Vaccine Wars
In a huge escalation of the vaccine row, the European Commission invoked Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol in the Brexit deal yesterday in a bid to prevent the region becoming a backdoor for EU vaccines to be sent to the wider UK. This would effectively have created a hard border between Northern Ireland and its southern neighbour, but after furious criticism from the British, Northern Irish and Irish governments, it quickly backed down. The Mail has more.
The EU sensationally backed down last night over its plans to impose Covid vaccine controls on the Northern Ireland border after the proposals were met with a strong and united backlash from UK and Irish politicians.
EU chiefs had been accused of an “incredible act of hostility” after announcing controls on the export of jabs to the UK, including Northern Ireland.
In a move which would have effectively created a ‘hard border’ on the island of Ireland, EU officials had planned to override part of the Brexit trade agreement and demand checks of vaccines flowing from Europe into Northern Ireland.
Ireland’s Taoiseach Micheal Martin raised objections to EU leaders, while Michel Barnier, who was the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said he was calling for “co-operation” over vaccines between the UK and Brussels.
And in another strongly-worded statement, Boris Johnson last night said he had “grave concerns” over the proposals and demanded the EU “urgently clarify its intentions”.
But in a major climb-down, hours after announcing the proposals, bloc leaders quickly reversed the decision and say they will now no longer go ahead with the controls.
In a statement released late last night, the European Commission said: “To tackle the current lack of transparency of vaccine exports outside the EU, the Commission is putting in place a measure requiring that such exports are subject to an authorisation by Member States.
“In the process of finalisation of this measure, the Commission will ensure that the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol is unaffected. The Commission is not triggering the safeguard clause.
“Should transits of vaccines and active substances toward third countries be abused to circumvent the effects of the authorisation system, the EU will consider using all the instruments at its disposal.
“In the process of finalising the document, the commission will also be fine-tuning the decision-making process under the implementing regulation.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Read Ambrose Evan Pritchard’s report in Telegraph on the prospect of the EU invoking Article 122 against Astra Zeneca, paving the way for seizure of its intellectual property and data, and arguably taking control of its production as well.
Stop Press 2: Meanwhile, Macron has backed claims that the AstraZeneca vaccine is ineffective for the over-65s. Which begs the question, why is he so desperate to get hold of it?
Technical Issue
As some Lockdown Sceptics readers will be aware, we’ve been having a bit of trouble sending our daily newsletters to some of our email subscribers. This issue relates only to @mac.com, @iCloud.com and @me.com addresses, all of which are run by Apple Inc. We’re trying hard to resolve this, but if anyone affected by this is missing our morning newsletter and would like to keep receiving it in the meantime, please re-subscribe to our newsletter using an alternative email address. Incidentally, if you no longer wish to subscribe please notify Ian Rons that you wish to be removed from the mailing list. Don’t mark the emails as “junk”.
More Fines and More Invasions of Privacy
Yesterday, without much in the way of reporting, new coronavirus regulations came into force. PA media has the details.
Fines of £800 for people caught at house parties and fresh powers to share data with police on those who should be self-isolating have become law in England.
The latest coronavirus regulations came into force at 5pm on Friday as part of tougher measures to crack down on illegal gatherings and those flouting the legal requirement to self-isolate during the pandemic.
The house party penalty will apply to groups of more than 15 people and will double after each offence, up to a maximum of £6,400 for repeat offenders.
This supersedes existing fines of £200.
But the £10,000 penalties for unlawful groups of more than 30 people will still only apply to the organiser.
According to the legislation, called the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers and Self-Isolation) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021, the £800 fine is cut to £400 if paid within 14 days…
Police are given extra powers to access Test and Trace data under the new law.
It comes after data published by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) on Thursday showed just 332 fines had been issued by forces in England and three in Wales, to people failing to self-isolate after arriving from a country on the Government quarantine list between September 28th and January 17th.
The latest laws, signed off by Health Secretary Matt Hancock, amend self-isolation regulations “to correct a number of errors” in previous versions of the legislation and “update the information which may be shared for the purposes of carrying out functions under the regulations, or preventing danger to the health of the public from the spread of coronavirus, and to allow certain information to be shared only where necessary for specified law enforcement purposes”.
Contact details, including a phone number and email address where available, can be shared if someone tests positive for coronavirus or if a person has come into close contact with a positive case, the laws state.
Last year, it emerged people in England who had been told to self-isolate through NHS Test and Trace could have their details shared with police on a case-by-case basis after the Government updated its guidance.
But police would not have access to data from the NHS COVID-19 app, which is anonymous so the Government does not know who has been sent instructions to self-isolate.
Worth reading in full.
Adam Wagner, the human rights lawyer who’s an authority on Coronavirus regulations, has a useful thread on this, detailing both the new rules and the important human rights issues that they raise:
Big Brother Watch is also concerned about the new regulations:
Stop Press: openDemocracy is reporting that some 1,500 Met Police officers have, on the quiet, been ordered to switch off the NHS COVID-19 tracing app while at work. This appears to be aimed at reducing the number of officers having to self-isolate.
Did ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ Increase Covid Infections?
Yesterday brought further confirmation that the Treasury is the most sceptical of the Whitehall departments after it issued a stout defence of the Eat Out to Help Out scheme. This followed heavy criticism of the scheme in the wake of the winter surge in Covid infections. The Sun was first to the story.
Rishi Sunak has launched a full throated defence of his flagship Eat Out to Help Out scheme after data showed no link to rising Covid cases.
The incredibly popular £849 million scheme launched last August to keep the hospitality industry afloat has come under fire in light of the deadly second wave.
More than 160 million punters were given 50% off meals to try to get people back into struggling pubs and restaurants, with the scheme credited for getting 400,000 workers off furlough.
Now data published by the Treasury shows areas with the high take up of the scheme also still had low virus levels between August and October.
The figures show places such as Westminster and Scarborough and North Devon had very high take-up of Eat Out to Help Out, but very low subsequent Covid cases.
Meanwhile Knowsley, Rochdale and Merthyr Tydfil had far higher Covid rates, but lower levels of use of the scheme.
The Treasury said: “These figures confirm that take-up of Eat Out to Help Out does not correlate with incidence of Covid regionally – and indeed where it does the relationship is negative.”
A spokesman said: “As we have done throughout the pandemic, we have worked with creativity and at pace to support individuals and businesses.
“We designed The Eat Out to Help Out scheme to protect two million jobs in hospitality, an industry whose employees are at high risk of long-term unemployment in the event of redundancy.
“It protected jobs across the UK by bringing back 400,000 people from furlough while safely restoring consumer confidence.”
The Treasury is obviously right about this. Last week Parliament was reminded that hospitality is not a huge risk when it comes to infection. The Caterer reports:
Greg Fell, Director of Public Health at Sheffield County Council, and Richard Harling, Director of Health and Care at Staffordshire County Council, appeared before Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee yesterday [27th January].
When asked about whether hospitality was a vector for infections, the pair said the spread mainly occurred in people’s homes.
Fell said: “Most of the transmission events are within households and household to household.
“Hospitality doesn’t crop up as a terribly big risk on our radar. When we look at the common exposure data set hospitality isn’t a huge risk.
“There will have been transmission events within hospitality, but it’s certainly nowhere near the top of my risk radar.”
Harling added: “Back in the summer and autumn, once you put transmission between household members aside, the next most important one was transmission between different households.
“The hospitality sector did feature, but much lower down the list. At the moment, with the hospitality sector closed, the main [cause of spread] is other businesses and workplaces.”
A Smidgen of Pessimism on Masks
Today we have another contribution from Dr Rachel Mann, written in response to the “A Smidgen of Optimism on Masks” which we published last Sunday.
Having mulled over Steve Sieff’s interesting take on masks in the January 24th Lockdown Sceptics newsletter, I wondered whether to just bury my head in a box of face masks and accept the joyless existence of a world where the divisive impacts of masks are considered completely normal, or respond. As an arch sceptic of mask wearing, I couldn’t help but choose the latter of course.
The central theme of the “Smidgen of Optimism” piece was to think about a dial down of the mask debate in terms of ‘just the science’ and focus on mask wearing as a choice, based on an individuals’ own concept of their risk. This seems highly logical and completely sensible to me and would that we might have had that option last year. Instead of a mask mandate, allow individuals to assess their own risk and choose to wear a mask or not. Simple! Or is it?
We were never given that choice, to assess our own risk, nor are we likely to be in the distant future. The mask mandate was brought in last year with absolutely no thought or clear messaging as to how this so called ‘public health intervention’ should be managed. Consequently, the psyche of mask wearing has become shaped and warped by a popular opinion war as to what is right or wrong and polarised discourse.
I fear that we have gone past the point of no return in some ways because the concept of, as Steve himself says, “Those who do not wear a mask are letting down others and are stigmatised” has been, and is, occurring on a daily basis and I see no reason for it to change or that “More protective masks such as N95s and N99s could change this narrative”. So, parking the science about the (inconclusive) effectiveness of masks for one moment, I thought I’d briefly muse over a few issues that seem relevant to the divisive nature of masks:
1. Masking ‘Care’: We are already at a point where those admitting to vaccine hesitancy or outright refusal for whatever personal reasons to take the COVID-19 vaccine are being singled out as not worthy of receiving health care treatment for COVID-19 from the NHS. If choosing to mask up became a free choice, and that choice is the best possible protection (N95 or N99 mask) rather than a mandate, the use of a mask still continues to perpetuate the message a particular person choosing to wear the mask is stating to the outside world “I am responsible, I care about my health and the NHS is important to me”. Those who don’t mask up will still be stigmatised whether it is under mandate or a choice; choosing not to wear a mask has become and will remain entrenched in negative opinion as irresponsible, uncaring and selfish behaviour. As with the popular “no vax, no Covid treatment” opinion being embraced, those engaging in perceived negative behaviour of non-mask wearing will potentially be deemed not worthy of receiving health care for COVID-19, or maybe all respiratory viruses, or maybe even all conditions? The refrain of “you didn’t wear a mask to protect yourself from respiratory disease, so your partial knee replacement will be delayed until you mask up and protect your health first” is not really too dissimilar to denying people treatment who smoke or are overweight, is it?
2. Masking Affordability: The mantra of “we are all in it together” and that SARS-CoV-2 and “COVID-19 does not discriminate” is a myth; they are not socially neutral entities.
People living in more socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods and minority ethnic groups have higher rates of almost all of the known underlying clinical risk factors that increase the severity and mortality of COVID-19, including hypertension, diabetes, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), heart disease, liver disease, renal disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity and smoking”
The COVID-19 Pandemic and Health Inequalities, NIH
Yet, interestingly how do those people considered the most at risk of severe COVID-19, who are the most socio-economically disadvantaged in our population afford to pay for N95 and N99 masks? A very quick scout around Amazon revealed prices range for N95 mask from a single mask priced £6 to a box of 30 priced £56, and a box of five N99 masks for £50. The personal financial burden to hard-put working people would be immense and it’s likely that the most vulnerable would not wear masks due to eye watering unaffordable prices. If it’s food and rent needed, I think people would likely favour those choices over purchasing face masks. Or choose sub optimal masks due to costs and take the risk. What is the answer? State funded face masks, that are means tested and provided by the taxpayer? Another potentially divisive action perhaps as a mask wearer is then defined as someone on a lower income? Or equally someone who can comfortably afford an N95 and N99 mask is perceived as taking mask supplies from those who really need them?
