Sweden’s Per Capita Deaths in Line with the European Average in 2020
Will Jones has taken another look at the situation in Sweden. He finds that the country does indeed show that lockdowns aren’t needed.
Severe restrictions on civic and economic life are the only thing standing between us and the virus spiralling out of control and killing many times more people than at present. That is the foundational belief of lockdownism. Unfortunately, it is defeated by the example of any country or state that does not impose such restrictions and does not experience such an outcome. A number of states in America fit this description this winter, such as Florida, Texas, North Dakota and South Dakota.
Sweden is the main example in Europe. It is also a good comparison for the UK as it is similarly urbanised (actually slightly more, 87.7% vs 83.4%) and the capital Stockholm has a similar population density to London.
In the spring Sweden imposed only light restrictions, including a limit of 50 on public gatherings, but did not at any point close businesses or most schools or require people to stay at home. This light-touch approach has largely continued, although the country has come under huge pressure to impose more restrictive measures.
In the midst of a winter surge, Sweden finally passed a law that came into effect on January 10th adding some new restrictions on gathering sizes and venue capacity and enabling the Government to close businesses, though it has not yet done so. Reuters reported:
Sweden tightened social distancing rules for shopping centres, gyms and private gatherings on Friday and said it was ready to close businesses if needed, but stopped short of a lockdown to fight the spread of the pandemic.
Earlier in the day, parliament voted the Government wider powers to close businesses and limit the size of public and private gatherings as an addition to what have so-far been mostly voluntary measures to ensure social distancing.
“Today, the Government has not decided on the closure of businesses, but the Government is ready to make that kind of decision as well,” Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told a news conference. “This is not something that we take lightly, but people’s lives and health are at stake.”
From Sunday [January 10th], gyms, sports centres, shopping malls and public pools will have to set a maximum number of visitors based on their size.
In addition, private gatherings will also be limited to eight people, a rule which until now has only affected public events.
A Lockdown Sceptics reader whose family lives in Sweden sent us an update on the current rules.
- We can visit family and friends – max eight people inside or out
- Social distancing – one person per 10 square metres in shops etc.
- Bars and cafes are open but can not serve alcohol after eight o’clock, max four people to a table
- Restaurants open – table service only and max four people to a table
- All shops and businesses open but must be Covid safe
- Hairdressers and beauty parlours open but must be Covid safe
- Nurseries and primary schools (under 13) open
- Lower secondary schools mostly open but decision up to the school board
- Schools over 16 years mostly closed but may take decision to open from January 25th
- Universities closed
- Theme parks closed
- Gyms mainly open but must be Covid safe
- Public swimming pools and theatres closed
- Museums and cinemas – some open, some not. Must adhere to Covid restrictions
- All other businesses open
- Advice is to avoid unnecessary shopping/travel and so on
- No requirement to wear a mask/face covering. However, it is advised on public transport during peak times and should be more substantial than a face covering
Despite these much lighter restrictions than in the UK and many other countries, Sweden has had a death toll broadly in line with other countries that locked down hard. Indeed, a study from researchers at the University of Oslo concluded that between July 2019 and July 2020 Sweden had almost no excess deaths at all.
The winter surge is currently in decline in Sweden, and was in decline prior to the new restrictions coming into effect on January 10th. ICU admissions have been declining sharply across the country since the week beginning January 4th, and in Stockholm, which was hit hard in spring, ICU admissions stopped rising at the beginning of December and have declined since (see below).
Overall excess deaths in the country have been running quite high since mid-November but are now, like ICU admissions, in decline (see below). A recent, very thorough blog post found that if you add Sweden’s all-cause mortality in 2019 and 2020 together (2019 had below-average mortality), it was about the same as the cumulative total for 2017 and 2018.
Sweden didn’t do nothing. But it did a lot less than many other countries including the UK, and without seeing the huge death tolls predicted by those who tell us lockdowns are the only way to “control” the virus. There are places which did even less than Sweden, and their examples should also be studied for the lessons they teach us. But Sweden continues to expose the central myth of the lockdowners – that without severe restrictions things would be far worse than they are now, and so all the collateral damage must be worth it.
Stop Press: Philippe Lemoine, a PhD student at Cornell, has produced a great Twitter thread about Sweden and the unavoidable conclusion that lockdowns don’t have much impact on reducing Covid mortality.
Ivermectin: Miracle Cure or Snake Oil?
City AM reports that Oxford University is to investigate the potential of the antiparasitic drug ivermectin for treating COVID-19:
A cheap drug credited with dramatically reducing COVID-19 deaths has been moved to trial stage in the UK.
Researchers at Oxford University are carrying out a Principle trial programme aimed at finding a treatment that can counteract the disease at an early stage and could be used at home soon after symptoms appear.
The next batch of medicines it will assess includes ivermectin, which has been hailed as a Covid “wonder drug”, the Times reported.
Ivermectin has traditionally been used on livestock and to treat people with parasitic infestations, but has been credited with reducing Covid deaths in the developing world.
However, scientists have warned that its efficacy is yet to be properly proven.
“It has potential antiviral properties and anti-inflammatory properties and there have been quite a few smaller trials conducted in low and middle-income countries, showing that it speeds recovery, reduces inflammation and reduces hospitalisation,” Chris Butler, Professor of Primary Care at the University of Oxford and a co-chief of the Principle trial, told the newspaper.
“But there’s a gap in the data. There’s not been a really rigorous trial.”
The drug has been shown to block the entry of viral protein into the nuclei of cells, which could prevent the virus from replicated.
Results from initial, small-scale trials have been described as “promising”, though scientists and health officials have warned that further tests are needed.
It seems worth doing a mini round-up of just some of the evidence recently amassed for the beneficial effects of ivermectin:
- “Prophylaxis Covid-19 in Healthcare Agents by Intensive Treatment With Ivermectin and Iota-carrageenan” – A clinical trail in Argentina evaluated the protective effect of intensive treatment of Ivermectin and Iota-carrageenan. It found that the treatment was able to reduce the number of health workers infected with COVID-19 and that it reduced the severity of the disease
- “Controlled randomised clinical trial on using Ivermectin with Doxycycline for treating COVID-19 patients in Baghdad, Iraq (Preprint)” – In this controlled trial, 70 patients were treated with ivermectin and doxycyline for a defined period, and 70 were given standard therapy. The treatment reduced the time to recovery and the mortality
- “Ivermectin as a potential treatment for mild to moderate COVID-19 – A double blind randomised placebo-controlled trial (Preprint)” – This trial administered 12 mg of ivermectin to adults with mild to moderate COVID-19 disease on day 1 and day 2 of hospital admission, and set a primary outcome measure of a negative test on day 6. While there was no difference in the primary outcome, a significantly higher proportion of the patients who were given ivermectin survived
- “Role of ivermectin in the prevention of COVID-19 infection among healthcare workers in India: A matched case-control study (Preprint)” – This study took place in India, and was aimed at exploring the association between ivermectin prophylaxis and the development of COVID-19 infection among healthcare workers. It found that two-dose ivermectin prophylaxis at a dose of 300 μg/kg with a gap of 72 hours was associated with a 73% reduction of COVID-19 infection among healthcare workers for the following month
- “Meta-analysis of randomised trials of ivermectin to treat SARS-CoV-2 infection” – A WHO-sponsored meta-analysis investigating ivermectin in 18 randomised clinical trials (2282 patients) identified through systematic searches of PUBMED, EMBASE, MedRxiv and trial registries. It found that in six randomised trials involving patients with moderate or severe infection, there was a 75% reduction in mortality with favourable clinical recovery and reduced hospitalisation. It pointed out that “Ivermectin should be validated in larger, appropriately controlled randomised trials before the results are sufficient for review by regulatory authorities”
The Swiss Doctor has an explanation of how ivermectin works:
To date, the mode of action of ivermectin against the SARS-CoV-2 has remained somewhat of a mystery. Early studies indicated that ivermectin may inhibit viral protein transportation. But a new US-Canadian study, published in Nature Communications Biology, found that ivermectin is highly effective (>90%) in inhibiting the main enzyme (3CLpro) involved in the replication of the SARS-CoV-2 (and other RNA viruses). This might explain why ivermectin appears to be highly effective even as a prophylaxis against SARS-CoV-2 infection
Scepticism is required in all things, of course, but this treatment does look promising, as Mike Yeadon confirms:
REACT Report: Why Wasn’t it Peer Reviewed?
The latest REACT report from Imperial College received a fair amount of media attention for its finding that “Coronavirus infections are not falling” and that they “may have begun to rise”. Today we’re publishing a guest post by Alice Bragg, who points out that the REACT reports are seldom subjected to peer review.
Here we go again! Imperial College publishing reports that tell us we need more lockdowns for longer. The latest REACT report claims the last three weeks of lockdown have made no difference, so our children must suffer more.
