The Official Estimate of the Collateral Damage
Friday saw the publication of the Government’s assessment of direct and indirect impacts of COVID-19 on excess mortality and morbidity. The Daily Mail has the details:
More than 100,000 people are likely to die from non-coronavirus causes because of the pandemic, according to an official Government estimate.
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.
Cancellations to routine operations may cause 18,000 excess deaths in the long-term, on top of hundreds more from cancer.
Officials calculated that over the next few years another 40,000 people may die due to the economic impact of lockdown, including rising unemployment and mental health issues.
The Government paper says the overall death toll of the pandemic will be 222,000, with 54% dying from the virus.
Overall, scientists suggest there will be 105,000 additional deaths because of the enormous disruption to non-Covid NHS care, as well as the economic downturn.
The document, dated December 17th and published yesterday by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), was drawn up by civil servants at the Department of Health, the Office for National Statistics and the Home Office.
It laid bare the unintended consequences of lockdown in detail, but stressed that the overall death toll would be far higher without the draconian restrictions.
So far more than 103,000 people in the UK have died after testing positive for COVID-19.
Without lockdown, another 97,000 would have died from this winter alone, the report said.
The document also suggested the number of virus deaths could reach 122,000 by the end of next month…
The research supports a series of warnings from health charities that non-Covid patients are becoming “collateral damage” of the pandemic.
It said that plummeting non-Covid hospital admissions led to 4,000 excess deaths early in the pandemic, when many people avoided A&E even when they were suffering a heart attack or stroke.
Continuing disruption to emergency care could lead to a further 10,000 deaths in the second wave, the document said.
The cancellation of operations and outpatient appointments could cause 18,200 deaths.
And the impact on GP services could result in at least 1,400 deaths over five years from missed cancer diagnoses, according to an early estimate which only examined figures up to August.
Excess deaths from non-Covid among adults receiving social care could hit 32,000 by the end of March due to reduced support and a rush to discharge vulnerable patients from hospital.
The report illustrated how even with a successful vaccination programme deaths are likely to remain well above pre-pandemic levels for years.
Of the 222,000 toll, 61,000 deaths were estimated to take place after this March.
The report said that the health impact of the ensuing recession is likely to be much worse than previously feared because “the bounce-back and recovery are likely to be at a slower pace than previously predicted”.
When assessing the Government’s claim that the Covid death toll would be roughly twice as high absent the three lockdowns, it’s worth remembering that Sweden’s deaths per million in 2020 were bang on the EU average in spite of not imposing any lockdowns last year. That suggests the lockdowns imposed in every other EU member state did nothing to reduce Covid mortality.
The report itself goes into more detail.
Under our central scenario there is a loss of approximately 1.3 million QALYs as a consequence of this pandemic induced recession. These health losses are largely accrued in the medium to long-term, with the morbidity affects largely falling in the medium term and the resultant mortality impacts falling in the longer-term. Under the upside scenario, there is an estimated 0.23 million QALY loss in the medium and long-run and under the downside scenario, there is an estimated 2.7 million QALY loss in the medium and long-run from COVID-19
Overall, our analysis suggests that the recession resulting from COVID-19 and restrictions on activities to contain it could have large effects on lives through unemployment, mental health impacts, loss of income and increased financial uncertainty. These impacts are likely to have medium and long-term consequences on population health in terms of increased morbidity and mortality
This analysis also presents an increase in the impact of the recession on medium and long-term health compared to our previous update. This is because more recent economic forecasts suggest the bounce-back and recovery are likely to be at a slower pace than previously predicted, and therefore the health impacts from the economic downturn accumulate over a longer period of time than previously considered.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Psychologist Dr Oliver Robinson is hosting a webinar on Saturday February 13th, 4 – 6pm, examining the the (in)effectiveness of lockdowns in bringing down infection rates and the impact they have on mental health. Tickets are £10 each—£5 if you’re eligible for the concessionary rate – and can be purchased here.