3. Masking the Big “E” – “Environment”: In an age where we purport to be concerned about the environment it is quite astonishing that there is so much support for wearing face masks of the surgical, N95 and N99 variety; an item that is classed as ‘disposable’ but is in fact a non-biodegradable, one-wear item containing micro plastics. We care so much about our environment it seems that we are happy to send 1.6 billion ‘disposable’ face masks to landfill every month. If choice based masking becomes the ‘go to option’ this will inevitably contribute hugely to our future woeful landfill statistics. Or if we care about our drinking water supply and oceans, how about the recent studies that have investigated whether surgical face masks and N95 masks could be a source of microplastic pollutants in the environment? The results strongly suggested that masks act as a potential source of microfibers when they are released into the environment, adding additional burden to current microplastic pollution. Therefore, does a disposable N95 or N99, or whatever affordable masks one can buy, mean that you do not care about the environment and that you are putting your own selfish needs first? Does the need to protect yourself with a non-biodegradable mask rank above the needs of our global environment, our precious ecosystem, and the collective need to nurture and sustain our planet for our future generations? Are those who dispose of ‘disposable’ face masks, whatever their filtration properties to be labelled as “environmental safeguarding deniers”?
In conclusion, I fear that whatever the future of face mask wearing, it will remain a divisive issue for some time to come, as indeed all labelling does, whether it is masks, exemption badges or green and red bands (I note the green band – red band home page shows banders of both colours wearing masks). Which incidentally makes me wonder about how those who would choose to wear a green band and no mask would be perceived by others? We seem intent on overtly identifying individual’s personal choices and beliefs. Perhaps we have entered an age of ‘unmasking’ personal health beliefs where one must wear one’s health beliefs on one’s sleeve, face or neck. Looking back to 20th century history I don’t feel that bodes well…
Does Charging Travellers for Enforced Hotel Stays Violate WHO Rules?
In the January 26th newsletter, we published a comment from a reader who had been looking at the WHO’s International Health Regulations and found that it might be against the rules to charge travellers for their period in mandatory quarantine. Today we have a response from Dr David McGrogan, an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School and a previous contributor.
Sadly, while the answer to this question may very well be “yes”, it has to be followed by an immediate “but”: this is highly unlikely to matter. The International Health Regulations are a treaty, which means obligations in it are binding on States which are party to it (which is all, or almost all, of them). But individuals would have no standing before any international court or tribunal to bring a claim for a violation. Only another State could do that. Why would one State sue another for charging people for using a quarantine hotel in violation of the International Health Regulations? (Particularly as they are all likely to be doing it soon if they aren’t already.)
The only other remotely realistic alternative would be for the WHO itself to raise the matter with the WHO’s World Health Assembly, but since the World Health Assembly is simply a body comprising representatives of the governments of the states who are members of the WHO, this would be very unlikely to bear fruit for obvious reasons.
There would be no prospect of a claim succeeding before a UK court, either. The UK has what is called a “dualist” system, which basically means that it treats international law as separate to domestic law. The UK government can sign whatever treaties it wants, more or less (although the first Gina Miller ‘Brexit’ case made clear that this power is not untrammelled), but they do not become ‘law’ at a domestic level until there has been an Act of Parliament making it so. And this means that our courts cannot enforce them without such an Act. This is the reason why, for example, the Human Rights Act 1998 was necessary in order to give UK courts the capacity to hear claims regarding violations of European Convention rights. It ‘brought rights home’ by in effect making them part of UK law. Since the International Health Regulations have not had a similar piece of legislation to make them part of our law, they are largely irrelevant as a matter for our courts.
At best, international legal obligations of the kind found in a treaty like the International Health Regulations can be said to have a ‘hortatory’ function – violation will have no legal effect but might shame a government to change its policy. International lawyers often claim that this is important. One can make up one’s own mind about that, of course.
Stop Press: The UK Government has placed travel bans on 33 high-risk countries. Travellers who set foot in any of the countries on the list, even in transit, will not be allowed into the UK.
British and Irish Nationals and third country nationals with the right of residence in the UK will be allowed in but will need to quarantine for 10 days upon arrival. Further details of the policy, including whether or not those in quarantine will have to pay for he privilege, will be set out next week.
Stop Press 2: Worth noting that the UK would not be the first to charge for quarantine. Australia, whose borders are closed to nearly everybody, even New Zealand at the moment, has been charging returning nationals and residents $3,000 dollars for a mandatory 14 day quarantine for months now.
The Adults are Having a Quite Different Conversation
Today we’re publishing a new response to Sam Bowman’s anti-lockdown sceptics article in the New Statesman last week. The response is by Timon Wapenaar, a violinist based in Spain. It’s a scorcher. Here’s an extract.
A piece in the New Statesman by Sam Bowman which ostensibly aims to debunk the “eight biggest Covid-sceptic myths” presents us with a pot-pourri of Twitter-troll inspired overripe low hanging fruit. No serious lockdown critic has ever framed the argument in the way Bowman represents it. Has Sunetra Gupta ever said that “we are overreacting to a virus which 99.5% of people will survive”? I doubt it. A Google search for “Sunetra Gupta” and the exact phrase “we are overreacting” yields Bowman’s own article as the first hit, and only five other hits in total, none of which contained the damning quote.
Likewise, there is not one lockdown sceptic of stature who says that “we aren’t seeing excess deaths”, or that “we’re witnessing a ‘casedemic’ of false positives from doing too many tests”. While there are assertions made about both excess deaths and a ‘casedemic’, their nature is much, much more nuanced than Bowman would have us believe. Indeed, his phrasing of the ‘casedemic’ is absolutely absurd. How on earth could any opponent worth arguing with believe something as patently stupid as “more tests result in more false positives”? He obviously hasn’t read or listened to Heneghan, or Jefferson, or Yeadon, or McKernan. Or Levitt, or Gupta, or Bhattacharya, or Kulldorff, or Sikora.
It is mala praxis to choose the worst possible version of your opponent’s argument, and yet this is what Bowman does. The refutations he offers might be useful for dunking on your brother-in-law at a family dinner, or vanquishing that Twitter troll with a hundred followers, but fall hopelessly short of being a contribution to any real argument over the efficacy of lockdowns.
If he’d been more courageous, Bowman would have addressed the most important question posed by sceptics: are state-mandated NPIs (non-pharmaceutical interventions) sufficiently effective to justify the significant harms they entail? That they reduce transmission to some degree (which they do, in all likelihood) is not sufficient. The gains must outweigh the price paid by society. Bowman instead chooses to focus only on whether lockdowns reduce transmission. This is disappointing: if the holistic effectiveness of the most restrictive lockdown measures can be proven, all other arguments become somewhat ancillary.
Worth reading in full.
In Defence of Sir Desmond Swayne
There follows a post by Will Jones.
Lockdown sceptic firebrand Sir Desmond Swayne MP has come under intense criticism following the surfacing of an interview he did with Save Our Rights UK back in November.
According to Sky News, in the interview the former minister said:
It seems to be a manageable risk, particularly as figures have been manipulated… We’re told there is a deathly, deadly pandemic proceeding at the moment. That is difficult to reconcile with ICUs (intensive care units) actually operating at typical occupation levels for the time of year and us bouncing round at the typical level of deaths for the time of year.
He also told the group, which appears to be a broad tent that includes supporters of some of the wilder conspiracy theories, to “persist” in their anti-lockdown campaign, adding: “And I’ll persist too.”
His comments have been roundly condemned and the Labour Party has called for him to have the Conservative whip removed, though there’s no indication that will happen.
Michael Gove said: “I would hope that he issues a full and complete retraction and apology for what he said – it’s unacceptable.”
Boris Johnson’s spokesman said the Prime Minister agreed with Gove, though awkwardly when asked about it during his trip to Scotland, Boris replied: “I’m sorry I haven’t seen that.”
Home Secretary Priti Patel said: “Those comments are thoroughly wrong and I very much hope Desmond will reflect and take those comments back.”
The Whips’ Office said: “We completely condemn these comments. It is on all of us to work together to control the virus to protect the NHS and save lives.”
It is reported that Conservative chief whip Mark Spencer spoke to Sir Desmond and asked him to attend a meeting with scientific advisers – which Sir Desmond has happily agreed to do. Oh, to be a fly on the wall…
Angela Rayner, the Deputy Leader of the Labour party, wrote to the chair of the Conservative Party Amanda Milling alleging that Swayne “endorsed conspiracy theories about the veracity of the disease” – seemingly a reference to his claim that “figures have been manipulated”.
She laid it on thick: “The seriousness of his actions cannot be understated. For a member of parliament to appear on this platform and undermine our fight against the pandemic could have truly devastating consequences.”
The criticisms of Sir Desmond (at least, the ones that aren’t based on guilt-by-association) boil down to arguing that 1) there is no evidence that data has been “manipulated” and 2) that at the time of his comments, deaths were not “typical” for the time of year.
It is notable that no attempt has been made to dispute his claim about ICUs in November operating at “typical occupation levels for the time of year”, since that is demonstrably true, as this graph comparing 2020 with 2017 shows. This was not the impression many in Government and the media were giving at the time, with claims that daily “Covid admissions” were running at around 1,500 a day – which they were, but that wasn’t unusual – being made to whip up fear and used to justify increasing restrictions. This, presumably, is what Swayne means by “manipulation” of figures. That and the infamous prediction of 4,000 deaths a day made by Witless and Unbalanced in October to bounce the Government into the second lockdown. I think it’s fair to describe those figures as having been “manipulated”. After all, it was that prediction which prompted the UK statistics watchdog to issue another warning to the Government on its confusing and opaque use of statistics.
In terms of deaths, while November did see a greater number of weekly deaths than the average for the last five years, it was not hugely elevated and the trend was largely flat or declining. Describing this as “bouncing round at the typical level of deaths for the time of year” seems a fair description.
Sir Desmond defended his comments this week, saying they were “legitimate at the time”.
He is right to stand his ground. It must be acceptable for MPs, like journalists and other members of the public, to challenge Government policy, particularly during a crisis when momentous, far-reaching decisions are being made. Hindsight must not be used as a weapon to attack critics of the Government. Everyone has made some poor predictions in this crisis, Government ministers and advisers included. That’s not a reason for punishing dissenters from Covid orthodoxy in order to silence them. Any moves in that direction must be stoutly resisted.
Lockdown Sceptics win Cambridge Union Debate by 362 Votes to 309
On Thursday evening, Toby took part in a Cambridge Union debate. The motion was: “This House believes lockdown was a mistake.” Toby spoke in support of the motion along with Richard Tice and Sir Graham Brady MP. Writer, novelist and journalist Laura Spinney, novelist and physician Phil Whitaker and Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran spoke against. The motion was approved by 362 votes to 309. The Cambridge Independent has more.