The problem is that this report has not been peer-reviewed. As an academic friend once said to me, “If it’s not peer-reviewed, it’s not relevant.”
Which begs the question: why have only two of the 14 REACT reports, stretching back throughout last year, been peer-reviewed?
Here is the December 15th REACT report on the World Health Organisation website with its own clear warning:
“Preprints are preliminary research reports that have not been certified by peer review. They should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behaviour and should not be reported in news media as established information.”
Worth noting…
We have all been shocked by the footage from inside Intensive Care Units at hospitals in London and the South East. All the doctors, nurses, porters, cleaners and managers working in them are heroes, and we are indebted to them for the rest of our days.
But are lockdowns the way to prevent these scenes?
One would assume that policymakers would only implement a policy as far-reaching and punishing as lockdown if they had a strong degree of certainty that the suspension of our liberties will save lives.
It was in response to a model produced by Imperial College that the Government imposed the first lockdown. However, it is now widely acknowledged that the assumptions underpinning that model were highly dubious.
In addition, the code that powered that model has been found to be of very poor quality when reviewed and analysed by coding experts, computer programmers and epidemiologists. Even Professor Ferguson himself said that it was a model he had created more than 13 years ago to model the likely course of flu pandemics.
Nevertheless, we have watched our freedom of movement be suspended indefinitely, along with our freedom to associate with others of our choosing, the freedom to assemble and gather, and the freedom to protest (the cornerstone of any democracy). Our children are being denied their right to go to school and, in many cases, have been separated from their peers and wider family for almost a year. Businesses have been forcibly closed, many of which will never recover.
At a time when the stakes are so high, why would Imperial College’s REACT reports not be peer-reviewed?
The answer can be found in the peer-review process itself. Over the last 20 years, the number of papers submitted to journals has grown dramatically. This has been compounded by the growth of ‘pay to publish’ sites that make money every time a paper goes up. Experts who are qualified to carry out rigorous peer-reviews would probably prefer not to spend all their time critiquing other peoples’ papers. Demand outstrips the ‘peer’ supply.
That said, when research findings are being used to guide Government policy, there must be a way to cut through the crowd? After all, not many scientific papers are used to justify a population being denied their basic freedoms or children being taken out of school.
According to David Livermore, Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of East Anglia and Chair of the Public Health England Resistance to Antibiotics Programme:
“REACT is a surveillance programme which then supports various studies and analyses. Such a surveillance programme would normally have an Independent Advisory Committee”
An Independent Advisory Committee of this nature, according to Prof Livermore, would undertake a number of tasks, including making sure that the people who participate in the programme continue to represent the population. They would also, he stresses, play the role of the peer-reviewer, so that when REACT reports hit the media and arrive on ministers’ desks, the information they contain has been rigorously assessed.
This is only possible if ‘independent’ means what it says, and that people who are constructively sceptical – asking awkward questions – are appointed, not just like-minded ‘friends of the project’. As the debate about ‘the science’ becomes increasingly polarised, inviting informed and qualified critics such as Dr Clare Craig, Dr Jonathan Engler, Dr Michael Yeadon, Dr John Lee and Joel Smalley onto an independent REACT advisory board would inspire great confidence.
Stop Press: Over at the Spectator, Philip Thomas has more on why the REACT study is problematic
What Value Should We Put on a Human Life?
Today we’re publishing a new piece by Dr David Cook, a senior scientist with over 20 years’ experience in drug research and development. Following the row over Lord Sumption’s contribution to the Big Questions last weekend, Dr Cook explains the concept of Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY), and then applies it to lockdowns.
In 2017 the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) rejected the drug nivolumab for use in the NHS to treat patients with advanced head and neck cancers. The reason given was that, despite the drug showing positive benefits, it was judged to be too expensive based on the cost per ‘quality adjusted life year’ (QALY). For patients with this disease (and clinicians treating them) this was a hugely disappointing decision and although subsequently nivolumab has been approved for use, at the point of this judgement it must have felt to these patients that their lives were somehow being deemed to be less valuable than those of other patients.
Let’s wind forward to today and Lord Sumption discussing the impact of lockdown on society and apparently suggesting something similar, namely, that some lives are less valuable than others.
But in both of these cases is this what was actually meant? Are we really assigning a value to a life? Are we really judging that some lives are more valuable than others and so more worthy of saving?
To answer these questions, let’s focus on QALYs because these seem to be highly culpable in the crime of ‘life valuation’.
Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) are not used to assess the quality of a life and they are certainly not used to make a judgement on its value.
The reason for this is because QALYs are used to assess the impact and value of an intervention. The judgement as to the quality of someone’s life is something that only the individual can make, but regardless of how they feel about it as a whole, they would certainly be able to tell if it had improved or got worse after some kind of treatment. If I whack you on the hand with a ruler has this improved your quality of life? What if I now kiss it better?
This is the fundamental point – QALYs are always used comparatively: did this treatment or intervention improve or reduce the quality of life?
In assessing the value of new therapies, QALYs are used to try and produce an objective view of their (hopefully positive) impact. A good example of the challenges of this kind of assessment and why QALYs are so helpful is if we think about how we would assess the value of a new analgesic or pain treatment. Such a treatment may have no effect on life expectancy and so its whole impact is on quality of life. But how do you assess this impact when pain is such a personal experience? The only way is to actually ask the individual patient. As a result, a major part of the assessment of the benefit of such medicines is done through use of questionnaires and asking how the individual feels; did the treatment improve your quality of life? Then, by aggregating all of these individual responses together, we can start to assess whether overall the treatment was beneficial or not. You can see that at no point are we making a judgement of the quality or value of the patient’s life. The assessment we are making is of the value of the treatment.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: John Humphrys covers similar ground in his Saturday Daily Mail column. Noting that, according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the value of a QALY is about £30,000, he writes:
No one can possibly know yet how much the lockdowns have cost the country. The bills rocket with every day that passes. What we do know is that if we applied the QALY test to the lives ‘saved’, we would no longer be talking about £30,000 a year. It would be many times that amount.
The price of even the most expensive new drug is a drop in the ocean compared to the vast cost of closing down half the nation’s economy – and the bill is rising with every word I type.
So does that mean the life of someone who faces the risk of dying from Covid must be valued more than those who have other life-threatening conditions?
Many people have died because they’ve been unable to get the treatment they needed. Hard-headed calculations were presented to policy-makers who knew what the consequences of lockdowns would be but they took them anyway.
Look Him in The Eyes… A Reader Responds
A reader has written to us to express his disappointment about the NHS’s latest advertising campaign.
I am writing about the shocking new HMG/NHS coronavirus public health campaign. These are the adverts with “Look them in the eyes…” which show a poorly person wearing an oxygen mask.
In public health the aim of an information campaign should be to give accurate, truthful and honest information so that the public can understand the issues and take any necessary steps or measures for their own health.
Does the Governments and NHS “Look them in they eyes…” poster campaign fit any of the above? A resounding NO! Their campaign is one of blame and division. They have chosen to set one group against another. There is the victim group, this is the sick virus sufferer. They are portrayed as the innocent victim whom someone else has done a terrible thing to.
If there is a victim then this other person must be a perpetrator, a bad person or person who has committed a crime. We would generally consider a perpetrator to have carried out their actions against the victim on purpose and in a planned way. It follows that whoever becomes sick with Covid, or any virus for that matter, has had a bad thing done to them and a bad person is to blame.
The Government and NHS in this poster campaign is blaming one set of people for doing a bad thing to another set of people and no good can come from this. No one is given accurate, measured or honest information upon which they can take actions. Instead, in setting up a victim and a perpetrator, our Government and NHS are setting one lot of people against another. It is extraordinary that a Government and Public Health Service should commission a campaign that blames and divides its population. The campaign fails on all accounts – it provides nothing, people will be angered by it and take no notice of it because it is not truthful, while other people will seek out the bad people to punish them.
A poster campaign like this fails all groups. There are real families who have passed covid on to each other. One person I know of who works for the NHS likely picked up the infection during their hospital shifts. From this person, the elder parents picked up an infection and sadly one died. Does our Government and NHS understand what it is suggesting to this worker and their family? The suggestion is the NHS worker has killed their own parent.
It is widely acknowledged that many patients acquire their coronavirus infections during their hospital stay. Some of these people have died. Has the Government and the NHS looked itself in the eyes?
This is a terrible public information campaign. I believe it has come from a Government which has taken on the belief it can control a respiratory virus and is desperate to deflect blame as it becomes obvious it cannot.
When a Government blames its population and attempts to turn one group against another what will become of us? Is the Government aiming for civil war?
A Smidgen of Optimism on Masks
Lockdown Sceptics reader Steve Sieff finds cause for optimism in the change in emphasis to medical and surgical masks in the various mandates, rules and guidance. Steve runs the Green band: Red band website which makes the case for a coloured wrist band system that could promote individual choice when it comes to social distancing and managing Covid risk.