The Catastrophic Impact of School Closures
On January 29th, the Education Endowment Foundation published a paper on the effect of school closures and subsequent support strategies on attainment and socio-emotional wellbeing on school pupils in Key Stage 1. The paper focusses on the the impact on the attainment gap in reading and maths and is based on assessments taken by nearly 6,000 Year 2 pupils in 168 different schools in the autumn term. The paper takes a standardised sample of assessments carried out in 2017 as its counterfactual; as its estimate of what progress might have made had pupils been in school as usual.
The findings are concerning, though not surprising:
This study confirms that, following the disruption to schooling in the 2020 spring and summer terms, Year 2 pupils had significantly lower achievement in both reading and maths in autumn 2020 when compared to performance seen in Year 2 in the autumn term of 2017. This represents a COVID-19 gap of around two months’ progress for both reading and maths.
The adverse effect is most pronounced among disadvantaged students. In both reading and in maths, the researchers found that the difference in standardised test scores between pupils on free school meals and pupils not on free school meals represented a gap of seven months of learning. It could not assess how far the gap had grown as a result of lockdown, as the 2017 data did not make this comparison, but by way of context, it says that the 2019 disadvantage gap was approximately six months. It concludes: “It seems that the disadvantage gap is wider than earlier estimates, and will likely be further exacerbated by school closures in early 2021”.
Worth reading in full.
Schools in England and Northern Ireland are set to remain closed until at least March 8th, and in Scotland and Wales until at least the middle of February. It will be difficult, when schools finally do re-open, to repair the damage done. The Prime Minister has penned an open letter to parents, in which he says:
When all this is over we’re going to be putting hundreds of millions of pounds into nationwide catch-up programmes so that nobody gets left behind.
Stop Press: A new piece of research carried out in Norway has found “minimal child-to-child and child-to-adult transmission in primary schools”. In other words, reopening primary schools now would not increase Covid infections.
Stop Press 2: Lockdown TV on Unherd has a special report on the closure of schools, getting perspectives from Katharine Birbalsingh, Headmistress of the Michaela Community School in northwest London, Miriam Cates MP and Alex Gutentag, a public school teacher from Oakland in California.
Stop Press 3: Boris Johnson will have to significantly increase the education budget when the crisis is over, says Isabel Hardman in the Spectator. She interviewed Robert Halfon, the Conservative chair of the Education Select Committee, and the Labour Peer Lord Adonis for the Week in Westminster, and both agree that education needs to be a post-pandemic priority for the Government.
Stop Press 4: Lockdown Sceptics may just have found a point of agreement with Professor Devi Sridhar. Who would have thunk it?
University Clamps Down on Rogue Scrabble Players
An anonymous reader of Lockdown Sceptics writes:
Anyone quaking in their boots with the current round of Covid terror sweeping the nation will be reassured to know that university officialdom is on top of the crisis. My neighbour’s son is at a university in the north of England. The other day he spurned the piffling misdemeanour of attending an all-night rave with several hundred other party people and went for the blatantly lethal and inconsiderate option of playing Scrabble with one other person from his hall and two from the adjacent building. Fortunately, the ever-vigilant university surveillance hit squad operatives who patrol the compound all night pounced on this incipient super-spreader hotspot and broke up the illegal mass-gathering of four Covidiot-insurgents. That they’ve all already had Covid of course counts for nothing as obviously they might have been re-infected.
The young maniac is now under ‘investigation’ but one of his tutors has advised him to write a letter claiming his mental health is under duress and that he needed to see other people. It’s reassuring to know that young people today are being made fully aware of their responsibilities, and in this case presenting this reckless fool with either being labelled as a vicious, semi-criminal member of the under-class of Covid subversives, or afflicted with mental illness. Either will serve as a warning to others and teach him a lesson he’ll be paying for for the rest of his life, the best way to treat a seditious young person. It’s also useful to know that the universities are finding productive ways to spend their extortionate fees to keep us all safe instead of wasting it on teaching or offering any other services.