Getting the proceedings under way was Sir Graham Brady, who said that the Lancet medical journal reported on December 23rd that, looking at the second lockdown, “it remains unclear how effective tier restrictions were in reducing transmission and what additional reduction in transmission might have been accomplished by the second lockdown”.
“We can see the efficacy of lockdowns is unclear,” suggested Sir Graham, “certainly rates had started to fall before schools were closed earlier this month, or indeed last March.”
He said: “We know that rates of transmission can fall without lockdown and can rise whilst restrictions are in place,” adding: “While some degree of restriction does, I’m sure, impact transmission, it remains, as the Lancet report says, unclear whether lockdown has any particular beneficial impact.”
Sir Graham mentioned, among other things, the 800,000 people who have lost their jobs since March, those who may have no job to return to when furlough comes to an end, and “the growing number” of people who are taking their own lives.
Sir Graham also spoke of the “hideous toll” on children and young people, the “three-fold increase” in the reporting of eating disorders, and the NSPCC reporting a 43% increase in referrals for child abuse.
Worth reading in full and the debate is worth watching in full.
Round-up
- “Britain gets a boost to its vaccine programme” – The Spectator‘s Katy Balls reports on the Novavax vaccine, which has completed phase three trial and been found to highly effective against the Kent strain, though less effective against the South African one. A booster shot is to follow
- “Covid’s economic impact could kill an extra 40,000 people over 50 years, modelling suggests” – An estimate placed before SAGE suggests that unemployment, reduced income and increased anxiety could kill an extra 40,000 – and delayed treatment an extra 18,000 over the next five decades – reports the Telegraph
- “Welsh lockdown is extended by three weeks ‘to allow NHS to recover’” – MailOnline reports that the level 4 lockdown restrictions in Wales will remain in force for at least another three weeks so that NHS Wales can recover, but primary schools may reopen after February half term
- “Personal liberty is another, unsung victim of the pandemic” – Good piece by Camilla Cavendish, former head of the Downing Street policy unit
- “Are we immune to the suffering of our children now?” – In her column for the Belfast Telegraph, Fionala Meredith highlights the experience of children living through lockdown. Masked up and treated like vectors of disease, they are guinea-pigs in the biggest medical experiment in history and they are suffering for it
- “Is the NHS overwhelmed by incoming COVID-19 patients?” – No, says Ludovic Noble in Off-guardian. It’s overwhelmed because it already is an overwhelmed system and it is operating at reduced capacity
- “Why the ‘grim milestone’ of 100,000 Covid deaths is nonsense” – James Delingpole takes aim at the coverage of recent ONS statistics in the Conservative Woman
- “Scepticism – the only intelligent option” – “We don’t need less scepticism,” says David Seedhouse in the Conservative Woman. “We need as much of it as we can muster”
- “Who’s the sceptic?” – Omar S. Khan argues that the hard lockdowners are the real sceptics; sceptical of established public health practice and civilised norms
- “Futile Covid regime is becoming Western leaders’ Vietnam” – The parallels are striking says Niall McCrae in the Unity News Network
- “What is causing the sudden rise in mortality in the UK?” – Hear Dan Astin-Gregory discuss the question on the Pandemic podcast
- “A tale of two Januarys” – Jeffrey Peel takes a look at January 2015 and January 2021. Deaths for time of year, in both years, is similar, he says
- “COVID-19 positive test cycle threshold trends predict COVID-19 mortality in Rhode Island“(pdf) – A new preprint study by Andrew G Bostom, Todd Kenyon, and Charles B. Eaton, showing how PCR cycle thresholds impact what the tests say about how much real, infectious virus there is
- “What’s the new phenomenon called ‘Covid Vaccine arm’” – Chris Gilbert, MD, reports on her experience of a delayed reaction to the Moderna vaccine in Psychology Today
- “No, Lockdowns do not foster creative destruction” – Writing on the AIER blog, Peter C. Earle warns against conflating entrepreneurialism with the rush to fill gaps created by major errors in public policy
- Dr Pierre Kory on ivermectin – Watch Kory’s interview with Vincent Evans in which he discusses his research on ivermectin, the most promising treatment for COVID-19 he’s looked at so far
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Three today: “Killed by Death” by Motörhead, Time for Livin” by The Association and “Could It Be Forever” by David Cassidy
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
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Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, the news that the “thin blue line” has been cancelled by the University of Madison-Wisconsin Police Department. The Kansas City Star has the story:
Created as a pro-cop symbol, “thin blue line” imagery can be found hanging from the walls of police stations, waving from front yard flagpoles, and stuck to car bumpers – but they won’t be found at the University of Madison-Wisconsin Police Department.
Whatever the white, black and blue flag might mean to some, it evokes “fear and mistrust” in Chief Kristen Roman’s community, she said. It’s one reason among several that she’s decided to ban it.
The term “thin blue line” has been around for decades, but the flag itself is much newer, coming to prominence alongside the Blue Lives Matter movement, which was established in response to Black Lives Matter, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. As such, some view the flag as symbolizing a movement that exists in opposition to BLM and its goals of achieving social justice and eliminating racism in policing.
“Effective immediately, visible public displays of thin blue line imagery while operating in an official capacity are disallowed,” Roman wrote in an email to officers on January 15th, but released to the public this week.
The move comes after community backlash against the department for a November social media post in which a “thin blue line” flag can be seen displayed at the police station. Student activists also called on the department to remove the flag, outlets reported.
But the January 6th Capitol riot in Washington, D.C., was Roman’s tipping point, the email says. Watching the chaos and violence unfolding on the news, it wasn’t hard to spot a few familiar flags carried in the fray.
Though they likely didn’t know it at the time, police at the Capitol were facing off against fellow officers from communities around the country who had joined in with the rest of the rioters, McClatchy News previously reported.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: From the you-couldn’t-make-it-up department: Black Lives Matter has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Stop Press 2: Woke politics is screwing up the vaccination programme, says Brendan O’Neill in Spiked-Online
Stop Press 3: Ed West, in Unherd, says that the Government’s new anti-woke campaign in defence of street names and statues is a distraction from the truly dangerous ideas that lurk behind woke orthodoxy.
“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: MailOnline has a report on the SAGE recommendation that face masks be worn “in a wider range of settings where people could be asymptomatic and may be in close proximity… This may include outdoor spaces where it is difficult to maintain distance and people may be close together for extended periods (medium confidence).”
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.
There’s the class action lawsuit being brought by Dr Reiner Fuellmich and his team in various countries against “the manufacturers and sellers of the defective product, PCR tests”. Dr Fuellmich explains the lawsuit in this video. Dr Fuellmich has also served cease and desist papers on Professor Christian Drosten, co-author of the Corman-Drosten paper which underpins the SARS-CoV-2 PCR test protocol. That paper was submitted on January 21st and accepted following peer review on January 22nd. The paper has been critically reviewed here by Pieter Borger and colleagues, who have also submitted a retraction request.
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.
Stop Press: A group of Scottish Church leaders from various denominations have now launched their claim for judicial review over the decision by the Scottish ministers to close churches during the current lockdown. The group, which is supported by the Christian Legal centre, claims that the closures exclude the vulnerable who don’t have access to the online broadcasts, that they are unconstitutional, and that they are illogical – how can it be that church buildings can safely be used for blood donor sessions and food banks but not public worship?
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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are covid deaths being manipulated?
A nurse know from our prayer group (over twenty there, but fifteen seats to be covid spy secure) said the other day that there is pressure on doctors to put a death as a covid death because they get extra funding for it (£1000 for every ten covid deaths reported?). Also, they can put a death as covid without having to ask a lot of questions (and the similar for care homes) We wondered if it would provide opportunities for another Harold Shipman.
Meanwhile, Sir Desmond Swayne is accused of “misinformation” for saying that coronavirus death stats are manipulated and that NHS risks are manageable. One draws one’s own conclusions.
Now what was that story about 22 deaths in a Basingstoke care home again?
The Great Reset debunked by a raging free-market capitalist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQfz2zwfpzU
Douglas Kruger
No cases at all of flu in the United Kingdom; a medical triumph!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cA7moHQdEk
History Debunked
Reported cases of Covid-19 seem to be rising exponentially. There may be a simple explanation for this, as at the same time cases of influenza have dropped to zero
Te simple explanation is that we are being scammed and this will all end very badly.
Te =The
Propaganda triumph.
Can’t be arsed to vieew your video but I know my wife has just finished a week at the vrtual Davos event and every single meeting was about planning for the great reset, 4th Industrial revolution. call it want you want be it’s real and being planned for.
It’s not that this agenda exists that is disputed, only the lunatic conclusions some people have reached concerning some of its aims that are highly questionable.
You don’t see a lunatic agenda. Its a ‘conditioning’ thing. Trust your stakeholders. It’s your freedom to give to what you value most and live your reward. The mask of virtue catches the unwary.
Yes, it’s not as if there are any historical examples of any large organisations making plans for world domination. A lot of people came to lunatic conclusions about people like Monsieur Napoleon, Herr Hitler, Mr Stalin and Mr Pot, but they turned out to be baseless…er…I think.
By 2030 you will own nothing and be (un)happy. Is that lunatic enough for you?
That is because they possess artificial intelligence and we don’t.
This a reply to those replying to and downvoting Nick, not a reply directly to Nick.
It’s not, in fact, very helpful for those here who believe in a globalist conspiracy to attack those of us who don’t. Nobody wins except the people (whoever they may be) who are destroying our way of life. Inasmuch as we have any power at all here, it is through our elected representatives and through our own actions. Whether the agenda is being controlled by Matt Hancock, Boris Johnson, SAGE, Klaus Schwab, the CCP or Bill Gates makes absolutely no difference to the options open to any of us to deal with it. Insisting that other people see the same truth that you do, when they hold basically the same position, is needlessly divisive. Can we just stop it?
Some of those or more likely all of those you have mentioned are waging a war on the masses of which we are part. Sun Tzu advises to know our enemy and to do that we have to know who the enemy is.
The title was misleading “The Great Reset debunked by a raging free-market capitalist “
The video is actually saying how awful the great reset is and how it is a plan for worldwide Communism.
Douglas Kruger is the debunking the behind it and not the fact that it exists.
Did they set out a time line for this?
2030 at the very latest.
I would be really grateful if you could give more details of what exactly they are planning? It would be very helpful to have some kind of idea of what to expect in the near future?
Read United Nations Agenda 21, then add 9 years.
Let them plan to their heart’s content. It ain’t gonna work.
Of course they are.
If there was to be another Shipman, I can’t think how our Gov could have created a more perfect environment and culture for him to operate in. It’s a complete insult to the measures they put in place after the enquiry to prevent this. Presumably Shipman II might find it a bit harder to procure enough diamorphine this time, but he could easily use another method and it get caught for a long time if ever.
They have the “vaccines” and Shipman is not needed.
Has this nurse tried reporting this to the media?
Sadly, we are the media now.