I have an optimistic view to offer on the advance of N95 masks.
I know that the position of most lockdown sceptics is that masks should go. I also know that many of the LS arguments are based on the lack of evidence that they are effective to reduce transmission – even in some cases that they increase the risk of harm. I do not know, but I suspect, that for many LS readers, the question of transmission is largely irrelevant because they consider that the negatives of a masked society outweigh the gains that might be made if some reduction to transmission were shown. The logic behind this goes back to the fundamental belief that COVID-19 should not be ascribed the special status that it has been given on the basis that it affects a small percentage of people. Beyond that, the groups most likely to suffer can be easily identified and therefore can easily protect themselves or be protected.
I believe that underpinning the views above is a strong desire amongst the vast majority of LS readers to see a restoral of the individual’s right to make choices for themselves. We would all like to see a more balanced presentation of risks and of facts from our Government (and others). In the event that the balanced presentation of available data convinced some people to take extraordinary protective measures, we might disagree with the reaction, but most of us would acknowledge and respect others’ right to be cautious provided their decisions did not overly impact on the decisions we make when not in contact with them. This is the basis of Green Band: Red Band of course.
In the context of individual freedom, I wonder if a shift towards more protective masks might be a positive thing. I know that this might sound like anathema to most LS readers so I will explain. The mask narrative to date has been that “my mask protects you, your mask protects me”. This logic moves us away from personal responsibility towards collective responsibility. Those who do not wear a mask are letting down others and are stigmatised. More protective masks such as N95s and N99s could change this narrative. These masks are designed to protect users. If they were widely available then the message could shift to wearing a mask to protect yourself. There would still be some protection for others, but the emphasis would be on protecting oneself. That is extremely important because it could pave the way for masks to become a choice. Those at lower risk (whether through age or vaccination) could decide that they do not require the protection that a mask provides while those who were more concerned could opt to protect themselves.
Of course, this shift in approach will not come easily. There will be many who argue that mandatory self-protection has an important place (see seat-belts, motorcycle helmets, etc.) because the dramatic reduction in risk is worth enforcing for the relatively minor loss of liberty. And there will be those who will continue to believe that the individual has a duty to protect the NHS by making every effort not to get sick/injured, etc. While hospital numbers remain high, those arguments will no doubt be persuasive for the majority. However, as hospital numbers fall, the general assessment of risk will change. It is harder to maintain a climate of fear without supportive death rates and as increasing numbers of people are vaccinated. At that stage the availability of protective masks could give the Government the opportunity to end mask mandates in favour of advising people to wear N95/N99s if they are concerned.
Stop Press: The Connexion reports that the WHO is maintaining its recommendation for fabric masks.
A Close Encounter With the Police
A Lockdown Sceptics reader has written to us describing a nightmarish afternoon dog walk.
I just need to offload.
I went two miles to a huge area of open space. Arrived at 3pm. Walked the dog and got back to the car at 4.30pm, darkness now creeping in and a howling gale. My 21 year-old was with me (student final year law degree… yep so much stress and upset). We were about to drive off when a police car drove up and a rather hot (okay unnecessary detail) bobby stopped us.
Now at this point I looked around at the car park. Four cars and maybe a few bedraggled dog walkers. Hmm… No way he’s here for Covid surveillance, I thought. Maybe it’s a drug selling hotspot? To cut a long story short, yes he was there to nab (engage and educate) Covid rule-breaking criminals. After a 15-minute chat I drove off uncomfortably, having given him no details about how far we had come or why. The local police had actually sent a patrol car out in the rain to a hill at dusk to ask people why they were there!
Admittedly, my husband is critically vulnerable according to the NHS. Was I taking unnecessary risks and endangering his life? We walk locally and rarely go in shops. I’m antisocial. I don’t need shops but I do need open spaces!
I relayed this story to a close friend. Her reply was aggressive, judgemental and swift. I shouldn’t have driven and my actions put others at risk. She claimed I could have had an accident and caused yet more issues for the ambulance service. I was very much in the wrong. She is a partner at a large law firm. She’s now so far lost in the crazy mists of fear that her reasoning is, in my opinion, misguided and extreme. A lawyer! We’ve had many such conversations and I’ve patiently listened and respected her views. This was a line too far over-stepped.
I’m terrified for the evolution I see in society. It’s gnawing holes of fear and anger into my very being . I’m watching the shifting mood, peoples lives used like props in a high-budget Derren Brown special.
And so, don’t stop fighting. I’m a harassed and war torn ‘at home mum of three’ with no influence. I need you… and all the other questioning sceptics. I want educated reasoning rather than fear-focused propaganda.
Next Week’s Davos Guest List
Like so much else these days, next week’s DAVOS summit will take place on Zoom. Deutsche Welle has the story:
It’s that time of the year again when a sleepy Alpine town in Switzerland usually comes alive as the global elite descends on its snow-clad slopes to debate global challenges. This year, however, Davos has been left undisturbed with its eponymous annual jamboree moving online amid a still raging COVID-19 pandemic…
The more than 50-year-old annual event attended by global political and business leaders, celebrities and prominent social activists is taking place amid the worst economic crisis in living memory that has rendered millions jobless and deepened global inequalities.
An annual risks survey published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Tuesday warned that economic and social fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic could lead to “social unrest, political fragmentation and geopolitical tensions”.
We need an economic recovery that is “more resilient, more inclusive and more sustainable”, WEF founder Klaus Schwab told reporters…
The pandemic and the uneven responses to the crisis unleashed by it have stoked geopolitical tensions. Governments have chosen to put national interests ahead of others, unilaterally shutting down borders and hoarding food and medical supplies.
We need to restore trust in our world, Schwab said. “We have to substantially reinforce global cooperation again and engage all stakeholders into the solution of the problems we face, and here we have to engage particularly business.”
Nowhere has this me-first approach been more apparent than on the vaccine front where rich nations have secured billions of doses – many times the size of their populations – while poor nations struggle for supplies. The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is also one of the speakers, cautioned that the world was on the brink of “catastrophic moral failure”.
The global scramble for vaccines, or vaccine nationalism, risks prolonging the pandemic and delaying the easing of global travel restrictions.
“COVID-19 anywhere is COVID-19 everywhere,” WEF President Borge Brende told reporters. “We all are in the same boat and we would have to collaborate to really make progress.”
It is interesting to note that the WEF has a date in mind for when it may be able to meet in person:
A virtual summit doesn’t mean that Davos regulars, many of them without official badges, would be robbed of their opportunity to hobnob and strike deals at glamorous receptions that take place on the side lines of the main event.
The WEF has said it would hold its marquee event in person in Singapore from May 13th-16th later this year.
Worth reading in full.
Sceptics Under Fire
It won’t have escaped readers’ attention that lockdown sceptics are coming under increasing fire from defenders of lockdown orthodoxy. Now, it seems, the most fanatical of these defenders – a group that includes Neil O’Brien MP – have created a website called “Antivirus: The COVID-19 FAQ“. As you’ll see if you click on the link, it attempts to rebut most of the sceptics’ arguments and singles out a group of sceptics for criticism, most of them contributors to this website.
We thought about producing a lengthy response, making all the obvious points: the fact that some sceptics’ predictions have turned out to be inaccurate doesn’t mean their main argument – that the costs of lockdowns outweigh the benefits – should be dismissed; the proponents of lockdowns have made equally inaccurate predictions (remember the “Graph of Doom”?); some of the stories we’ve flagged up that were initially dismissed as “conspiracy theories” have turned out to be quite plausible (e.g. that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology); there’s a world of difference between being a ‘lockdown sceptic’ and a ‘Covid denier’; the WHO has confirmed that our reservations about the accuracy of the PCR test are well-founded; etc., etc.
However, we thought it might be more fun to invite readers to defend lockdown scepticism from the arguments set out on Neil O’Brien’s ‘myth-busting’ website instead. So please take a look at the website and let us know what you think. Put the word “Antivirus” in the subject line and we’ll publish some of the best responses over the next few days.
Stop Press: We’ve received a terrific response to Christopher Snowdon’s Jan 16th piece in Quillette that we’ll publish tomorrow.