Stop Press: For more on the experience of students during the lockdown, listen to the Planet Normal Podcast with the Telegraph’s Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan. In the latest episode they speak to a third-year geophysics student at the University of Durham.
My Mask Battle With the NHS
A reader has written in to share his experiences of getting treatment for his toe over the last few months, an experience dominated by masks.
Last September 29th, I went into a hospital up in the North East to have my big toe joint replaced with a silastic one.
I’ve never worn a mask anywhere and do not possess one. And when I bowled into the ward early in the morning, without a mask, nobody said a word to me. The nurse who was assessing me agreed when I said that mask wearing was a lot of nonsense, but said she would be sacked if she were to say that openly. She burst into tears when I sympathised with her and she said the strain was getting to her. Many of the staff on the (largely empty) ward agreed that masks were pointless, but they dare not dissent. The surgeon turned up wearing a serious-looking surgical mask and his couple of side-kicks were also wearing masks, but cheaper-looking versions. By this time I was in a hospital gown lying on a bed. None of them said a word about my being bare-faced – so to speak. The porter was the only person who handed me a mask and insisted I wear it otherwise he refused to push me down to the operating theatre. I offered to walk but he was having none of it. I held the thing up to my face and he seemed satisfied.
I’ve been back a few times to various hospitals since the operation to see nurses and others and have been shouted at about not wearing a mask and subjected to considerable rudeness and hostility from the staff and other patients who have ganged up on me. On a couple of occasions I’ve covered my mouth with a silk polka dot scarf which seems to satisfy all concerned.
I have tried to obtain a consultation with the surgeon since he did the operation because I am not satisfied that he’s got it right. I was promised a “telephone consultation” with the great man, which turned out to be with his young female registrar who was less than sympathetic and, as she could not see my foot, was of limited help. I told her I wanted the surgeon who did the operation to have a look at it, because the orthotic specialist I’d seen a week earlier (without mask) advised that the surgeon should see the joint because he was concerned the toe did not seem to be “on straight”.
The registrar said the surgeon was not offering “face to face consultations due to the Covid pandemic”. I said I couldn’t understand why not, seeing as he could be masked up and in full anti-virus outfit if he was concerned about catching it. I asked if he was still doing private operations and whether if I paid he would see me. She replied that she knew nothing about his private practice, with the clear implication that she did not want to know either. She made it apparent, by her manner, that she thought I was being a nuisance, but agreed to ask the surgeon if he would arrange a face-to-face consultation.
Yesterday I got a copy of a letter from the registrar to my GP, saying the surgeon “has agreed on this occasion to review [me] in person…”
The letter ended: “On previous visits [he] has declined to wear a face covering but is not medically exempt from doing so. We would kindly ask [him] that he complies with hospital policy and wears a suitable face covering when attending his appointment, otherwise he may not be seen.”
It is not an exaggeration to say that the whole mask-wearing thing causes me “extreme distress”, which in law is enough to exempt me. But the NHS is not concerned about that. They really mean it when they say we have to “protect the NHS”.
YouGov’s Numbers Don’t Add Up
Our next post comes from a Lockdown Sceptics reader who has scrutinised a recent YouGov study about the numbers of people who know someone who died from COVID-19, and found that it doesn’t really make sense.
YouGov have published a study of how many people know someone who has died of COVID-19. They have asked people in 16 different countries.
At first glance the results look coherent – countries with higher death rates are at the top, ones with notoriously low death rates at the bottom. So 19% of Spaniards claim to know someone who has died of COVID-19 while only 2% of Chinese and Singaporeans do.
However, 2% of Chinese is 28,000,000 people. And China claims that only 4,600 people have died of COVID-19. That would mean that every Chinese individual who died of COVID-19 was acquainted with over 6,000 people. Is that a reasonable number?
Based on those poll numbers, how many acquaintances did COVID-19 victims in other countries have?