She would be wasting her time and the media would probably report her to the NHS. I’m not sure that most people on this excellent site have really begun to grasp just how very deep this rabbit hole goes.
Whilst most people here have focused on all things covid19, and rightly so, it has been at the expense of looking at the bigger picture, unfortunately. Tons of excellent work on here laying out the facts for which I’m immensely grateful. Equally tons of comments that have brightened many a day and saved me from the doldrums. However, the rampant opportunism of groups and individuals controlling and influencing the covid/vaccine story is our real enemy. Not that enough people are ready and able to face up to this even after all that’s happened. For me it’s about good versus evil. If I stand alone in that, so be it.
“For me it’s about good versus evil. If I stand alone in that, so be it.”
You can’t be alone; I will always stand with you. The lockdownistas can shriek all they want, but the very bottom line is that they are all evil, for the basic reason of an unwarranted removal of the human right to judge our own risk.
Some bedwetter put a meme on another forum where I used to contribute, showing two “nurses” holding a piece of paper up that suggested that sceptics should not mind working without PPE in a COVID-19 ward as a volunteer porter. I replied saying “Go on then, I am volunteering; no PPE, I will act as a porter in a COVID-19 ward for a month”.
Instead of taking me up on my offer (WHICH IS STILL OPEN), I got banned. Gutless bastards. Don’t DARE show me those stupid foul adverts that say (cue high-pitched whining voice) “We’re all scaaaared…” with a bedwetter nurse wringing her hands. It doesn’t affect me one jot.
Yes I go along with you entirely. As I said, this is an excellent site and not yet overtly infested with paid trolls. There are a few though, generally quite subtle, this not being the Daily Mail etc.
Highly suspect people appear to be running the NHS these days.
But they are just part of the Chain of Command. Like the military and most corporations.
Can’t argue with that.
The real manipulation is that the population is interpreting honest reporting of “deaths with CoVID-19″ and as “deaths from CoVID-19″. From that, everything else follows on naturally because we’re already lying to ourselves.
If you honestly looked at the provenance of the definitions on which both tests and the genetically defined RNA protein ‘pathogen’ arise from, you might find a deeper basis for lying to ourselves. But you are right, everything is being propagandised to push narratives that are baseless or grossly distorted.
The desire to BE manipulated is the other side of the balance sheet.
Do I get something I believe I need from these narrative identifictions?
I appreciate your bringing to awareness the nature of a flow of consequence from a ‘false’ cause. Unless people wake up to the nature of cause and effect they blindly assign ’cause’ to effects, and consent to be subjected by what they have given meaning to, as if a wholly external set of circumstances.
Thus I see a deep lesson in cause and effect underway in practical terms. Manipulation of meaning is also a form of magical appeal by which what we WANT to hide or hide from can SEEM to be escaped or overcome.
That this ‘new world’ comes with a heavy burden of sacrifice and denial COULD be obvious…
This post continues on
https://willingness-to-listen.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-desire-to-be-manipulated-is-other.html
Rather odd that stories like these are not reaching the MSM.
It makes you wonder about the NHS staff. Are they so blinded by their nomenklatura & “hero” status that they will overlook the fake statistics, the futility of the app and turning away patients who have cancer, hip problems, etc so they can keep their freebies, gifts, discounts and priority shopping hours?
They need to be careful as they can go from hero to zero quickly and when the day of reckoning comes, they won’t be spared and it won’t be a nice ending.
At a personal level, the little people who stay in line will probably be okay. We will always need doctors and nurses. But whistle blowers are likely to achieve little but their own dismissal and subsequent unemployability. The media won’t publish anyway.
Maybe that explains it. Along with the fact that, once you have morally compromised yourself to that extent, it’s much more comfortable if you convince yourself that you truly believe.
“Once you have morally compromised yourself to that extent, it’s much more comfortable if you convince yourself that you truly believe”
I really think you have nailed it there Ovis!
Indeed.
Your last sentence nails it!!!
Get bigger whistles.
https://youtu.be/9GwTERGveKg
I wanted to put this in for discussion. FPF police are set up as Ltd companies..
This is alarming.
It is vital that death certificates, autopsies and inquests can be carried out. (I know the coronavirus act has lifted the autopsy and inquest requirements)
But these laws are in place to protect us from murder (or at least to bring the perpetrator to light)
As I understand it, it is also an offence for a doctor to falsely declare cause of death, for which he can be charged.
There is a discussion with Dolores Cahill early on in this video from Reiner Fuellmich on the importance of the documentation around deaths.
https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/professor-of-molecular-genetics-issues-chilling-warning-on-covid-mrna-vaccines/
It starts at 1:01:29
I remember when this kicked off and I read that autopsies were not required or to be performed. It was one of a few things causing hairline fractures in my cognitive dissonance – which has now been so obliterated I’ve grown long floppy ears.
There are so many levels to this deception, I consider it our duty to perform a cost-benefit analysis as to whether we imprison all these cunts or just make soap out of them.
I despair for my children. Everyone else’s too.
The fee is absolutely not true – there is no fee for signing any death certificate. What is true and concerning is that a positive test is not needed for covid to be put in a death certificate, symptoms consistent with covid is sufficient, and this was even more prevalent in the early days last year before testing was widely available. The information is readily available – here is the advice from the medical defence union for example: https://www.themdu.com/guidance-and-advice/latest-updates-and-advice/certifying-deaths-during-covid-19-outbreak
Deaths from all causes per million is the only way, in my view, that the impact this virus is having can truly be measured.
If indeed that presumption is correct. For the disease symptoms and the reactive treatments and social measures and prophylactic intervention are all lumped as if the ‘virus’. As far as I am aware the virus exists as a computer modelling recombination or ‘alignment’ of many short strands of RNA discovered in a sampling of tissue fluid that holds a mixture of many different organic particles and detritus. Such discovery was not claimed or investigated as the cause of any disease. But the linkage of ‘virus’ and disease is strongly established in our belief systems – regards there are trillions of such particles pervading our world, our body our breath, and our mask. If nearly all of this was a form of cold and flu with a relabelling and escalation of perceived and believed threat and resulting responses, then that would be supported by comparing 2020 with previous years and factoring in deaths due to mistreatment along with deaths arising from the ‘side effects’ of lockdown and in the first instance to shutdown of normal medical support and for many a fear or aversion to engaging with a covid health service. A focus on clinical disease that poses threat to life… Read more »
Agreed. Speaking of which, when do we get the excess deaths for January?
There would be no formal payment scheme, far too incriminating. However, doctors would probably receive bonuses based on performance in delivering just what their management wants. You won’t find a smoking gun.
“extra funding available”. I would have to check with him/her about the nature of the extra funding. (Obviously he/she has to remain anonymous).
I heard sth from Germany, a reliable source, that the doctor wanted to write covid on the death certificate so he would get more money. Just has to be mentioned, not necessarily as the cause of death.
No, other causes of death are being manipulated to be covid deaths.
So bang on the nail.
I’m amazed that nobody puts out the chart of total annual deaths divided by population size which clearly shows that 2020 was a normal year for mortality. The Nhs is a joke they get over 100bn each year and have 1.4m employees. The whole pandemic is corruption at the highest level.
Good to hear you have a prayer group. I support a charity called Project Barnabas for persecuted Christians. They send a monthly magazine with stories about Christians being arrested, beaten, killed etc in various countries. I don’t recall anything about the effective closure of all churches in the UK, but of course that’s voluntary…
I heard of a UK church that was effectively open last April (though keeping a low profile). I am just glad that I am able to meet with a group of people under (old) normal conditions and appreciate how lucky I am in these circumstances – and grieve for those who are unable to do so. I wonder how many old normal groups, whether prayer groups or anything else, are carrying on at the moment.
Unfortunately, persecuted Christians (who face more persecution worldwide than any other group) is not a very fashionable cause in recent times, so I am glad to hear you are supporting them.
Taxpayer money.
today its me !!!!!
damn .. it wasnt me !!!! deflated! . and yes of course deaths are manipulated. all the data it being manipulated
Sorry!
The Startling Truth about Covid-19 and Vitamin D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pNyLLRQSTc
Vernon Coleman
Fantastic. So true
I was alarmed at his RDA comment. UK RDA is 400IU !!! – the Vit D council along with others who have researched Vit D is 5000IU. Fauci reportedly takes 6000IU. So I would consider at least 3000IU or indeed 4000. But unless medically advised otherwise not more than 10,000IU daily (in winter). Higher dose is worth adding Vit K2 for the proper laying down of calcium. A recent doctors zoom on Vit D had one doctor taking his 1 month at a time as one dose. (In Italy it is over the counter as a phial of oil So while VC may be covering his liability to being attacked he would do better to invite people to research – which means caring to seek out information rather than ticking the boxes. The smear campaign against Vit D is in my opinion, commercially and politically motivated. ‘Stay in the cage everyone!’ One last thing; it can take a couple of weeks for the body to synthesis the supplemental form to the bioactive form that enables T-cell and other immune functional support, so it is not an acute remedy as a supplement. Bernstein-Mercola receomend a nebuliser to deliver a remedial salve… Read more »
You only have to look at the stats that our media puts out every day – deaths within 28 days of a positive test and “with” rather than from Covid, this is obvious manipulation.
It’s not ‘me’, it’s Hugh. 🙂
to Hugh, to me!
Lockdown is a huge medical experiment being conducted without the consent of the participants
What will be the effect of not exposing the participants to virus and bacteria for extended periods?
The outcomes will be unknown until long after the experiment is concluded
The lawfulness or otherwise of lockdown will occupy the courts for many years to come
On the practical front the dictatorship appears to labour under the illusion that at some stage they can unlockdown (no me neither)
The extent of the phycological damage lockdown has caused is unknown. For the past 12 months people have been told mere contact with another human being will kill them and they believe it
Will the dictatorship be able to unfrighten the population and send them back to work? I doubt it.
Economically the county has ground to a halt and then been shoved into reverse
Imposing lockdown was easy.
I doubt if the dictatorship will be able to put back together what it has broken
There are people out there that are already permanently crippled due to cancelled hip ops. Others that will kark it at the first sign of the common cold. Kids with psychological damage will now suffer this through their entire life course. The list goes on and on. SAGE really do have a lot to answer for.
Yes, even if lockdown were to be lifted today and not enforced again, the damage is already off the charts and permanent. However, lockdown isn’t going to end today and this tyranny is going to last a long time. This crime is immeasurable.
Yes, I go along with your pessimistic, but very realistic view.
Interesting to note the doctor writing on ‘covid arm’ openly stating we are taking part in a large clinical trial.
Spot on. The damage brought about by this has been massive and regardless, we will be paying for this for years, even decades to come. For some especially children, it will be for life.
They are still labouring under the illusion that they can defeat a virus. If they continue to do this they can never un-lockdown so the 2 beliefs are in fact mutually incompatible.
One would have thought that the psychologists in the Psi-B team having done such a good job in terrorising the population would have similar ‘reversal strategies’ to un-frighten them. It seems there is no desire to try this.
Imposing lockdown was easy – they did indeed ‘get away with it’ (what did Prof Pantsdown really mean by that?). There is no incentive to un-lockdown – it would only bring into sharp relief the catastrophic damage that has been done to all aspects of our lives.