Round-up
- “Covid: More deadly’ UK variant claim played down by scientists” – The BBC notes that there is only “some evidence” that the Kent variant may be associated with “a higher degree of mortality”
- “Who is Britain kidding? We can’t control the virus with a travel ban and we shouldn’t try” – Juliet Samuel in the Telegraph says that an expensive and damaging travel ban makes no sense
- “Don’t blame the public for packed hospitals, urge top doctors after string of medics tell rule-breakers they have ‘blood on their hands‘” – MailOnline report that two doctors have warned their fellow medics against blaming rule-breakers for packed wards
- “Why is the Labour Party so enthusiastic about COVID-19 lockdowns when they are so destructive to our poorest communities?” – Writing for RT, Dr Lisa McKenzie asks an excellent question of the Labour party – and the British Left more generally
- “Fast-spreading Covid variant can elude immune responses” – Nature reports on the evidence that a variant identified in South Africa might compromise immunity, sparking concerns about vaccine effectiveness
- “Those with the least have suffered the most during the COVID-19 pandemic” – “People on the lowest incomes have faced the worst of the pandemic’s economic bite” say Ian Hamilton and Aleks Collingwood in the BMJ
- “So is this really an epidemic of despair?” – Peter Hitchens points out in his Mail on Sunday column that there is no counting the damage done by the loss of social contact
- “Do people want to be free? Or do they prefer security at any price?” – In her Sunday Telegraph column, Janet Daley says weighs up today’s answer to an old question
- “Word of the Week: Sceptic” – Spectator Life‘s resident satirist Andy Shaw provides a new definition of the term ‘sceptic’
- “Reject Bad Science with Nick Hudson, PANDA – Pandemics Data and Analytics” – The Pandemic Podcast interviews Nick Hudson, the founder of Panda, an organisation with a mission to challenge the scientific basis of lockdowns
- “Lockdown Forever; The State of ‘Lockdown Scepticism’” – The latest edition of the Irreverend podcast sees Tom and Jamie considers the growing hostility toward lockdown sceptics
- “Tanzania took 27 million Euros from the European Union, embezzled it and then declared the country as Coronavirus free” – Africa Explained reports that officials in Tanzania are struggling to explain what happened to the 27 million Euros they collected from the EU solidarity fund for the fight against COVID-19. President Magufuli declared the pandemic in Tanzania officially over in May 2020
- “Travel bans should be based on evidence, not politics or fear” – Jakub Hlávka and Lisa Bari set out the case against border closures in Statnews
- “Wuhan one year on: The city that appears safe from Covid – but at what cost?” – The Telegraph’s China Correspondent reports from Wuhan, where, one year on, residents are grappling with the new normal
- Following the alarmist press conference on Friday, The Great Barrington Declaration Twitter account has a produced a great thread on Government messaging
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Seven today: “Hard Times Of Old England” by Steeleye Span, “Who’s Zoomin’ Who” by Aretha Franklin, “Running Out Of Fools” by Aretha Franklin, “Never Get Out Of These Blues Alive” by John Lee Hooker and Van Morrison, “Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’” by The Allman Brothers Band, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by The Who and “Hard Times (Nobody Knows Better Than I” by Ray Charles
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. We have a team of moderators in place to remove spam and deal with the trolls, but sometimes it takes a little while so please bear with us. You have to register to use the Forums as well as post comments below the line, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.
Stop Press: In another disturbing development for our times, it would appear that the best hope of a right swipe on a dating app is getting vaccinated. TMZ reports that Tinder, Bumble and OkCupid have all seen a major uptick in profiles mentioning the words “vaccine” or “vaccinated’ in their bios, and indicating vaccination readiness as a screener for matches. The jury is still out on whether the vaccine reduces transmission.
Sharing Stories
Some of you have asked how to link to particular stories on Lockdown Sceptics so you can share it. To do that, click on the headline of a particular story and a link symbol will appear on the right-hand side of the headline. Click on the link and the URL of your page will switch to the URL of that particular story. You can then copy that URL and either email it to your friends or post it on social media. Please do share the stories.
Social Media Accounts
You can follow Lockdown Sceptics on our social media accounts which are updated throughout the day. To follow us on Facebook, click here; to follow us on Twitter, click here; to follow us on Instagram, click here; to follow us on Parler, click here; and to follow us on MeWe, click here.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, we bring you the author Jen Hatmaker, who has publicly apologised for the offensive opening line of the prayer she delivered at the inaugural interfaith prayer service held for President Joe Biden. The Christian Post has the story:
Christian author Jen Hatmaker, who on Thursday joined a progressive group of interfaith leaders for the National Prayer Service in honour of President Joe Biden’s inauguration, has apologized for the first line of a prayer she delivered at the event.
“Almighty God, You have given us this good land as our heritage,” Hatmaker began in the prayer that she said was written by organisers of the event in her apology posted on Facebook shortly after the event.
“I was proud to offer the final liturgical prayer which was written by the organizers to serve as an anchor. I have one regret and thus apology. The very first sentence thanked God for giving us this land as our heritage. He didn’t. He didn’t give us this land,” she said.
“We took this land by force and trauma. It wasn’t an innocent divine transaction in which God bestowed an empty continent to colonizers. This is a shiny version of our actual history. If God gave this land to anyone, it was to the Native community who always lived here,” Hatmaker continued.
She explained that as soon as she read the line from the prayer she began to regret it.
“I panicked and froze and then just kept going. I am so sorry, community. Primarily sorry to my Native friends. It matters to me that we reckon with our history of white supremacy and the lies we surrounded it with, and I am filled with regret that I offered yet another hazy, exceptional rendition of the origin story of colonization. Ugh,” she lamented. “I can’t go on without apologizing. My stomach hurt all day.”
Hatmaker, who is also a mother of five, said if she could change anything about the prayer she would have included a call for America to repent of things like the unjust systems the nation has built.
Hatmaker, who is also a mother of five, said if she could change anything about the prayer she would have included a call for America to repent of things like the unjust systems the nation has built.
“God, may we continue to be a people who reckon with our violent history, repent from the unjust systems we built, denounce white supremacy in all its forms past and present, and continue to work together to form a more perfect union,” she said
Stop Press: In a comment piece for the Times, Janice Turner says that the US is heading towards eradicating “the language of biological sex in order to appease an influential trans lobby”.
Stop Press 2: The Post Millennial has an exclusive interview with they/them, the editor of the Spectator USA’s new Wokeyleaks column who is seeking to expose the “CEOs and board members of the social justice movement”.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a one-stop shop down here for people who want to obtain a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card – because wearing a mask causes them “severe distress”, for instance. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and the Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. And if you feel obliged to wear a mask but want to signal your disapproval of having to do so, you can get a “sexy world” mask with the Swedish flag on it here.
Don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face masks in shops here.
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption. Another reader has created an Android app which displays “I am exempt from wearing a face mask” on your phone. Only 99p.
If you’re a shop owner and you want to let your customers know you will not be insisting on face masks or asking them what their reasons for exemption are, you can download a friendly sign to stick in your window here.
And here’s an excellent piece about the ineffectiveness of masks by a Roger W. Koops, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry. See also the Swiss Doctor’s thorough review of the scientific evidence here and Prof Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson’s Spectator article about the Danish mask study here.
Stop Press: We have been reminded that today, 24th January, is the deadline by which the Secretary of State for Health was bound to review the requirements of the mask rules. The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Wearing of Face Coverings in a Relevant Place) (England) Regulations 2020 were passed on 24th July 2020. Regulation 9 stipulates that: “The Secretary of State must review the need for the requirements imposed by these Regulations before the end of the period of six months beginning with the day on which they come into force.’” It is unclear what the review will have entailed, but if any reader can enlighten us, please do so. According to Regulation 10, the mask regulations expire “at the end of the period of 12 months beginning with the day on which they come into force.” Six months to go.
Stop Press 2: The Telegraph has an entertaining postcard from South Dakota, where the Republicans are shunning masks to the consternation of the Democrats.
The Great Barrington Declaration
The Great Barrington Declaration, a petition started by Professor Martin Kulldorff, Professor Sunetra Gupta and Professor Jay Bhattacharya calling for a strategy of “Focused Protection” (protect the elderly and the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with life), was launched in October and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it ever since. If you googled it a week after launch, the top hits were three smear pieces from the Guardian, including: “Herd immunity letter signed by fake experts including ‘Dr Johnny Bananas’.” (Freddie Sayers at UnHerd warned us about this the day before it appeared.) On the bright side, Google UK has stopped shadow banning it, so the actual Declaration now tops the search results – and Toby’s Spectator piece about the attempt to suppress it is among the top hits – although discussion of it has been censored by Reddit. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job.)
You can find it here. Please sign it. Now over three quarters of a million signatures.
Update: The authors of the GBD have expanded the FAQs to deal with some of the arguments and smears that have been made against their proposal. Worth reading in full.
Update 2: Many of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration are involved with new UK anti-lockdown campaign Recovery. Find out more and join here.
Update 3: You can watch Sunetra Gupta set out the case for “Focused Protection” here and Jay Bhattacharya make it here.
Update 4: The three GBD authors plus Prof Carl Heneghan of CEBM have launched a new website collateralglobal.org, “a global repository for research into the collateral effects of the COVID-19 lockdown measures”. Follow Collateral Global on Twitter here. Sign up to the newsletter here.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many legal cases being brought against the Government and its ministers we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
The Simon Dolan case has now reached the end of the road. The current lead case is the Robin Tilbrook case which challenges whether the Lockdown Regulations are constitutional. You can read about that and contribute here.