Well, here is the answer:
What to make of the results? There seems to be a big disparity between countries.
Are the Chinese the most sociable people on earth? Does a typical Australian or Indonesian have five times more acquaintances that your typical European? Are Mexicans the most personally affected by COVID-19 in the world ?
Or perhaps some countries are hiding deaths? China is always under suspicion of lying about its data. But what about Singapore or Australia? Are those governments hiding deaths too?
The most plausible explanation is something that many Lockdown Sceptics probably already suspect: that YouGov polls, many of which rely on panels of people to fill them out regularly, aren’t very reliable.
You might be tempted to go further.
If you click on the “See Full Results” link you will see some fascinating stats. YouGov will have you believe that 23% of Mexicans claim to have lost a family member.
But it seems YouGov doesn’t put much faith in the Mexican data so it has left it out altogether from the summary they publish and which is circulating in Twitter.
We can safely conclude that this particular YouGov poll should be taken with a pinch of salt.
Trudeau Administration to Face Legal Challenge on Travellers’ Quarantine
Much like other Governments around the world, the Trudeau administration announced last week that travellers coming into Canada will be subject to mandatory quarantines. The National Post has the story.
Travellers coming into Canada will be forced into mandatory hotel quarantines, part of a suite of measures designed to keep Canadians at home as the Government grows increasingly concerned about the risk of new Covid variants that appear to be more transmissible.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the quarantines and several other restrictions on Friday outside Rideau Cottage.
Trudeau said travelers will pay for their hotel stay of up to 72 hours while waiting for a negative Covid test. He estimated the cost at approximately $2,000 as they will have to pay for lodging, food, Covid tests and security ensuring they remain inside.
Anyone testing positive for the virus will have to finish their quarantine in a designated quarantine facility, where the Government will cover the costs.
Travellers testing negative will be able to finish their 14-day quarantine at home, but Trudeau said the Government would step up surveillance of those quarantines. Private security firms have been hired to knock on doors of returning travellers to ensure they’re staying at home, and the Government will be making regular phone calls as well.
Starting Sunday and extending to the end of April, Air Canada, WestJet, Sunwing and Air Transat will cancel trips to sun destinations in Mexico and the Caribbean. All international passenger flights arriving in Canada must land at only four airports, in Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, and Montreal, as part of this stepped up screening.
Trudeau thanked the airlines for taking the steps to help limit the spread of the virus.
“We all agree that now is just not the time to be flying,” he said. “By putting in place these tough measures now, we can look forward to a better time when we can all plan those vacations.”
Though the announcement was made on Friday, the impact of the new law was already kicking in on Thursday evening, as an Edmonton pastor found out when his wife touched down in Calgary. The Western Standard has the details.
An Edmonton pastor may have found out the hard way Thursday night about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic…
The new rules weren’t even announced yet Thursday night, but it appears officials at YYC Calgary International were ready.
“(My wife Nikki) arrived in Calgary tonight and when she got there she was greeted by a Police Officer and an AHS official,” wrote Pastor Chris Mathis on his Facebook page.
“They rejected her results and told her she needed to go immediately to an isolation facility. She was told if she resisted she would be arrested. She called me, and I immediately asked to talk with the officer. I talked with both a police officer and the AHS official, they reiterated what she had said to me. I asked for the address of where she would be, they said they could not give me the location address as it was confidential.”
“I asked for their names, again they would not give me any information or their names. I pushed, I questioned, I tried to fight but they said they would arrest her if she resisted. They would not give me any information on where they were taking my wife.”
“She was not allowed to get her vehicle from the airport, she was immediately put in a white van surrounded by police escorts and taken to an unknown facility that is under full surveillance and has security at every entrance and exit. You can imagine I am barely keeping myself together wondering what in the world has happened in our country in what seems to be overnight.”