I don’t believe that ‘they’ believe that – any more that War on terror, War on whatever. China leads the way in lockdown as the normal. Once structured in the technology, social structure and enforcement agencies, it can allow permissible movement, or business to emerge. I can assure you that if the furlough or food supply was cut off, the people would come out and apply themselves to survival. Underneath all this is a simple fact that if the Banking sector didnt support all this, they could starve it of funding and bring it to a halt. Evidence shows the opposite is true and so they are at least co-driving it as a part of restructuring a corrupted, crashed and broken economy. I would like to believe that the lockdowns are a form of medical restraint while the surgery is undertaken. But where is there any sign of love of life in the ‘Surgery’? It is all fear and control masking in PR virtue signalling. Prove me wrong if you can. As for exit strategy it is this ‘builderberg better!’ (excuse the wordplay). Iraq as an example was more destroyed and undermined in life, function and wealth by the post… Read more »
Thank you. It’s very welcome to hear from someone who’s got a real grasp of what’s really going on. Strangely there are many who still believe that the long planned Covid event was (or is) about a virus. Covid has always been intended as cover for the Great Reset / Agenda 30, both of which require a massive cull of the global population. The exit strategy for non-stakeholders is of course death by vaccine.
It’s not a virus, it’s a germ.
Some people are way past the level of hypochondria that can be reversed.. even if they take the vaccine their life will not return to normal. Hypochondria is an obsessive compulsive disorder which is very difficult to treat maybe with some kind of ssri and exposure therapy.. can you imagine those visored gloved up, scared sh.tless poor souls consenting exposure therapy to human contact even after the vaccine?? I don’t think so and apart from the ones that have real health conditions or advance age I don’t give a damn about them either. They are a huge part of the problem,they are the ones responsible for world goverments cavalierly acts of putting us through this out of proportion reaction.
We don’t want what they have broken. We want our own Great Reset.
I’m not at all sure that they will want to reopen the economy, that is not what Klaus and Bill are after. Lockdown set to stay, at least until the vaccines have done their dirty work.
Some very unpalatable chickens coming home to roost. Even the BBC has a report that finally states the bleedin’ obvious.
Very noticeable that this item blames all these entirely predictable problems on the pandemic or the virus – ie not on the lockdowns which just get a mention in a couple of the quotes.
BBC News – Covid: The devastating toll of the pandemic on children
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55863841
Keep their government masters happy eh? Who would have thought that the threat to decriminalise non payment of the licence fee would have such devastating consequences?
Yes, but what is the ITV’S, CHANNEL 4’S, 5’S AND SKY’S EXCUSES?
Government terror ads must bring in a lot of money.
Non-Independent TeleVision?
I never realised how easy it was for the government to manipulate the media
Excellent point, Annie.
Of course they do. The media were ‘incentivised’ with government advertising back in March and this has been the main driver of the propaganda war ever since.
Various governments have been putting out terror ads for years. How about the anti-smoking ad with the guy in an alleyway being beaten to a bloody pulp by an invisible force? Sickening. PHE and the NHS approved of it and many people thought it was appropriate and justified.
If only the MSM would tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth on this whole diabolical show then surely it would be over??
The corporate media have never told the truth and nothing but the truth. They misrepresent and lie about anything everything. They even lie about dolphins: https://viewsandstories.blogspot.com/2020/04/corporate-media-lie-about-dolphins-and.html
There is a simple solution…
Shared! Yes I noticed the BBC talks about the effects of the pandemic and the virus, and not the effect of lockdown, but it’s a start… even BBC readers hopefully will draw the obvious inference.
Funny how they still can’t bring themselves to say that its lockdown wot did it.
It isn’t the “toll of the pandemic” on children it is the toll of the political response to the pandemic on children. That fact has to be absolutely clear in every headline. It was a choice and we had other choices. You can’t blame a virus for doing what it is designed to do but you can blame those making the decisions.
Exercise Cygnus in 2016 concluded that in the event of a pandemic the NHS would be overwhelmed. The government responded to this, not by adopting the obvious measure, that is increasing capacity, rather the government reduced capacity. The government at the time was, of course, the Conservatives, who remain the government. When the entirely predictable pandemic did occur a year ago, the Conservative government, on the basis of its experts’ advice, decided against securing the borders, that is, they decided to import the virus, which inevitably occurred in late January 2020. The Conservative government did little about the virus. Indeed, on 19 March 2020, the government deemed the virus to not be a high consequence infectious disease. The very next day Boris Johnson made his first statement calling for lockdown and introduced it on 23 March 2020 on the ground that it was necessary in order to stop the NHS from being overwhelmed. He told the country that this would take three weeks. And parliament without scrutiny or division passed the Coronavirus Act 2020, which provided the government with the authority to govern by ministerial decree. The two hundred page legislation had been drafted in response to the result of… Read more »
An ugly duckling, eh?
Immediately after announcing the Lockdown, The Pig Dictator had a meeting with Billy Boy Gates. He also increased the UK payments to the WHO by a couple of hundred million.
Why ?
British politicians always seem to think they can take the lead by joining things. Think EU, where British views were consistently ignored. Johnson, being a typical arrogant Tory posh-boy, imagines he is just the man to head up the WEF and the WHO and lead us to the sunlit uplands of international corporate fascism.
This should be shared… do we have references?
“on the basis of its experts’ advice, decided against securing the borders, that is, they decided to import the virus, which inevitably occurred in late January 2020”.
I totally don’t agree with this. The virus, if there is ONE…which there Isn’t, was endemic globally from I think from at least October 2019.
In fact I think this is a corner stone of COVID bollocks. That we “let it in”. It was here already.
There are many Corona virus variants as we know and they are EVERYWHERE. They always have been and always will be endemic. NPI’s are voodoo.
The first recorded instance of Covid 19 in this country occurred at the end of January 2020. A Chinese couple arrived at Heathrow, travelled freely about the country, until when they reached York, they sought medical assistance.
While that is true there is some evidence for undiagnosed coronavirus cases in UK in December or even November 2019. Andy Gill (Gang of Four lead) a notable case (but underlying condition too) RIP. His tour manager was ill too after returning from tour in China.
Pretty damn sure there were cases around that time too. Myself and others I know all had the same classic “Covid” symptoms. I’m also hearing further afield that people were getting ill then.
The first “recorded” “case”, OK. Well before then they weren’t “recording” anything or testing anybody, it was just a boring old cold then. My Aunty and all her (7+) Scottish 80+yr old friends caught a hacking cough/feeling terrible/getting SHINGLES!/ bug at Christmas 2019 when they all met up for their Christmas shin-dig. They are all fine now, obviously. If they were tested it would have been covids and they probably would have been hospitalised, ventilated and would be dead by now. Lucky they got it early when it was still a crap cold.
Oh yer, and nearly all of my European online mates got a hacking cough/feeling crap bug around December too.
As did I.
Yes! I’m actually starting to think stretching back to late 2018.
Why 2018? Also, what’s your username referring to? Lady Bracknell?
“When the entirely predictable pandemic did occur a year ago …” ??
WHO had changed the definition of pandemic.
WHO downgraded the ‘pandemic’ before the first lockdown.
There is no pandemic. There has been no real pandemic. Pandemic was called to put the frighteners on the undiscerning public and give cover for totalitarian ‘governance’.
Coronavirus Act 2020 must be repealed.
The Act should never have been passed in the first place. It was subject to zero scrutiny. If the MPs had bothered to read it, they might have noticed that at Part 2 Section 90 it gives government ministers the legal authority to do anything, forever. The Act marks the legal parliamentary implementation of fascism, and there was barely a word of protest.
As to the definition of the word pandemic: it just means an infectious/contagious disease that is prevalent across much of the world. Thus, the common cold(s) is an obvious example of a pandemic.
You’re right. If there’s one Brucie bonus from this dire shitshow, it’s the evidence that Parliament isn’t even capable of reading the actual lines, let alone inbetween them.
Does anyone have any insight into the ‘Covid denier’ Gary Matthews death – Covid kills Covid-denier who refused to wear mask or socially distance. It seems to be all over the news in the UK and they seem to be using the story into silencing the lockdown skeptics.
This Clown Ian Fraser posted about it
https://mobile.twitter.com/Ian_Fraser/status/1355095324667351040
Also Ian Fraser is out to get Toby, Gupta ….
It’s great there’s now an organised group debunking the disinfo being spread by “Covid sceptics” Sunetra Gupta, Carl Heneghan, Mike Yeadon, Toby Young, Allison Pearson, Julia HB, etc. Well done @s8mb @StuartJRitchie @NeilDotObrien https://covidfaq.co
https://mobile.twitter.com/Ian_Fraser/status/1353728994164830210
“Covid kills Covid-denier” eh?
Quick, someone print out a load of stickers saying “Lockdowns kill children”!
Fight fire with fire. If enough people put them up, they can’t stop all of them.
Well he looks fit and healthy in the photos which makes it statistically highly unlikely but who knows? Perhaps his friends and family were begging him to wear a mask because he had an underlying health condition?
Aside: what happened to wearing a mask protects others not yourself?
That was SO last year!
I’ll take responsibility for this mans death if Ian Fraser takes responsibility for every suicide,every heart attack and stroke victim who was too scared to access the NHS,Every cancer victim who had treatment stopped or had screening delayed and now is incurable .Every care home resident who had a DNR and was barred from NHS care.
Every person who has died as a result of taking the vaccine.
These people have blood on their hands and I haven’t even mentioned the closure of the schools or the utter destruction of the economy.
He’s an adult who conducted and executed his own risk assessment like we all did back in the day.
When Covidians wave this story at me I simply ask where all the stories are for people who followed all the rules and still died?
The Covidian then has to pretend people who follow the rules don’t die or accept that the media is fully signed up to dishing out government propaganda.
It’s all good PR for the pro-lockdowners, of course. But it should be viewed in the context of knowing the precise circumstances and what NHS treatment he received. I am becoming more and more of the opinion that many ‘covid’ deaths are due to medical malpractice.
Sky News: Vandals target Long Man of Wilmington and paint COVID mask on its face.
https://news.sky.com/story/vandals-target-long-man-of-wilmington-and-paint-covid-mask-on-its-face-12202603
Has anybody put one on. the Sphinx?
They’ve been all over the place – I think “David” had one.
Such an uplifting piece of vandalism. Reminds me of the mostly peaceful BLM protests.
Sistine Chapel next.
EXCLUSIVE!! Shorthand Snr (77) in Hot Water Over Vax Infertility Fears. It has emerged overnight that the father of Aberdeenshire’s most eligible bachelor and committed Lockdown Sceptic, Shorthand, has questioned his own imminent participation in the UK vaccination rollout over fears that it may make him infertile. The 77 year old Bo’ness resident who has recently bemoaned the last year of lockdowns not over any moral, economical or ethical issues but that it has killed his promising 5 a side soccer career. A source close to the family has told us that the ageing (Left) winger had hoped to see himself up among the Bo’ness footballing elites such as Lexie Shields, the one eyed goal scorer who took the town to victory over rivals Baillieston in the Scottish Junior cup in 1984. Bo’ness, a small mining town on the banks of the River Forth remains insulated from many surrounding towns not through covid restrictions, just no one really likes them. Many outsiders harshly claim that the only good thing to come out of Bo’ness is the roads. In another matter, long term rivalry dating back to the days of the great plague between the neighbouring posh town Linlithgow was recently… Read more »
You’ve been self isolating for far to long
… I’ve time on my hands…..