Then there’s John’s Campaign which is focused specifically on care homes. Find out more about that here.
There’s the GoodLawProject and Runnymede Trust’s Judicial Review of the Government’s award of lucrative PPE contracts to various private companies. You can find out more about that here and contribute to the crowdfunder here.
And last but not least there was the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. A High Court judge refused permission for the FSU’s judicial review on December 9th and the FSU has decided not to appeal the decision because Ofcom has conceded most of the points it was making. Check here for details.
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. Samaritans is available round the clock, every single day of the year, providing a safe place for anyone struggling to cope, whoever they are, however they feel, whatever life has done to them.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. Doing these daily updates is hard work (although we have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending us stories and links). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here. (Don’t assume we’ll pick them up in the comments.)
And Finally…
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Good morning
Coronahoax.
Latest ICNARC Graphs: Amongst General Reattribution Of Other Illness To Covid-19, Pneumonia From Flu Is A Thing Of The Past
“Figure 19 is the most interesting graph of all because it shows that ICU admissions for patients with pneumonia leading from flu bumping along all year after April at, or just above, zero. This condition, it would seem, has gone the same way as polio, but more so, and is apparently a thing of the past.”
Well known phenomenon, covered in The Transmission of Epidemic Influenza by R Edgar Hope- Simpson, published almost 40 years ago.
Thankyou for that. Fascinating how mysterious flu remains. My search led me to the following update/review of his study. There’s a great bit about early research into transmissibilty research methods; different times!
https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-422X-5-29
Yes, one suspects a lot of his research wouldn’t be allowed or would be dismissed as ” not reliable” or ” not peer reviewed” in these establishment conformity days.
The Great Reopen UK businesses are asked to open – please forward to all local businesses
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 #
Here is the link and you can print the flyers. Please spread the link far and wide
https://thewhiterose.uk/the-great-reopening-30-january-2021/
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
Joe Biden Takes the Throne – Trump Is Finished!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTvBnU0Ed8A&list=WL&index=33
AwakenWithJP
1.68M subscribers
(THIS IS A PARODY BY THE WAY)
Joe Biden Takes the Throne – Trump Is Finished!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTvBnU0Ed8A&list=WL&index=33
AwakenWithJP
1.68M subscribers
JP nails it again!
Ah, Winnie, who ordered the RAF to bomb the Kurds with CW to ‘teach them a lesson’.
Biden Invites China Into US Energy Sector
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shDqFGPPmnk
Mahyar Tousi
Styx doesn’t call him, ‘Beijing Biden’ for NO reason…
I thought it was China Joe
He has his finger in many pies. Ukraine 2014, he was at the head of table at the Government meetings. The nominal head of the government (Petro Poroshenko) is taking back seat on the right.
Biden once joked “I talk to Poroshenko more than my own wife”
http://fortruss.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/biden-i-talk-to-poroshenko-more-than.html
Ivor Cummins
@FatEmperor
https://twitter.com/FatEmperor/status/1353032963156561923
Okay it’s retweet time guys, please share to make ourselves known out there. The British doctor’s outfit behiond this have finished their website
– NOTE the questions to ascertain if you support this
– very clear criteria indeed https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/svg/1f928.svg
https://smiles-matter.org #SciencePride2021
Wannabee Dictator
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbmqAstdk7U&list=WL&index=36
Google is ‘holding a gun to our head’ by threatening the removal of the search engine
Sky News Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ6CClY4Tt8
Go ahead and shoot, the bullet is harmless.
This is not to say that I support the Australian government’s proposed law – I need to know more about the details of that. However if the law as proposed is sound, I don’t think Google’s threat should be a showstopper.
Use DuckDuckGo.
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.
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
Morning. Just like the stupid man of p plumbers this turd should be named and shamed as well. Note the use of the elderly lady.
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-concerns-grow-over-number-of-carers-turning-down-vaccine-12195852
Good for them 😊
“The government should do more to counter the amount of disinformation”
Quite agree. They should immediately stop all their press conferences and daily briefings to the press and get on with doing what they should be doing.
Interesting shift from sky using disinformation… mostly media outlets have been content calling misinformation. Disinformation would be coming from a place of deliberate malice.
They didn’t finish the sentence…”coming out of their own mouths!”
The threat to care home staff does ring a bit hollow, I expect many of them take the line of, if you are paid very little you have very little to lose. I understand there is a huge shortage of care home staff and so I would have thought they are in a strong position.
Interestingly the news clip talks about vaccine misinformation and yet the misinformation would seem to be the issue with the vaccine promoters. Am I correct in thinking that the vaccine protects from serious covid effects but does not prevent primary upper respiratory infections? That is to say you all still get the covid cold but the cold no longer goes on to kill the vulnerable. In which case are the younger care staff not being entirely logical? I struggle to see any case for this vaccine other than with vulnerable people?
Saying that people who won’t have the vaccine are selfish rather implies that those who have had it are not actually protected by it.
I had someone tell me that the other day, that I was selfish and should think of others. I gave them both barrels, really large barrels. They were shocked and left speechless. Can’t be bothered with them anymore.
Very very good for you!
Many of those carers will be women of child-bearing age, who are advised against having the vaccine because of unknown side effects. Pfizer specifically advises pregnant and breastfeeding women not to have it, and pregnancy should be excluded before having it.
“Animal reproductive studies have not been completed.”
People on anticoagulation treatment should not receive the Pfizer vaccine.
Basically, they’ve rushed the vaccine out, using a novel vaccine that’s never been used in human populations before.
People are wise to be cautious.
As someone said last night, there’s a one-word answer to being bullied into having the vaccine: Thalidomide.
My wife works in admin at our local NHS hospital. She was contacted by a friend at the hospital on Friday, who pleaded with her to go to the hospital (it was her day off) and get a (Pfizer) Covid jab. It seems that the various clinical staff who had been assumed to be at the front of the queue had all found pressing reasons for not making themselves available, and there was a danger that the precious vaccine might be wasted. My wife was more than happy to have the jab and has encountered no significant side-effects, but it’s obvious that the professionals don’t seem to share her enthusiasm!
I certainly don’t share anyone’s enthusiasm to be an unpaid guinea pig for this rushed out vaccine. Out if interest was your wife given any opportunity to ask questions about the vaccine and was she asked about any previous health conditions/allergies etc.
Yeah, this is the very gnarly interface between personal liberty, customer demand, corporate pressure and government force.
A good friend of mine desperately needs to get her 93 year old mother into a care home – what do you think her attitude is towards care home staff who refuse the vaccine? Do you think she’s going to choose the care home where staff have free choice, or the one where by hook or by crook, all staff are certified vaccinated.
Her case is very difficult to refute without being particularly cold hearted. Accordingly, the care home provider’s business case for requiring all their staff to have the vaccine is very strong.
Of course I can make the case for personal liberty, but it will fall on deaf ears, and I admit some grudging sympathy for her position, and that of the care home providers.
What about the resident and many residents in care homes that have refused it. Does the same not apply to the care staff ?do they not have the same right?
Well yes they do but, unfortunately, there are conflicting rights in play here, so ultimately they may have to exercise that right by withdrawing their labour and dealing with all the consequences that flow from that.
And yet there were many care homes that had no ppe and no mask wearing at the start of this with no fatalities?no covid in the building ( until the dodgy pcr tests started) . It depends on your perspective and what you believe to be the truth. In my opinion no jab no job is wrong irrespective of your profession.
It’s becoming clear to me that downvotes here mark a refusal to accept a particular reality.
I get downvotes whenever I state plain but uncomfortable fact.
Why would your friend prefer vaccinated staff when vaccination does not prevent transmission of the virus? Why is it that people can’t seem to understand that?
As far as she’s concerned it’s Pascal’s Wager.
Not sure why I’ve been downvoted for this.
It’s a very real dilemma that people are facing, and I’m merely illustrating how ones priorities may depend on ones circumstances.
It is quite clear there is NO plan and NO intention of ending lockdowns and restrictions! Not in 2021, not ever!
No economic activity, no tax revenue, no NHS to protect, now what’s their excuse?
They’ve already approved extension until 17th July;
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/01/23/government-quietly-changes-law-give-councils-lockdown-powers/
“Mark Harper, the chairman of the Coronavirus Recovery Group of Tory MPs which is campaigning against unnecessary restrictions, said: “The extension of councils’ Covid powers until July will be of great concern to those worried about their jobs and businesses.
“Given the limited time allowed for debate this change in the law was little noticed.
“Once the top four risk groups have been vaccinated and fully protected by March 8, assuming the Government hits the February 15 deadline, the Government must start easing the restrictions.
