basis but will still probably decline it. By the way, can anybody point me… Read more »
Doesn’t your wife recall seeing on the news Whitty and Valance telling us that there would be four thousand coronavirus deaths per day by November of last year?
Is she not aware that when the government changed its position on face masks, Whitty had to admit to a Select Committee that there was no evidence for the change of policy?
Does she not know that the same committee was told that scientific evidence for the two metre social distancing rule was “the precautionary principle” ie, there is no evidence?
Has she not noticed that each lockdown has been introduced after the number of so called cases have already started to decline?
Is she not aware that the so called vaccines are still in the trial stage and have not been licensed? That the manufacturers do not even claim that they confer immunity? That they have side effects, including (judging by the experience of Norway) a more than a one in a thousand risk of death?
Does she not realise that the so called the science is in fact nothing other than pseudoscience?
Thanks for your reply.
She knows most of what you rightly reference from me.
Just to no avail.
This deliberate fearmongering evokes a visceral response rather than a reasoned analysis in most people.
My wife is an intelligent person (she did marry me,after all!) but her anxiety is too much for her.
I have to add that the fearmongering evokes a visceral response in me too but one of instinctive disbelief and distrust.
I really cannot understand the fear! The evidence that this is a sham is all around us yet people choose not to see it.
Between March and June last year the whole population was subjected to mind control and brainwashing techniques.Deprived of normal human contact this is the result.
I’ve seen the result with family and friends.They know something is not right with the official line but they always revert back to the comfort blanket of official propaganda.
I always assumed it was because with a 1 in 100 or 1 in 400 or 1 in 10,000 risk of death (delete according to your individual risk profile) from the virus, was enough of a risk to induce fear in many people.
For me, a virus would have to kill about 5pct of healthy 48 year olds before I got scared. Mostly because I never get sick. Never had flu, mumps, German measles etc.
Though it brings little comfort, Plato’s Cave perfectly encapsulates the difficulties we face as LD opponents.
I haven’t watched one! There is an upside to not watching live TV. 😂
If you are pushed into vaccination a prescription will have to be given as the vaccine is unlicensed except for emergency use. Point out to the vaccinator that you are on methotrexate and get them to sign indemnity against damage. I bet they won’t.
No reason why Methotrexate should be a contra indication to having the “vaccine” but it may impair its efficacy- Mrs M is on similar and has been told this by her specialist nurse, anyway.
There has been NO contra indication testing done for ANY medication. Be careful.
Neil O’Brien MP strikes me as thoroughly modern and fashionable. He asserts that facts he does not like are disinformation. He thinks that asserting something is false is a refutation. He believes casting aspersions on a person’s motives demonstrates the falsity of any evidence they have presented. He thinks rhetorical appeals to his moral superiority trumps evidence and reason. He assumes accusation is proof of guilt. He believes he has the right to censor. He assumes his sensibilities are superior to sense. For Mr O’Brien is always right and anyone who holds a differing opinion is mad, bad and dangerous, a threat to society, and should be stripped of their rights.
interesting – because I think he’s a kind of grotesque distorted mirror image of the RIGHT position, the TRUE position. (ie- my position 🙂 It is not ALWAYS right to give the other side the courtesy of listening to their point of view, debating it like a gentleman; it is not ALWAYS right to give them the courtesy of assuming they are acting in good faith – sometimes that is misplaced trust, sometimes that is to give them too much credit. There ARE circs when they should just be shot down, without any courtesy at all – would you have listened to Hitler’s point of view about the gas chambers, would you have politely debated with him about it? – this is a battle between good and evil, it is not a scholarly debating society
Hitler never publicly acknowledged the existence of the gas chambers.
He is just a good reminder to any previous Tory voters never vote for the shitty party again ever…..he is the kind of person you get. They really are filth.
Perhaps the electorate or the local party would care to express their views?
And more importantly offers not one item of evidence to back his claim up. All disinformation and smears. This is using SJW methods this is how they cancel people. Keep punching the same story and eventually its somehow believed?
He has a website devoted to disinformation and smears: https://www.covidfaq.co
Unsurprisingly he’s a PPE graduate – couldn’t hack the medicine degree he started. Never had a proper job in his life. Too fucking many of them in parliament like this I’m afraid.
Using the figures that Boris based his 30% on he could have said it decreases the chances of survival from 99% to 98.7%. Wonder why he didn’t…
You are correct but looking at survivl rates, the other side of the coin of covid statistics doesn’t inspire the righteous fear that this government of ours seeks to engender in it’s public.
Yes he should be honest but be isn’t and never has been over this whole shit show. I bet he didn’t even have COVID when he said he had it!