I’ve started the day with a big big laugh. May your hand never grow longer.
My pleasure Annie
More please!
Aberdeenshire? 1983? drinking incident? soccer?
Easy – ECWC!
Bo’ness Boys Club Disco 1983…. And what an incident it was. Last night was the Aberdeenshire 2021 incident. Baw Baws now….
This is adorable! Thanks very much.
No idea what that’s all about, but for steam train enthusiasts the Bo’ness and Kinneil Railway is worth a visit (if it ever opens again).
I’ve just been for a jaunt around the comment sections of Lockdown Sceptic’s favourite rag, The Daily Telegraph. What a sewer. Full of apoplectic zombies shrieking that the EU is “trying to steal our jabs,” coupled with mushy praise for the Führer Johnson and the head of the vaccines task force (and unashamed crony) Kate Bingham.
Interesting then that the continued fallout from Brexit and the purported theft of these experimental, unlicensed vaccines led by France and Germany is drawing out far more incandescence than the continued house arrest of 67 million people, the destruction of the economy, the ruination of our childrens’ education, the transformation of our society into a hostile, Stasi state and the most terrible loss of quality life years directly due to government policies in our country’s history.
I can only hope that the vast bulk of these people are comfortably retired with nothing else to do but clutch their pearls over utterly trivial matters.
The DT evidently has human readers and zombie readers. Both have money. Both do comments. The DT has to be ‘faithful to both’, like Monmouth.
There’s no doubt now if you look at a lot of these daily front page headlines that there is some sort of shadowy discussion group talk behind the scenes with editors to constantly be distracting attention by switching the focus of daily ‘outrage’. Absolutely and cynically planned diverting attention away from the botch ups in ensuring adequate numbers of new customs officers post Brexit and inherent problems little reported and, away from their own constant mistakes . A Czech friend whose parents resided under the Warsaw Pact era find it baffling why so many people here seem to be believing the Govs line and MSM. Like her parents she’s always had the attitude that all politicians are liars and not be trusted only some less so than others and any State owned media by its very nature is always 90% propoganda.
In 1972 Idi Amin expelled 60,000 Ugandan asians and many came to the UK for a better fairer life. Just after Christmas our son and family, including our twin grandsons went to Uganda for a 3 year work commitment. Since arriving in Kampala the grandsons have started at a play-school and the family have been enjoying social gatherings with other families. It is a strange situations and a complete reversal where in order to enjoy any sort of normality in life you have to leave London and re-locate to Uganda!
I should join them asap, Steve!
Mikey Mikes parents arrived here from Uganda
Mike now wants to deploy the tactics of Amin in the UK
Has she been seen shopping for oversized fridges yet? I hear Beko do a good model.
I can well believe that Uganda is more family friendly than Britain. It reminds me of the mother who fled Britain with her children because of problems with the notorious family courts (she had done nothing wrong) and found a warm welcome in Turkish Cyprus.
yes, the third world is going to be the last place to be reached by the boot stamping on the human face forever- and some slither of hope remains that it may never get there. And all those boat-loads of migrants: the traffic is really going in the wrong direction now
Unfortunately, China’s boot prints can be seen all over Third World resources.
There’s no escaping the shitshow. Besides, we’ve got front seat tickets.
Residents of care homes are said to be self isolating
Hmm! The guards lock the doors and the residents are not allowed in or out
Using that rationale the prisoners of Auschwitz could be described as self isolating
Of course. They were sent there for their own safety, in case that tiresome ailment called Living started to trouble them.The treatment was 99.99% effective. A few inmates survived, but that wasn’t due to a lack of zeal on tbeir protectors’ part.
I think the whole concept of ‘care homes’ will be questioned by the next generation of older people. I think there will be a growing number who will take the Amy Winehouse line, ‘they told me to go to a care home, I said I won’t go’. My 91 year old aunt has her box of pills and bottle of booze ready for the day when anyone tries to condem her to a care home. The present older generation have been surprisingly acquiescent and accepting of being bundled into care but I think that is changing.
My wife’s uncle was forced into a care home, he drove them crazy by proving an expert escape artist, he did not last long in the care home system! We are now being driven by relentless propaganda to be injected by dubious vaccines and ask no questions, the corollary to that will be when people turn round and demand a jab to end their life at the time of their choosing. I think one result of this current hoo-haa will be that there is an increasing call for people to have an end of life option.
Shot by a jealous husband is the top exit option although harder to manage as time goes on.
Partly because if you sneeze out of place, let alone shoot some bugger, the bastards take your license away. Nanny state gone mad!!!
Or crash a fast car, like Desmond Llewellyn?
I will be making it clear to my family that I will never forgive them if they stick me in a home. I was extremely fortunate to be a lifelong friend of the headteacher of my first school. He drowned himself after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s, what a brave and generous man he was.
I mentioned, half joking, a final boat trip to a neighbour. A few days later she said after sharing the idea with a few friends that I needed a bigger boat.
So, those who think care homes are a questionable concept – who do you think should be caring for my 89 year old, doubly incontinent husband with severe dementia, who has not known who I am for several years, let alone has the capacity to commit suicide? What’s your solution, what experience have you had of this kind of situation?
My mum had a stroke and was in a care home for some months before she died, this was part funded by us and part funded by the NHS, there will always need to be some care for people in a severe condition. However, I have a friend from the work retirement group who was put into a care home when she came out of hospital following a broken hip. She would have been quite capable of living in her own place with some support but the hard pressed local authority adult social care team found the easiest option was to bundle her into a home where she was then forgotten by the system and rapidly became institutionalised so that a return to her home became increasingly unlikely. Of course in the present situation I have not seen her for nearly a year but I expect she has deteriorated further. For many of the present elderly generation it did not occur to them to need to think about how to cope with extreme old age and so they were unprepared when the situation arose. Many of the next generation down have realised that this is going to be a problem… Read more »
I really feel for your situation.
In my experience of care homes (all of 3, so pretty limited) the vast majority of residents were like your poor husband.
However, there were a small minority of residents who were still in full mental control (like my 96 year old aunt, my mother in law and my own 96 year old mother). They all hated being in the home, but apart from my mother last summer, they realised that their alternatives were non existent.
For the vast majority of residents who need constant nursing care, there is no easy alternative.
My half joking conversation with my neighbour followed the deaths of both my parents in NHS hospitals. My father’s at 90 hastened by a pointless lumbar puncture. He was kicked out of NHS care as we rushed to convert his house to cope with his sudden inability to walk after the lumbar puncture. He endured a month in an expensive ‘posh’ local care home and finally got back home where with live in care he survived for another 11 months. Not much reward for 70 years as a tax payer including 30+ in the army starting in Burma. Because he hadn’t expected them to live that long (65 years of marriage) he hadn’t made any tax plans and a grateful nation took a further 20+% as a final FU. So the half joke was from a jaundiced frame of mind. I will admit to having softened now that I have grandchildren.
Your situation is horrible and of course you have my sympathy. I pray that I shall have the strength and courage when the time comes.
I think the solution is to have care homes for those who want them, and euthanasia for those that don’t.
I sympathise with you and your husband. Life is sacred and to be cherished, yet we’re more humane to pets.
I’m not naive enough to know such actions aren’t littered with all manner of ethical and spiritual debate but it’s time the government and the adult population grow up and figure out how to deal with this. Doing nothing is unthinkable.
Some mechanism, like a will that bestows money and things, only this one bestows one’s dignity.
I truly wish you well.
I’ve had it worked out for a long time how to deal with things if it got to that stage – portable barbecues used indoors = carbon monoxide = gone. Even worked out the relevant ppm (parts per million) of carbon monoxide in the air. 1600 ppm = gone within 2 hours. 3200ppm = less than half an hour. 12,000ppm = 1-3 minutes. So just how many portable barbecues does it take to get to 12,000ppm? Remedy to be applied in the case of threat of carehomes/severe chronic illness or, latterly, any attempt to force me to have the vax or discriminate me out of access to things once everyone else is allowed to use them again (because I won’t be having the vax).
Good shout. Could get a few burgers done as your final meal. Make sure the chicken is cooked through first though. Love a BBQ, me.
LOL – chicken is out. I’m vegetarian – but there are veggie burgers.
Don’t forget to silence the CO alarm first.
That is very useful information.
I’ve had a long time to think about what to do if ever needed. One of my parents lived with severe chronic ill health (steadily getting worse and worse) for over 30 years and the rest of my family with lots of chronic ill health too. You can imagine that was an object lesson to me of just how much being so unhealthy can cause one to suffer in a variety of ways and I decided then I’d never be in that position. Hence figuring out what to do if ever Mother Nature didn’t co-operate with me and tried to put me in that position. Subsequently updated and amended just-in-case re Lockdown etc. So I started with changing my diet from the way they all eat/ate to being a (genuinely) healthy diet instead and eat very differently indeed to them – but, if all else fails, one way or another – I’ve got it figured what to do.
Yes that is the first method on my list
Yes, I have long been worried that they would start trying to bump off the old. A perhaps inevitable consequence of killing the very young.
yes the relaxing of strictures against abortion did indeed turn out to be the beginning of the slippery slope that ended the sanctity of ALL human life
I presume Hugh meant the “very young” when he used that phrase – and not “foetus that hasn’t been born yet” – as that’s a very different kettle of fish. One of the divisions in the Anti-Lockdown movement is when someone pops up with all sorts of unrelated stuff (like being anti-abortion for instance). Abortion – or otherwise – is absolutely totally unrelated to Lockdown or otherwise. I’m vehemently anti-Lockdown and, on that totally unrelated subject of abortion, I wouldnt have hesitated for one moment if ever my body had pulled an unwanted pregnancy on me. That pregnancy would have gone within days/at most a couple of weeks.
‘Protective custody’ was the term adopted for those confined at Spandau after the Reichstag fire.
Our parliament has oodles
Of spineless, brainj-dead poodles,
But, to ease the pain,
It also has Desmond Swayne.
My sister has a sproodle as a pet.
It has not shown much gumption as of yet.
Well may one love a creature with four paws
Without considering it a suitable instigator and guardian of national laws.
Can someone please remind me of the name of the Health and safety instrument that the (fucking) teaching unions invoked to close the schools at the beginning of the month?
From the Morning Star (not a paper I take (I don’t take any!)):-
“The National Education Union (NEU) will inform its members that it is not safe to enter schools before mid-January given the government’s loss of control over the rising tide of Covid-19 infections.
It will advise them to refuse to enter their workplaces under Section 44 of the Health and Safety Act, on the grounds that the government has not taken steps to ensure schools are safe environments for pupils or staff.”