“Vaccinations will of course bring immunity from Covid, but they must bring immunity from lockdowns and restrictions too.” “
And : “Mr Hancock said last week that for restrictions to be eased, deaths and hospital numbers had to be coming down, while the vaccine programme has to work, and there has to be no new threat from a new variant of Covid-19.”
As there will always be a threat from a new variant, that’s a “never” to the question of when restrictions will ease.
I think Sweden might be riding to the rescue in that regard. If the virus continues to disappear in Sweden while continuing to rise in the rest of Europe then push will come to shove. By the middle of February we will know whether Sweden has achieved herd immunity.
The UK Government will just invent something else. Very little about Covid-19 is real.
Latest ICNARC Graphs: Amongst General Reattribution Of Other Illness To Covid-19, Pneumonia From Flu Is A Thing Of The Past
By the time they decide to open up the economy, there’ll be nothing left to open.
And not enough private businesses and employees to pay for the NHS or anything else in the public sector.
Keeping you (the readership here) from this realisation for so long is the controlled opposition media that teaches passivity. Engagement remains about receiving information, and in fact being familiarised. Some of you even reward this with coin.
Like some of said a long time ago, it don’t end until you make it. You’ll come over to our way of thinking. You’ll have to.
Action To End The Interminable Unlawful Lockdown
That has been clear since the day Hancock laid down his legislation that would last for an initial 2 years.
Nothing will change until they start thinking about re-election.
I agree with you inasmuch as there is no PLAN because they are making these decisions off the top of their heads when it suits them to do so. I understand the REACT study used in the Presser on Friday was given to Johnson 2 hours before the Conference. Massive game playing by SAGE (all Imperial College of course). That it misses out an entire month seems to have passed them by. The Zoe App shows far difference but more accurate information. If Lockdown and restrictions remain in place for months more then what we will have is a bankrupt nation, literally. We are close to being that already. So, I won’t call it the Government rather Johnson and his cabal of pathological liars, power crazed and narcissists will have some serious decisions to make. Either they pursue their own agenda of Power, Greed and Money and tank the British economy wholesale whilst the rest of the world is getting back to normal or, they lift Lockdowns and restrictions in March, get the economy moving, prevent massive unemployment and start to repair the economic structure. Well, given they couldn’t hold a thought for more than 5 minutes and have zero… Read more »
This is a brilliant job, NN. So grateful to you for doing it. But you ought to have a regular spot above the line, so the stuff doesn’t drown in the usual torrent of comments.
Oh I second that! Let NN have a regular “small victories from around the world” piece above the line! That would cheer me up no end…
Slightly off-topic, but considering the above woke nonsense about ‘native’ Americans being the only folk entitled to live there.
They are no more indigenous than anybody else. They’ve just been there longer, though how long is disputed.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-53486868
It’s pretty certain that the advent of the first human migrants had a catastrophic impact on the existing fauna, leading to the extinction of most huntable species. The earliest settlers were the biggest environmental wreckers.
Same is true of Australasia, where human intrusion began far more recently.
I remember visiting a, as I grew up to know them, red indian (AKA first nation) site in southern Alberta and the talk was of the very spiritual meaningful ways of the first nation people. I then looked up how come that particular tribe lived in that place and it was because they had devastated, slaughtered and pretty much annihilated the previous tribe that lived in that area!
Who did the native Americans invade?
bad use of the word “invade”. he means that the predecessors of what you would call native americans migrated from siberia using the land bridge (caused by an ice age) to occupy an otherwise unoccupied land .
It’s more a long migration. If you have warlike tribes on the edge of China in central Asia chasing you arse you might well move on. There was a drift West to Europe since forever but ‘recently’ accelerated and also a move across the bridge between Alaska and Siberia that populated all the way to Cape Horn. Successive waves of more aggressive migrants subjugated or forced on the earlier ones. Eventually the Eastern and Western moves met. No plots. No colonising, no invading just people doing what people do, trading, fighting, moving on to better places with bad stuff behind. No goodies and baddies. Blaming Europeans for age old population dynamics out of Africa and then generated at China’s frontier with the barbarian is just ignorant wokery. Human sacrifice, cannibalism and atrocity were clearly common in pre-Columbian America so one need not accept lectures on that front. The natives of the NE enthusiastically took up European advances and mingled. Why wouldn’t they. Evil colonisers and innocent peace loving aboriginals is an idiotic view.
I understood that humans first reached the Australian continent 50,000 years ago.
Then started to wipe out all the mega-fauna there.
Where is the Capt. Beefheart poster when you need him? to point to ‘The Human Gets Me Blues ?
The Damm Van Tam man: “Even if you’ve been vaccinated, you can still spread the virus !!!
SO WHAT’S BEEN THE F×CKING POINT OF IT ALL, THEN?
I would be grateful if someone can correct me if I have not understood or am over simplifying things. It is my understanding that the vaccine protects you from the effects of serious covid.
So that even if you are vaccinated you can still pick up and pass on the ‘SARS-Cov2 cold virus in your upper respiratory tract but if the vaccine works you will not get seriously ill or die. Consequently the vaccine is only of any use to people who are vulnerable to serious covid and is a waste of time and money for everybody else.
Is my understanding correct?
Apart from the extremely vulnerable groups who are at risk from Covid as well as the vaccine
ON THE NAIL, Steve, but then, I’m not an expert (THANK GOD).
I think that the collaborators and sheep and the rest of us can DREAM ON,BABY.
With apologies to Austin Powers.
Unless it is proved to stop transmission you are correct. We were told Porton Down would be reporting in a week on the transmission issue… three weeks ago so it doesn’t look good.
If it stops you getting ill (as claimed) then I suspect you cannot pass it on. We all know there is precious little evidence of asymptomatic transmission anyway. However, how do you maintain compliance with the rules once you give someone this immunity? You have to lie about it’s effectiveness.
Should reduce you getting serious symptoms requiring hospitalisation/death but of course it’s not 100% effective so sadly a few people will still be struck down.
But you can still get infected, i.e. the virus is inside you trying to replicate but the vaccine has primed your body to fight it.
It there seems sensible to me that if you’re not generating vast amounts of virus, that you’ll not be as infectious but still could infect that small percentage for whom the vaccine isn’t effective. This is an identical situation to asymptomatic carries at the moment. Yes, you’re infectious but I read conflicting reports of how infectious from not very through some to very.
Although we’re playing the laws of diminishing returns here…
If the result was scary we would have heard. The delay can only be because the answer doesn’t fit the narrative.
When they don’t can we all agree that this is a conspiracy.
Steve, can I refer you to an article in Forbes by William A. Haseltine, a former professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health who did a vaccine analysis. It was published Sept 23 2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/09/23/covid-19-vaccine-protocols-reveal-that-trials-are-designed-to-succeed/?sh=553110645247. I have extracted three pertinent paragraphs, the emphasis is mine. Prevention of infection must be a critical endpoint. Any vaccine trial should include regular antigen testing every three days to test contagiousness to pick up early signs of infection and PCR testing once a week to confirm infection by SARS-CoV-2 test the ability of the vaccines to stave off infection. Prevention of infection is not a criterion for success for any of these vaccines. In fact, their endpoints all require confirmed infections and all those they will include in the analysis for success, the only difference being the severity of symptoms between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Measuring differences amongst only those infected by SARS-CoV-2 underscores the implicit conclusion that the vaccines are not expected to prevent infection, only modify symptoms of those infected. The greatest fear people have is dying from this disease. A vaccine must significantly or entirely reduce deaths from Covid-19. Over two hundred thousand people have died in the United States and nearly a… Read more »
This much has been clear from the beginning although doesn’t seem to have got through to most people!
Exactly
Jonathan Damnation
LIKE IT!!!
Money.
Pure and simple.
It’s been about collusion between drug companies, corrupt scientists and politicians to scare everyone into a position where the population has to have a vaccine, preferably once or twice a year, thereby transferring a lot, lot, lot of money from taxpayers to a few deeply corrupt beneficiaries.
And this scam is not new:
https://healthcare-in-europe.com/en/news/european-parliament-to-investigate-who-pandemic-scandal.html
“European Parliament to Investigate WHO and “Pandemic” Scandal
by F. William Engdahl
The Council of Europe member states will launch an inquiry in January 2010 on the influence of the pharmaceutical companies on the global swine flu campaign, focusing especially on extent of the pharma’s industry’s influence on WHO. The Health Committee of the EU Parliament has unanimously passed a resolution calling for the inquiry.
The step is a long-overdue move to public transparency of a “Golden Triangle” of drug corruption between WHO, the pharma industry and academic scientists that has permanently damaged the lives of millions and even caused death.”
And it adds to the Asymptomatic transmission theory where people who exhibit no symptoms can spread the virus. Which scientifically, in theory, is possible; but mathematically so low as to not even register as a mild concern.