That miracle of miracles, dying on Good Friday, miraculously recovered Easter Sunday. The unholiest resurrection. And he wasn’t shoved straight onto a ventilator, like all the other poor bastards who were being admitted for Convid, 9/10 of whom did not survive, the protocol still being used by the No Health Service
They make you think everyone is on a ventilator, but being in a “ventilator bed” doesn’t mean a ventilator is being used – in my hospital only about 1 in 6 in those beds are actually ventilated, and not for very long. Most will be on CPAP or just oxygen. Most deaths are the very elderly or unwell who are too sick to be ventilated – and as everyone on here knows, ventilation is no walk in the park and can kill a fragile body. So frustrating to see the stats put out, and it scares people and puts them off coming for their appointments for other conditions. And wastes appointments that other people could have used, as they often decide not to attend on the day, after seeing the latest nonsense spewing out. Our hospital was in a TV report, and next day 125 people rang to cancel outpatient appointments as they were scared they might “catch it”. However, interestingly there’s no sign that anyone is worried about distancing when they’re queueing up for they vaccines!
They must know the wheels are coming off this thing. They must be absolutely terrified. They can’t back peddle now. So the only way forward is keep on lying, let the lies get bigger – so big that anyone disputing them will be crucified as a “denier” (we are denying the LIES not the virus/disease) and this is how religion takes hold. Every time!
I’m denying the virus. The virus is at the centre of the lie. I’m denying it all: I don’t see any baby to extract from the bathwater, it’s ALL bathwater, with no baby in there at all: just pull the plug on it
My baby is the fruit of an asymptomatic pregnancy and you just flushed it down the drainpipe! You have asymptomatic blood on your hands! Waaah!
Perhaps we can join Creepy Joe’s new wars to take people’s minds off this monstrous cock up.
The cracks are showing
For once, I feel slightly optimistic that cracks are appearing in the polit bureau of Johnson, Hancock, Vallance et al.
“The new variant is 30% more deadly” said the clown, intending to scare people into more lockdown, knowingly speaking utter bullshit. “No evidence,” chorused SAGE, “but please press project fear.” “Right, we’ll cut you off,” said the rest of the world, adding a further cruise missile under the economy.
“The vaccine won’t work against Variant South Africa,” Hancock spluttered. “Shut the f**K up,” said Vallance, worried he would spill the beans. The cracks are showing: the exit strategy won’t work. We have to live with the virus; vaccination might help but I think they know it is not going to deliver what they want.
Meanwhile the next crack needs to come from Rishi Sunak or a treasury leak. Lockdown (and future government debt repayments from it) costs EACH taxpayer about £130 PER DAY of lockdown (that’s my estimate). That might motivate a few more Tory MPs to consider joining the recovery group.
I thought it was originally 70% more deadly?
70% longer lasting, no, wait, that was fairy liquid.
Fairy Liquid: Hands, Face, Soft.
Those hands that do dishes are as soft as your face!! Aaah great advert
Oooh! Stepford Wives flash back.
Mutant strain? My arse!
Jim Royle
”…mutation is a humdrum aspect of life for an RNA virus. Because these viruses employ an intrinsically error-prone RNA polymerase for replication, their genomes will accumulate mutations during every copying cycle. Moreover, these cycles can occur on the order of hours, ensuring that a diverse virus population will be generated within a single infected host. While this amazing capacity to mutate fuels the engine of evolutionary change, most mutations adversely impact some aspect of virus function and are removed by natural selection. Hence, although a mutation that changes how a virus is transmitted or its virulence may readily appear in a virus population,”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0690-4
The Major General strikes again: They are the SAGE committee, they know all about the Virus, And they have a hundred thousand tricks, with terror to inspire us: They imprison us at home and tell us coffee cups will kill us, And a thousand other lies they spout and with them gaily fill us. They’ve reduced the hoi polloi to herds of meekly bleating sheeple, They have stigmatised the attitudes of sane and decent people; They convinced the brainless masses that they’d save us with their vaccine, But now we’ve got the snake oil, there’s no sign of SAGE relaxing. They love to see their puppets on their jerking strings a-dancing, And the war against the sceptics they are every day advancing. In short, their total lack of all humanity and pity Makes them the very model of a Fascist SAGE committee. Now their latest trick is mutants, and they have them by the million: There’s one that comes from Kent and there’s another that’s Brazilian, There’s one that’s from South Africa and one that comes from Singapore, And one from the Antarctic that was never on the wing afore. There’s one from Windward Islands which is carried on bananas,… Read more »
Genius – thank you! Our very own G&S poet laureate, take a bow!
Utterly brilliant – please get Toby to reprint so all can see!
Hear hear!
Brilliant.
Bravo!