Don’t know why everyone has it in for BLM. Lesbian Marxist witches, what’s not to like? A quick look through the list of Nobel Peace Prize awards reveals some corkers. EU, Barack Obama, Al Gore, Yasser Arafat, Henry Kissinger, others depending on one’s politics.
Burn Loot Murder – after the Bidentard Communist coup all quiet now isn’t it?
Anti-White racism has a lot of Establishment support of course.
Al Gore the Globalist Eco Whore, Arafat the Muslim playing with his boys, Kissinger and his de-population schemes; OClowna funding the Muslim Jihad……some patterns can be identified by the igNobel prize.
Biden Likes Minors #NotMyPeadophile
What is it about Biden and minors? Is it the dirty black faces, the hard hats, the cap lamps, THE CLOSE HARMONY SINGING?
I just don’t get it…..
Dear Deirdre
The vast majority of the people I speak to now say they ‘have had enough’ and want lockdown to end
They are not sceptics, they are not zealots, they just ‘want it to end’
I get a very warm feeling inside as I watch them suffer. I reply ‘I’m Ok with it and I could do another year of it no problem’ My comment appears to inflict even more pain on them
I am however serious, I could do another year of this and I am enjoying watching them suffer
Is this normal?
dear Cecil, do not feel guilty about taking some petty pleasure in the vilest of places – since there are so few real sources of pleasure left to you, you must take what slim pickings you can get, to sustain your spirits through the lean times. Ordinarily, I am sure you would not have dreamed of stooping this low, but desperate times call for desperate measures. amidst all our suffering, we can in future look forward to such spectacles as Matt Hancock being thrown under the bus, comfortable furloughers being thrown on to the scrapheap, to name but a few…. stay sane, Deirdre
“Matt Hancock being thrown under the bus” Can I recommend the most suitable bus to be chosen for this honour to be the N15 from Westminster to Becontree because Becontree is completely beyond Barking.
Lockdowns
Loathe them or ignore them – you can’t like them
(Dedicated to Douglas Adams)
In last night’s dream I seemed to see
The loathsome Wankok on TV,
Where, to encourage the zombie mob,
He underwent an anal swab.
Was the swab taken with a q-tip or a garden rake?
Pike.
Piledriver
A red hot poker is the traditional English implement (Edward II).
The baby-eating Bishop of Bath and Wells was a proponent too for debtors.
Red hot poker
…and he ENJOYED it.
Ok this is me with my tin foil hat on but does anyone else think this EU vaccines dispute is part Psyop to create the impression there is a huge EU wide demand for their wonder jabs ?
it’s totally psyop. they’re just playing hard to get. the appearance of a glut would depress demand.
They do it every Christmas, rationing supplies of the must-have (expensive) toy so that every kid pesters its parents into buying the thing.
The Dreaded Brussel sprout shortage every Christmas .
Think of the greenhouse gas emissions this shortage saves though.
I hate Brussels , the bloating after Christmas dinner is frankly is too painful .
Yes I thought that straightaway
I think there is probably some sort of dispute but it is being ramped up here in the media to provoke two types of reaction,
1 : To get Boomer bulldog / spitfire patriot types to not want those ” bloody Germans ” getting the vaccine before bloody well me .
2 : Europhile / Remainer types to think ” Well the French and Germans are far smarter than all the awful gammon xenophobes here and if they want the vaccine so bad it must safe and I want mine Now “.
Maybe
I think it may also be a distraction tactic
Europe even among some fairly hardcore sceptics is still a divisive issue
I tend to think the vaccine row is fairly irrelevant
Europe are scared of other countries now wanting to leave – seeing as how we are now out and not yet a basket case despite the governments best efforts . So any political manoeuvering to put them off will be used
This is true also , my Mrs’s European friends and some of her remainer colleagues in the city are now looking at this whole situation and thinking that maybe Brexit was a good idea after all .
So that trying to punish the UK seems to be back firing on the EU if they want to put off any other member states from leaving.
I think the vaccines could potentially be a very divisive issue in the EU. Strong indications that CzR, for instance, and I guess some other East/Central European countries, will not have a high take up, and they may take very unkindly to being pressurized through either ‘vax-passport’ or conditions attached to distribution of ‘Covid relief funds’.
By looking at the media headlines, it also has the advantage of portraying Boris as a hero, and ‘genius’ to quote Street Porter. Then amongst all this news, hide the bad news of excess deaths from lockdowns.
Christ it would take all the propaganda powers of Edward Bernays to get the Blond Psycho Buffoon looking like a hero now . 😉
The fucker has plenty of useful idiots like Wancock and Williamson to chuck under the bus when it all goes tits. Plus he has the get out clause of his supposed hospitalisation.
Check out James Corbett’s reports from last year where he details artificial scarcity tactics used to get people clamouring for things. . . . same old playbook
Don’t be silly of course it is.
I think the vaccines are tanking. 40% want it in some countries so they say.
Matketing 101. Bluff scarcity increase demand. They are setting up life long yearly vaccines… they need to lie big. And so they are.
The brainwashed mindless duckparks think that getting THE JAB is like getting a new car, or a new gaming PC, or a new sofa, or a new conservatory.
Idiots.
I Know right , I despair at some my friends and work colleagues blase attitude to the jab . Well I had my Polio and BCG when I was a kid and i’m fine so what’s the problem? .
Also many have been heavy drinkers and drug users so I also hear ” after what I have put into my body a little jab isn’t gonna make any difference “.
Jesus wept !!
What a bunch of Mellon farmers.
The awful racist gammons will lap it up if they think they getting one over on the French .
Boris. “I have a cunning plan.”
Whitty. “You wouldn’t recognise a cunning plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on top of Big Ben singing ‘Cunning plans are here again.”
Create the impression of shortage? In order to stimulate demand.
Said to be an effective psychological trick.
The article about masks ATL lumps them in with other forms of “labelling”. They are a form of labelling, but they are much more. Wearing a label doesn’t stop you from breathing properly, or getting air on your skin, or speaking clearly, or hearing others clearly, nor does it obscure most of the face, preventing basic human communication. Masks dehumanize and invade personal bodily functions.
Masks
Does anyone have a link to the study? I have tried to find it without success so far.
If this is true it means that masks are murder.
I’m not assuming that it is true, yet.
Very true. Well known fact that cancers thrive in low oxygen environments.
Many people with cancer go for regular hyperbaric oxygen sessions
SAGE banging on about masks in being compulsory in outside public places https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9202691/SAGE-urges-No10-make-face-masks-compulsory-outdoors.html
i fear this may well be a price that we are forced to pay to ease restrictions.
But wearing masks whilst easing restrictions is tautological. They are inherently restrictive, affecting your ability to breathe. In the grand scheme of things, they’re only easing the economy slightly in exchange for restricting your breath. Not much of an easing.
I am trying to imagine a world where China was not the first country to realise that there was a new SARS virus…presumably that is what the CCP were aiming for for a while anyway by denying its existence and silencing the poor Doctors who raised the alarm. I am sure that Li Wenliang was murdered. I think it’s pretty obvious even without an investigation that the virus came from the bat caves research via the Wuhan lab, but the CCP seem determined to avoid this by obstructing the investigators and destroying research. Is Shi Zhengli still alive? Anyway… I think the primary motivation for declaring that asymptomatic transmission commonly exists was just to deflect attention away from themselves in the vain hope that they could make out that it came from elsewhere? And now we’re stuck with this fake supposition. I went to my GP with precise covid symptoms just over a year ago and they freely admitted that it’s was just a respiratory virus and that they’d been seeing loads of it last winter… They didn’t tell me to isolate, wear a mask, avoid vulnerable people etc! When I was still struggling to exercise weeks later they didn’t… Read more »
It’s hard to know why they went mad with the lockdown, but I strongly doubt many/any other countries would have tried it had they not been first.
Ferguson et al were inspired by Italy who were inspired by China
Suggestion that as well as Fauci’s GOF research they were doing bio weapons research. So that the leak scared CCP. Then they spotted the benefits in helping them deal with HK and then everybody else.
CCP also got their pet WHO to recommend it and testing, testing, testing …
I can tell an almost identical story of going to the GP with covid symptoms in early January last year. And being told. “You have a virus, there’s a lot of it about.” Many of my friends were telling much the same story. It took a couple of weeks to get rid of the barking cough etc, and then pretty much back to normal. That is until the shit hit the fan in China. Dumping us all into this dystopian nightmare.
Oh for the days when for most of us, this virus would have been treated with the advice take a couple of Paracetamol every four hours and drink plenty of fluids. Come back in a couple of weeks if there is no improvement.
My daughter took my grandson Aand E three times in January. He was listless, high temp, coughing non stop. A rash. Ist diagnosis. Scarlet fever, second and third …A virus
I have read the John Lee Spectator article and an article by Matt Ridley in the Telegraph suggesting lockdown might prevent a weakening of the virus. Can anyone point me to any other pieces about this theory, please?
https://www.aier.org/article/lockdowns-do-not-control-the-coronavirus-the-evidence/
and many others, the above link is the compendium of Ivor Cummins, bete noir for the Twatturd chattering cult of Covidiots. He is an IT engineer (like myself). We have a binary view of life – either it is true, or bullshit. And the LDs are bullshit.
LDs are destructive for many reasons – one is they derange the natural life cycle of a virus which is killed by the natural environment and your natural immune system, both of which are also negatively impacted by LDs. Keep in mind that many diseases and problems are also psychological, so creating an island prison will lead to increased health issues and deaths.
As Donne said, no man is an island.
Not until now, that is.
Yes little islands in an island prison. We will see past March what the real theme is – if the LDs are not lifted and this ended (completely), then we will have our answer.
Wasn’t the magic Vaxx the ‘way out’? Seems they have changed that theme already as well. If not the way out, why are they so intent on vaxxing everyone? And if it does work, why the LDs etc etc?
An archipelago, that feels familiar.
Also on the right of this site are links on the same subject eg https://dailysceptic.org/how-lockdowns-damage-our-immunity/
It is not a theory, just the way natural selection works
It makes perfect sense to me I just like to be able to link to scientific papers. The paper on excess deaths in Sweden V Norway is an absolute argument killer. Something similar on the mutation of the virus and lockdown would be handy to have up my sleeve.
Re: care homes.
”care homes” is a generic term and really shouldn’t be used.
There are two types, residential and nursing homes.
In the former the residents are relatively fit and well but have difficulty with coping alone for many reasons that makes domiciliary care inappropriate.
In the latter case residents have complex needs that require 24 hour care, this could be due to brain injury such as stroke or trauma, dementia of various types, learning disabilities or mental health disorders.
When the NHS decided to empty their beds it was the residential home residents that were discharged with the possibility that they were infected and infectious.
Personally I wouldn’t want to live in a residential care home but if I developed dementia with complex needs then it would be appropriate for me to be in a nursing home (bearing in mind that I would likely be oblivious to the fact due to the dementia)
Hmm…
https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1355432333487333376?s=20
He doesn’t care! Just a letter written by his PR team (Carrie?). Stand up and end the lockdowns now.