Unlike other Governments, this administration is facing an immediate legal challenge (not directly related to the incident described above) from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. The letter (pdf) providing notice to the Transport Minister the Honourable Omar Alghabra states:
Your Government has increasingly shown a disturbing and even aggressive opposition to the constitutional rights and freedoms of Canadians.
It has come to our attention that the Federal Government is now arresting Canadians at the border and transporting them to secret federal locations even when they possess a negative PCR test. The citizens you are holding have not been convicted of an offence, have not had access to a lawyer, and have not appeared before a judge. Your officers are even refusing to inform family members of where their loved ones are being held. This policy aligns with practices of repressive regimes and undemocratic regimes, and is completely unacceptable.
Your arrest and detention of Canadians in this regard is unlawful and unconstitutional and we hereby demand their immediate release, such that they may continue with any necessary isolation protocols in their personal residences.
This is not China or Cuba, or Chile under Pinochet, or Spain under Franco, or theocratic Iran. We are not prepared to permit you and your Government to turn Canada into a repressive replica of countries that have no respect for human rights and civil liberties…
The Order further mandates that, regardless of a negative Covid test result, any person entering Canada must quarantine for 14 days upon arrival…
Quarantining all citizens re-entering Canada, in addition to mandating negative test results, impairs liberty in a manner that is arbitrary, disproportionate, and overbroad, and therefore violates the principles of fundamental justice…
The mandatory quarantining of all Canadians, merely because they exercised their Charter right to leave or enter Canada, is not rationally connected to any legitimate public health objective. It is not rational to impose a 14 day quarantine upon asymptomatic individuals who are able to provide negative test results confirming their lack of infection.
Stop Press: On the subject of travel restrictions, it is worth reading Lord Blunkett’s rather libertarian letter to the editor of the Telegraph
The announcement by Priti Patel relating to quarantine rules and subsequent media interviews with Michael Gove raise several issues.
First, it is clear that the detail and practical arrangements had not been thought through. No plans appear to exist to save the aviation industry or to retain the capacity of our airports for freight and passengers in the future.
Secondly, making it “illegal”, in Ms Patel’s words, for British citizens to leave the country without permission is unprecedented. While measures such as withdrawing British passports have been taken in the past for very specific counter-terrorism or policing reasons, we have never in peacetime forbidden our own people to travel.
Strict requirements on their return may well be justified but historically only autocratic and totalitarian regimes have banned their own citizens from leaving the country.
Lord Blunkett (Lab), London SW1
Stop Press 2: Health Passports continue to gather momentum, though it doesn’t seem likely they’ll help much when it comes to escaping Gulag Britain. Travel Weekly reports that British Airways is to trial a new travel health app called VeriFlY on flights between London and the USA from February 4th. With both countries having closed their border to residents of the other, it is hard to imagine that there will be many people available to give the app a try.
Neil O’Brien Refuses to Debate Prof Carl Heneghan
Speaking on talkRADIO on Friday, Carl Heneghan, the Oxford Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine, said he would be happy to debate Neil O’Brien MP.