Yes I suspect that the vaccine DOES give you immunity but they don’t want to admit that because they’ll have to admit that asymptomatic transmission is complete bs and made up by China, and that there is such a thing as natural immunity too.
Klaus Schwab is NOT our friend.
‘recovery’ does not mean to how it was. Inflation and redistribution will be central to their plan.
Please remember that a UK-wide pay cap exists since this began. That’s not a good thing.
Hair smelling Joe has to “occupy” DC to get the message across with 25,000 reluctant national guard our fat globalist clown will have to get more troops than that on the ground when the slug hosts his forthcoming Cornwall shindig. Imagine the damage that could be done at that event if the right people got through.
You don’t need to get through to cause the damage!
Shame that it’s in Cornwall, and not Davos.
Wouldn’t want to see that village in Cornwall nuked into oblivion….
National Guard in Washington DC supposedly filmed from Biden’s motorcade:
https://twitter.com/InesdLC/status/1351915427589455872
Spot the guy spitting as well did you as the car went past?
If we do not stop this now, we will soon all be criminals. All of us. People like this will not stop until they have made dissent a crime. It is unconscionable that a journalist be allowed to publish these words. The Guardian is one of the most powerful newspapers in the world because it has no pay wall… it is supposed to be the bastion of democracy. I know many of you hate it because of its position on Brexit. I was one of those people who pushed for a second referendum, not because I simply disagreed with the result but because, once more evidence came to light I wanted people to have a chance to confirm their vote or change their minds. I am a passionate liberal, and I believe in democracy. And democracy says, when the facts change, when there is more evidence to consider, I am allowed to change my mind. I had changed my mind on how I feel about our membership of the EU a couple of times in my life. But now, The Guardian has become a mouthpiece for populist authoritarians who wish to deny us our human rights. We must all write… Read more »
Should we re-run, never implementing, every democratic decision because someone has changed their mind?
No. That’s an extreme exaggeration of what I said. And not the point of my urgent call out of a mainstream journalist inciting hatred towards people who question the current government propaganda.
Would use this article in a GCSE media studies lesson on the use of hyperbole and propaganda. “Enlightened” “Covid kingpin” jump out as the words. Plus you can see that middle class, London based journalists are using the same tactic that the Brexit team used so effectively of deriding opponents as the metropolitan urban elite.
What a shocking piece.Gives no evidence that his views cost him his life but uses his death to smear Toby and JHB.
Also creates this myth that there is a huge part of the right wing media’who deny Covid existence.
“How mad and how different from what passes for respectable opinion. But shift the conversation just a little and the conspiracy theories are not so different from the propaganda pouring out of rightwing radio stations and newspapers. Their claims that masks and lockdowns don’t work, that Covid is no more deadly than the flu, that 91% of so-called Covid cases are false positives and that there are no excess deaths are as false as imagining Gates wants to microchip the world and just as deadly.”
That is the worst journalism I’ve read in a while. Totally delusional hate speech, using the death of someone in a big ‘I told you so’ rant.
Extremely worrying to see that kind of stuff in print.
It is worrying indeed. However, it is rather irrational drivel isn’t it when analysed? It’s nothing more than a hysterical rant based on nothing really. Well, I’m going to come out as an official Covid denier. The reason is that this is another Coronavirus of which we have four already – the flu, the common cold and I think, but probably wrong, viral pneumonia? In 1968 there was a new Coronavirus which turned out to be the common cold. I am a denier because there clearly is no deadly pandemic stalking the UK or the world. We have a seasonal respiratory virus – a variant of Sars Covid 1 – no more no less. It’s flu by any other name. So, whilst there is a variant of Sars Covid 1 out there now, it is till only a seasonal respiratory virus. So, yes, I’m a denier unless evidence is provided to the contrary.
In a strange way, I am reassured (although angry). The referenced article shows clearly the lack of solid information and the desperation.
We are winning, though it’s going to be a very slow grind.
I agree. The situation is not sustainable.
“But now, The Guardian has become a mouthpiece for populist authoritarians who wish to deny us our human rights. “
The Guardian has always been a mouthpiece for authoritarians who wish to deny us our human rights (because they know best how to run a “good” society, and dissent from their greater understanding of the greater good is not just wrong, but evil). Whether they were ever populist is ope to question, but if so it was decades ago.
It’s just that previously they weren’t targeting views and people you had any sympathy for.
I understand that now and I hope it’s not too late to fight against this.
Relax, literally no-one reads the Guardian. Cohen’s drivel may as well be in chapter 7 of A Brief History of Time.
In your world, maybe. Literally everyone I know reads the Guardian and that is why I (now) have very few friends left. I have been calling this out as an authoritarian power grab since DAY ONE. They can’t admit they were wrong to support lockdowns and mask wearing so they double down, sometimes hysterically so. Please don’t discount the very real threat to our future. History has shown that most highly organised (I know, I know, but they are succeeding in rolling this out) authoritarian power grabs succeed and last many years. The UK as we knew it is finished. It will take years to take it back. When you hear, next month, that the 2010 Equalities Act has been repealed… be scared. Be very scared! We do have to fight this. We do have to acknowledge and engage. Ignore it at your peril!
We are all criminals now doing what was once classed as normal is now a criminal offense. Breathing free is one of them.🙃
That article left a really bad taste in my mouth. Hateful.
From the article “Respectable Opinion” as if other peoples’ opinions can’t be respectable. You lying dissimulating bastard, Cohen.
He is from Bowden in Cheshire…most people are cunts from there lol.
Look him in the eyes and tell him lockdowns kill.
Look her in the eyes and tell her you’re a lockdown sceptic.
Can the Government look me in the eye & tell me they are running a sensible & balanced Public Health policy based on good perceptive strategic planning and that they are not just jumping around like scalded cats with every bit of scary scientific tittle tattle?
Look them in the eye and ask them what rule they broke to catch it. Perpetrators get infected too.
There is mention in the news that the UK will soon exceed 100,000 covid deaths. Many talk about this as if these were deaths that but for covid would not have happened. Well I am only a simple fellow but even I can see that if you take the total covid deaths away from the overall total deaths you end up with a death rate lower than we have seen in recent history, which seems unlikely.
Advertising signs that con
You into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime, life outside goes on
All around you
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying
So we seem to have set ourselves up to reduce deaths to a lower level than we have known in recent times, on the road to eternal life! before we are going to be allowed to have our freedom back. If my analysis is correct than what are the Government and the Authorities thinking? are they stupid and cannot see this simple fact? or is this willful and therefore part of some sinister plot?
“… or is this willful and therefore part of some sinister plot?”
I’m no conspiracy theorist (preferring the incompetent politician view), but this is making me think:
The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly – OffGuardian (off-guardian.org)
yeh,, that article is the best and most credible attempt I’ve read at getting a glimpse of what lies beneath when you scrape away the veneer of lies that all sane unbrainwashed people know that covid is
Yep. I can spot the crazy stuff but this has a lot of plausible points as to why this near unanimous and wilfully misleading policy is sustained. Still seems hard to believe none of this has leaked out though.
The zombies were suddenly confronted with the previously inconceivable idea that they might die.
They were to,pld they’d die of Covid.
They concluded that without Covid they wouldn’t die.
Hence the latest batch of lies.
That song is in my opinion the best candidate for the Sceptics’ Theme Tune, along with ‘Let me die in my Footsteps’.
Last March I was very disappointed to receive one of the Great Man’s emails whch concluded ‘Stay Safe’.
So we’re all in a Derren Brown global scam? Just waiting for the man to appear.. If we’re not he should clearly claim credit for having come up with the idea in the first place (see Derren Brown: Apocalypse) We could start a conversation with the fervid Covidians ‘Do you know how DB persuaded that poor man he was in the middle of a deadly pandemic? Wasn’t that cruel..?’ Might work and incidentally I wonder what DB makes of what’s going on?
The NHS posters have plumbed new depths. Why not “Look him/her in the eyes” with photos of children, or is that a step too far for even the Nazi Health Service?
Nobody is buying it anymore, look in the eyes of an 8 year old girl who says Daddy i have no future and i`m scared of going outside ! these tory and science scum need the mussolini treatment.
Give them a dose of their own medicine 😉
Excellent!
Or this one
Sent to Whately yesterday to illustrate my telling her of a friend who died last year (2020) after his cancer Chemo was stopped.
(SS’s poster, the sad old bugger in the middle could pass for me on a good day)
Brilliant!
Lest it see more, prevent it. Out, vile jelly!
Where is thy lustre now?
All dark and comfortless.