Such a patronising letter.
Fucking tool. He could at least have the guts to admit that the government was humiliated, again, by the common room commissars of the teaching unions.
The teachers just used his death porn propaganda against him.Why should they go to work when there are loads of deadly new variants about.
Same with the 100,000 deaths.
They were inflated to scare people and are now being used against the government.
Just shows how weak this government is. Can’t stand up to scientists, can’t stand up to teaching unions.
It’s like the 1970s all over again – who governs Britain?
Has anyone else yet wondered whether we might end up having to have demonstrations outside places to shame them into changing – if they do open up, but discriminate against letting us in (ie because of not having had the vax)? I’ve got visions of having to stand outside a concert venue holding up a placard saying “I am Rosa Parks”? (ie reference to the woman in USA that refused to give up her seat on a bus – and then it all kicked off from there).
Rosa was Black. You are likely White. The Establishment will arrest and maybe soon shoot you. If you were Rosa they would bend their knees and give your genitals a loving tongue wash. Not so if you are not Black or Muslim. And most sheeple know this. So I don’t expect an uprising – only if the footie is cancelled maybe.
Rosa Parks was a publicity stunt and she was not the first. 9 months before Park’s arrest a brave 15 year girl called Claudette Colvin took a stand and was arrested. However the NAACP were not interested as she was not good PR.. lippy, unmarried and pregnant. Parks was already an NCAAP activist and a perfect role model. So her protest was staged managed.
Listen to “Paul Sinha’s history revision” on R4extra last Monday. This superb show covers off Claudette’s story which shows how everything can be manipulated
One correct assumption there – and the thought literally hadnt crossed my mind of getting in any trouble whatsoever for that – other than, possibly, something like a £200 fine or an aggressive police person with baton out (on everyone regardless) – which is far from likely re the baton part of that in the quiet little Welsh town I live in these days. Fine would be my worst case analysis. Shooting? We are in Britain here….
Swayne was and is right. Not just about ICUs or deaths in Nov 2020; but about the entire circus of fraud. A normal person would ask for an end to end data audit. From the MCCD all the way through the many data hops to the ONS. Validate the data. Is the data valid and accurate? Or, during the hops is it being manipulated and manually rendered? In analysing the data for 5 yrs my conclusion was that the system itself was completely corrupted by manual intervention and the convenient csv files on the ONS site are manual creations, not out of a central data warehouse.
Audit the flipping death data. Now.
Audit the flipping PCR testing process. Now.
I really want to take down this Ian Fraser chap.
On 15 January, speaking on Del Bigtree’s anti-vaxx show The HighWire, Conservative MP Sir Desmond Swayne suggested government-imposed lockdowns and mandatory masks “comes down to social control”. Bigtree is one of the US’s leading anti-vaxx campaigners and conspiracy theorists.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Ian_Fraser/status/1354781540123881475
I don’t know much about Swayne, but Del Bigtree is not anti-vax, he is safe-vax.
Highly recommend watching Del zooming with a Fox news reporter talking about safe vax and how the covid vax only lessens symptoms, doesn’t stop you from getting it or spreading it.
Starting around the 10 minute mark https://www.pscp.tv/TheHighWire/1ZkKzepjOrRxv?fbclid=IwAR0jLBFFYGcZ7EaUbgmUitOixYSKKemfFFlsvZzt-MS7sXxAkhp25vafs68
I wanted to throw my computer across the room watching this interview.
Fascists (Covidiots in this case) always use simpleton slogans.
So if someone like say Bigtree states that experimental RNA concoctions cannot be declared safe by definition; or that flu vaxxes have never stopped transmission; or that your immune system esp if under age 60 is much better than a vaxx…suddenly you are anti-vaxx or a murderer.
The flu is not rabies. Vaxx’s for flu viruses might help 10-30%, neutral for most, will injure and kill some. Many studies which look at vaxx’s taken by the same person over many years conclude that the vaxx weakens your immune system and makes you far sicker when you get the flu.
So we who are vaxx critics are the real scientists.
Lockdown Skeptics, The Highwire and a couple of other Facebook groups are my only sanity through all this. You’re absolutely right. A couple of episodes into The Highwire, and you’ll be shaking with withdrawal from MSM, then you’ll adjust your perspectacles, never vote Labour again, and face the REALITY with a jaunty step. The journalism on there is much more balanced.
Also got to big up living in Lincolnshire, where everyone is judgemental and passive-aggressive, but doing whatever the fuck they want anyway. Food is still plentiful, (if a little brassica heavy). The air is clean and we all know the NHS is shit. We aren’t prepared for Armageddon because we have always lived the Armageddon that is complete neglect from both political parties.
Letter from the Daily Telegraph 30th January 2021
Governing by Twitter
SIR – The attack by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, on people “turning up at St Pancras Eurostar terminal with their skis” (report, January 28) shows how a small story – picked up from Twitter and amplified without verification – makes it to the Dispatch Box in the House of Commons.
My son was one of those at St Pancras. He was trying to get to his ski-teacher training course in Switzerland – which equips him with qualifications for a career. The tweet came from a train manager called Justin (no surname given), and because he posted a picture of ski equipment no one bothered to find out the truth.
This happened well before the latest restrictions but education was and is a legitimate reason for travel.
Are politicians now using government by Twitter, relying on fake news to justify their decisions?
Sophie Durlacher
London W14
Fits a pattern; fake models; fake tests; fake dead count; fake news…..fake experts, fake politicians, pretty useless Patel etc etc.
i am sorry , but why couldnt the writers son do the ski instructor course at home ? via zoom or should that be ski-pe (boom boom). We had lots of snow last weekend. and he can always use the stairs. imagine how many 90 year gnomes in switzerland he will kill .
Enough! We are NOT “lockdown sceptics”, we are NOT “covid deniers”, we are NOT “anti vaxxers”. We fundamentally dispute the morality of imprisoning healthy people, and of removing their right to work, see loved ones and access health care, and of placing them under any kind of surveillance. We question how the definition of “covid death” is reached and how they are counted. We want FULL transparency on all vaccine data and INFORMED consent. We do NOT accept the official narrative or the response to this virus. We are sick of trying to argue with FACTS and DATA and ETHICS against people who spout a script driven by groupthink agenda. We are the people FOR the people. We care about LIFE not DEATH. Dead people do not have rights. Living people DO. We are the RESISTANCE MOVEMENT for THE LIVING and, without doubt, another movement that will – one day – be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. STAY SANE. STAY STRONG. STAY HUMAN.
Well said.
“We question how the definition of “covid death” is reached and how they are counted. We want FULL transparency on all vaccine data and INFORMED consent. We do NOT accept the official narrative or the response to this virus”
The site for human beings.
Anti-zombie?
With you 100% – except that the Nobel Peace Prize has been corrupted beyond recovery. Obama and the gnome Greta would not make good company!
Brilliant!
I approve of this message.
Hear, hear!!!!
Yes, it’s the new ‘Heil Hitler’, as someone posted here a few months ago.
Perhaps we are ‘FREEDOM FIGHTERS’
“thank you for not saying ’stay safe’ I detest that expression”
Oh yes, a thousand times yes.
True cost of lockdowns in terms of lives lost coming out and the commentators are not pleased! https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9203279/Government-estimates-220-000-true-death-toll-pandemic.html
46 K dead from the LDs and not from CV 19. Matches other estimates from the UK Actuaries and others. My own in Dec was 25 K so I was off. 100 K total to die. MSM wil need to bury this asap – blame these deaths on their flu.
By the end of next month the chaos in hospitals and care homes will have led to 46,000 avoidable deaths, Department of Health research has suggested.
Government and NHS getting a right kicking in the comments section. Top rated comment (1250 upticks) so far is ‘The next wave will be those poor souls who havent had the mental health help theyve so desperately needed, the people who havent had any help with their businesses and those who have been fobbed off by doctors who have issues that could have so easily been fixed.’
Comes with the usual disclaimer that deaths would have been far higher without any lockdown, which of course is pure model-based speculation. Facts such as 35,000 fewer cancer treatments last year can’t be argued with.
I just cannot get my head around the logic of what is written in the MSM about those dying after having a vaccine. On the one hand it is claimed there is no link between deaths and having had a jab recently because (in the example of care home residents) they were elderly and already vulnerable. i.e. they would have died soon anyway. And yet should someone in the same care home die after a positive test, despite them being “elderly and already vulnerable” it is claimed that “its COVID wot dun it” as though they would have otherwise lived for another 20 years. Especially interesting is Gibraltar where deaths “from COVID” have spiked since vaccines were rolled out (obviously just a coincidence…) and yet the following is written: The Gibraltar Government nevertheless revealed that six of the 11,073 people vaccinated had since died for reasons unrelated to the vaccine. “There is no evidence to link these to the vaccination in any way,” No.6 said. According to the statement, the six people were all aged between 70 and 100 and appear to have contracted Covid-19 before they were jabbed, although the infection had not been detected prior to vaccination. All… Read more »
On perusing the DM for my sins, I noted a similar story regarding Maureen Lipman’s partner. The headline stated he died of a covid related illness, which on further reading was found to have parkinsons, was in his eighties, but tested positive days after his vaccine…mmmm.
In my unqualified opinion, the Pfizer and Moderna jabs should never have left the lab.
Same could be said about SARS-CoV-2.
You are obviously a discredited individual.
LOL when are we going to start a line of ‘discredited individual’ merchandise? – T-shirts, hoodies, baseball caps, mugs….
I’ve spoken to a care worker who said there have been some deaths in one care home she visits following the vaccine but that they weren’t tested before being vaccinated because if they had tested positive they wouldn’t have been able to have it! What kind of logic is that? Does anyone know if this is a general policy not to test before the vaccines are given? Could the real reason be that any adverse outcome can be explained by saying they must have had covid?
Vaccine shouldn’t be given within 14 days of positive test. So just don’t given them the test! Simple.
And possibly criminally negligent.
I absolutely agree – there is something fishy here that surely the most dense individual would question how come deaths rose after having the vaxx. There seem to be several stories re care homes and especially the Gibraltar case study which merit full investigation/autopies etc.
I won’t hold my breath for the authorities to do this – unless they are doing it hush hush in the background but if proved would never be able to release the results.
A young Dr. Vernon Coleman on ITV regional news – July 1981
UnitedInvasion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L8RqNPdRzE
Here is a young Dr. Vernon Coleman, better known to some as the “Old Man in a Chair”, on ATV Today (the then ITV regional news service for the midlands) in July 1981. Courtesy of the Media Archive for Central England (MACE).
Description: Dr. Vernon Coleman from Leamington Spa refuses to state the nature of his patients’ illnesses on sick notes. He maintains that illnesses should be confidential and that the notes could ruin a patient’s career. The Department of Health and Social Security, who pay sickness benefits, made a formal complaint and this afternoon Dr Coleman had to appear before a medical committee and was told that he faces a £1,000 fine if he continues to write ‘ill health’ on sick notes. Shots of Dr Vernon Coleman in his surgery and close up shot writing ‘ill health’ on sick note.