An opportunity, surely, for Neil O’Brien to convince people of his case? A challenge to be seized. Alas, Neil O’Brien didn’t see it that way:
Round-up
- “Social distancing may have to remain in place all year” – Ministers have been warned that unless a vaccine proves to be 85% effective, Brits may have to keep social distancing for the rest of the year, according to the Telegraph
- “Virus ‘definitely’ began in China, say US scientists… and the outbreak started in October 2019” – The Mail on Sunday reports on the latest revelations from investigations into the origins of COVID-19
- “Nadhim Zahawi: I couldn’t save my uncle from Covid, but I can save the country” – In an interview in the Telegraph, vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi explains why he is so determined to vaccinate the country
- “Lift lockdown once most vulnerable are vaccinated, urges Senior Tory” – Mark Harper, Chair of the Covid Recovery Group, has called for lockdown to be lifted once everyone aged 50 and over has been offered the vaccine
- “Vaccines – A national effort in the national interest: Letter from the Editor” – The editor of the Yorkshire Post describes the blowback the paper experienced from people in power after it published its report that vaccine supplies to the region were to be reduced in order to allow other areas to catch up
- “Unmoored from all but a few friends, I fear lockdown has atrophied my social muscles” – Writing in the Guardian, Emma Brockes worries about the lockdown’s long-term impact on social health
- “The uncomfortable truth about death” – The pandemic has forced us to confront uncomfortable trust about our own mortality says Dr John Lee in UnHerd
- “Covid, Tango and The Lagom Way” – Watch BAFTA-nominated filmmaker Claudia Nye interview Sweden’s Chief Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell in a new short film
- “The EU’s vaccine nightmare” – In the latest episode of the Spiked podcast, Brendan O’Neill, Ella Whelan and Fraser Myers look in to the row over vaccines
- “A cancelled hysterectomy” – The latest episode of the CoronaStories in which Christine speaks to a guest about the pain of having a much needed operation cancelled, with no new date yet arranged. Previous episodes are worth a listen as well
- “Media Manipulation; More on Lockdown Scepticism, Cathedral and Church Closures” – The latest episode of the Irreverend podcast includes discussion of the Covid media messaging and the case for opening churches
- “Andrew Cuomo’s COVID-19 performance may have been less stellar than it seemed” – Beneath a headline that might be considered an understatement, CNN reports that COVID-19 deaths among New York nursing home residents may have been undercounted
- “Bill Gates shocked by ‘evil’ conspiracy theories: ‘I hope it goes away’” – The Washington Times reports the magnate’s horror at finding himself, along with Dr Anthony Fauci, at the centre of COVID-19 conspiracy theories
- “The catastrophic impact of Covid forced societal lockdowns” – A deep-dive into the whys, wherefores and follies of lockdowns on the AIER blog, concluding that it is way past time to get back to normal
- “How has your life been affected by lockdowns?” – The campaign group Time For Recovery campaign is asking for people to share their story
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Four today: “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” by The Animals, “All Things Must Pass” by George Harrison, “What About the Children” by Yolanda Adams and “Germ Free Adolescents” by X-Ray Spex
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 Lockdown Sceptics here.
Sharing Stories
Some of you have asked how to link to particular stories on Lockdown Sceptics so you can share it. To do that, click on the headline of a particular story and a link symbol will appear on the right-hand side of the headline. Click on the link and the URL of your page will switch to the URL of that particular story. You can then copy that URL and either email it to your friends or post it on social media. Please do share the stories.
Social Media Accounts
You can follow Lockdown Sceptics on our social media accounts which are updated throughout the day. To follow us on Facebook, click here; to follow us on Twitter, click here; to follow us on Instagram, click here; to follow us on Parler, click here; and to follow us on MeWe, click here.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, we draw your attention to Disney’s new animated movie Raya and the Last Dragon which has been criticised for the lack of South Asians among its cast of voice actors. NewsBusters has more.
One would think that looks and race would not matter for voice actors — after all, the viewers never see the actors in animated movies. But just as comedians aren’t allowed to be funny, even voice actors can’t act unless they perfectly resemble their characters.
On Tuesday, January 26th, Disney dropped the second trailer for Raya and the Last Dragon and the movie is once again generating a lot of controversy. While some fans are excited to see a movie portraying South East Asian culture, others criticise Disney’s inattention to which region of Asia its actors are from.
Based on South East Asian traditions, Disney says the fantastical story is set “in the fantasy world of Kumandra” which is endangered by monsters. Although 500 years ago dragons had protected the humans, only one remains alive and it is up to young Raya to “track down the last dragon in order to finally stop the [monsters] for good”.
Besides the film’s starring Vietnamese actress, Kelly Marie Tran (known for her role as Rose in Star Wars), nearly all of the cast are East Asian (Chinese and Korean). Although Raya and the Last Dragon was written by South East Asian-American screenwriters, Adel Lim (Malaysian) and Qui Nguyen (Vietnamese) and its lead actress is of South East Asian descent, Disney’s Representation effort just wasn’t enough for some people.