The case of Belarus demonstrates the fact that lockdowns are unnecessary even more clearly than the case of Sweden. Belarus did not implement any restrictions, and it has fared far better than the countries that did. It is a country of roughly ten million people. The Covid 19 deaths have reached just over one thousand and six hundred. Countries do, of course, differ. And one way in which Belarus differs from the United Kingdom is its hospital bed capacity. Belarus has eleven hospital beds to every thousand people. The UK has a mere two and half. This one difference may be significant, not merely in terms of health care, but more importantly in terms of politics and public policy. Boris Johnson inflicted the incredibly harmful lockdown measures on the UK on the ground that it was the only way to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed – ie, the lockdown was a recognition and acknowledgement that the NHS had insufficient capacity (something that the government was well aware of from 2016 at least: Exercise Cygnus). If the conclusion of Exercise Cygnus had been taken seriously and acted on in 2016 (Jeremy Hunt was the Health Secretary and Theresa May the… Read more »
In fairness, one possible reason for Belarus having more hospital capacity is that they learnt from experience. The Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion, in its Ukrainian neighbour, had a considerable effect on health in the country.
Ukraine got all the financial aid, Belarus got the fallout.
CV 19 has a deal with Lukashenko. It turns back at the border and flies off – in variant form – to Poland. The CV is smart and honest you see. 1000 dead in Be, 10 million people. UK Fake News says nothing. If they do it will be to say that the data in Be is falsified. Laughable.
How about we start with the mountain of fake UK CV data. The NHS-ONS CV data fraud needs to be investigated, starting with the MCCD and working an audit through the entire process. When will that happen?
coronavirus seems far more widespread in Belarus than UK – in the sense that everyone you speak to has either had it themselves, or someone in their family has. and therefore they know from their own lived experience that it is nothing more than a bad cold or flu. they don’t live in fear of it any more like people over here do: the spell has broken, they’re just getting on with their lives, going about their business as normal, coronavirus ranks low on their list of worries.
Which is what is actually happening in Wuhan as well and probably many other parts of China.
The website set up by the MP et al is in exactly the same format as the site criticising the climate change sceptics and is as misleading. One question, they’ve given a list of specific people, including academics; but why have the not included clinical sceptics like Claire Craig, John Lee an Malcolm Kendrick?
Have NO’B and Bob Ward (‘Wood Pellets’ Grantham’s attack dog) ever been seen in the same room?
It’s an awful site. So they want to debunk Professors Gupta and Henegen, with a FAQ using links to fact checkers? What kind of nonsense is this eh?
I note, given how absolutely critical it is to all of this, they made no attempt to look into the PCR test and demonstrate it is fit for purpose. Maybe its not a FAQ in their world. Well it is for us.
I also note a huge amount of their analysis relies on Imperial College London, make of that what you will.
They’ve done themselves no favours with that woeful site. Compare it to the trove of articles and data on the home page of this site.
When someone has to resort to ad hominem attacks then they have little other evidence. Does anyone recognise the other people who contribute to the website? To be honest I don’t think that it is worth getting into a lather about. It’s just another distraction. From my point of view there’s a certain irony with the mp involved, as he’s member for the constituency that includes the urgent care centre where I work, it also includes two parts of Leicestershire that had the highest “case” rate that were worse than the city itself, it also includes halls of residence for those nasty infected students from Leicester University including medical students, and finally it was the location for those patients who presented with persistent cough back in 2019. Maybe the honourable gentleman would care to address these issues in his own backyard.
Regarding the reader who drove 2 miles to go for a walk; apparently her lawyer friend has no clue regarding the risks of driving versus walking. Walking even 200m beside a road would incur a greater chance of injury or death. I suppose we should all hide in our houses where we can live a miserable existence for another year before dying at a more convenient time for the NHS.
Lawyers are libtards, many of them openly fascistic. They like the quackademics view themselves as Plato’s wise guardians. In reality, many are are not very bright and have few skills outside their profession.
Most Lawyers are also privileged to be able to work from home without too much difficulty, and are probably insulated from people whose lives and careers are being ruined by the restrictions and their attendant uncertainties.
Local press / PH authority keeping up the mind games / propaganda:
Northamptonshire residents who refuse coronavirus vaccine are endangering those around them | Northampton Chronicle and Echo
Translated: ‘Get the vaccine or kill your family’.
Nice.
Patently untrue – needs reporting
While “if it’s not peer reviewed it’s not relevant” is true it does NOT mean it is correct or applicable to the real world.
You need to validate, verify and audit it first. Very few scientific ideas ever become useful things in the real world.
Peer review in academia almost always means it is deemed sufficient to enter the scientific discourse. Academics often try to embellish the worth of their papers and work without experience of what it actually requires to make things useful.
I’ve seen this creeping belief that a peer-reviewed paper is the gold standard. If you have published in any field you’ll know that is nonsense. The quality of the work, the minimisation of assumptions, the repeatability, the testing and testing, these are what move an idea to a something more concrete.
What SAGE and the rest are doing is model masturbation using vague measurement techniques, dressed up as spin and frankly would be illegal if used in any other safety related field including other types of medicine.
As I’ve said before these people have form because they’ve been doing it with nutrition and with climate change science.
Plys an element of ‘you review me, I’ll review you’?
The thermageddon saga shows the flaws.
‘I approve your paper and fake data so you can get your grant, get published, get invited to the cool-kid conferences…..can you please return the favour and approve mine please and oh, don’t worry about the code-db application…it was built by my 2nd yr computer science class and I don’t have a clue what it means…Best’
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
Why most published research articles are false, Dr John Ioannidis et al, 2005
As in the field of climate science, peer review is actually friends review. If you are outside then it’s almost impossible to get anything published. Also, at the moment it is publishing season as the number of articles published, no matter the quality, determines research grants for the next 3 years.
Mrs Merkel was challenged about her advisory board (German Sage), why they do not have any critical voices.
You, as a scientist, should know better!
Looks like they’re planning on keeping us locked down until mid-July at least:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/01/23/government-quietly-changes-law-give-councils-lockdown-powers/
“Government quietly changes law to give councils lockdown powers until July 17 this year’Vaccinations will of course bring immunity from Covid, but they must bring immunity from lockdowns and restrictions too'”
The comment section is up in arms
This was all in the plan – give power to local areas to shift the blame from the government. We’re following an agenda and we’re well on the way.
On the bright side, the precedent of devolving important decisions to the regions has been established now, and will be expected in the future.
The closer the decisions are to where you’re sat, the better.
In Ireland, the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) is talking about restrictions until June.
https://www.independent.ie/breaking-news/irish-news/taoiseach-lockdown-restrictions-could-continue-until-end-of-june-40002175.html
The ‘look them in the eyes’ adverts portray actors who are pretending to be ill.
The actors are wearing make up in order to make them look ill when they are not. For some inexplicable reason the actors appear to have been smeared with gravy browning
The actors are wearing Oxygen masks when they don’t need them because they are not ill
The actors, make up artists and advertising agencies were paid handsomely from the public purse to create this illusion
The posters more than adequately sum up this scam
Simon Dolan has some excellent posters in response on his gab account.
Sorry they will not download on here.
https://gab.com/Simondolan
They’re acting like they’ve got it.
*ba dum tis* 😀
“Look him in the eyes…”
“Render unto Caesar…” my friend.
I have just sent this to my local Liberal Democrat candidate: Fundamental to this entire chaotic response to an outbreak of SARS CoV 2 has been the incompetence of the government/civil service/medical expert committee axis. My local Conservative MP no longer responds to my emails I would be grateful if you would press his local office on the following matters: When will the independent public committee inquiry into government handling of the covid 19 response, promised by the Prime Minister, commence? Will that public inquiry ask the following fundamental questions: Why was no detailed cost/benefit analysis of proposed government interventions conducted in line with international best practice, and set out by parliament, regarding the precautionary principle and risk assessment? Why was no ‘red team’ set up to challenge plans, policies, systems and assumptions by adopting an adversarial approach? Even Churchill, in wartime, adopted a variant of this validation process. What caused the fundamental shift in government policy in March? French diplomatic pressure or Imperial College modelling? What credible data was presented to inform this radical change of approach? Why was SARS CoV 2 made a notifiable disease on 05 March, then removed from the list of high consequence infectious diseases… Read more »
Can I copy and use?
Of course anyone may copy and use…..I would consider it an honour if you would.
Can you add
1-that we need a full data audit of CV death data. Starting from the MCCD to the ONS reporting database. Every single part of the process audited.
2-ask why the flu started to disappear in the statistics vs the previous 5 years in week 17 2020. Are most normal flu deaths now attributed to CV 19?
3-evidence that face diapers work (they don’t). Where is the evidence that cloth diapers stop a 0.012 sized micron molecule? What data supports that?
On point 3 the key point is that face coverings appear to produce longer term harm as well as they categorically do not improve infection control for those who are not coughing or sneezing i.e with symptoms. And even then that was a small sample and a weak effect.
Neir Orr’s RCT in Colchester. The Vietnamese Mask study from a few years back. Even the Danish Mask study which made the point that it’s often not the device but the common day use of it that reduces any efficacy.
Excellent! Thank you.
Excellent! Thank you.