“I am actually very conflicted about the new Raya and the Last Dragon casting. I love all those cast members,” said one Twitter user. “But basically everyone except KMT is East Asian. Imagine how big it would be if they actually casted Southeast Asian actors. SE Asian actors are sorely lacking in Hollywood.”
Another user, Laura Siriku, commented, “Listen, I’m all for Asians playing other Asian ethnicities, but the roles of South East Asians have been little to none,” she said. “With #RayaAndTheLastDragon celebrating South East Asia, I feel like it’d be a huge moment to have SEA being able to play their own heritage.”
Several others have possibly more legitimately complained that the world of Kumandra and Raya’s story are based on a collection of South East Asian cultures. Unlike nearly every other Disney Princess, Raya is not based on the unique culture of a single country but rather a region with vast cultural diversity…
The movie will premiere on Disney Plus on March 5th. Luckily for Disney, the movie has simultaneously generated plenty of excitement from fans who not only want to appreciate other cultures on the screen, but shockingly just want to enjoy a great movie.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Responding to Kehinde Andrews’ new book, The New Age of Empire, the British-Nigerian writer Ralph Leonard has penned an elegant defence of the West and the Enlightenment.
Stop Press 2: Writing for the Spectator, Jake Wallis Simons, Deputy Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, says that that Black Lives Matter should be looking to Martin Luther King for inspiration, rather than Malcolm X.
Stop Press 3: John McWhorter, a contributing writer at the Atlantic, has reminded schools and colleges that campuses are not, in fact, bastions of social injustice. They must resist he says “destructive anti-racist demands”.
“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: Everyone must wear a mask now, even the Long Man of Wilmington. Sky News reports that the 72 metre tall chalk figure had a mask added to his face by some local pranksters. Luckily for the historic, South Downs landmark, this was deemed an act of vandalism, and the mask was swiftly removed. As for the rest of us…
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.
Scottish Church leaders from a range of Christian denominations have launched legal action, supported by the Christian Legal Centre against the Scottish Government’s attempt to close churches in Scotland for the first time since the the Stuart kings in the 17th century. The church leaders emphasised it is a disproportionate step, and one which has serious implications for freedom of religion.” Further information available 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, which was pivotal to the roll out of mass PCR testing, was submitted to the journal Eurosurveillance 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.
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
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And Finally…
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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. ****************************************** ******************************************* 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… Read more »
“… shows how a small story … amplified without verification…” – reminds me of PCR tests.
Ivor Cummins – Zero Covid Island Enigmas: Addressing the New Zealand Question!
Any report writer who doesn’t know the difference between “affect” and “effect” immediately loses my respect.
‘militate’ and ‘mitigate’
‘enervate’ and ‘energise’
‘renumeration’ and ‘remuneration’
Yes – but it is an easy typo to make.
efficient and effective
Vibrant, resilient communities.
Full of converted, subverted humans.
Invariably is almost invariably used incorrectly.
loose instead of lose
infer and imply (Grrrrrr! 🙂 )
‘Fairly unique’…
“Vunnerable”.
Venerable.
“covid” and “dangerous virus”
Their, they’re and there
So comforting not to be the only one like me on here!
Officially placed 4th?
Make that 5th.
?
Much more accurate.
Also a crash helmet for all those flailing tiktok arms
To be honest, an NHS hospital is the one place I probably would wear a mask – and I’d go for a Fauci Triple Mask job too. They’re almost as filthy as public loos.
See the link in the articles above to excellent piece on masks. Those advising government who have any kind of scientific qualification must be aware of the facts. Are they ‘aving a larf watching the sheeple go about with bits of grubby fabric glued to their faces?
Hilton Valentine (The Animals):RIP.
Notice to all sheep and collaborators: Nobody lives forever no matter how many times you “sanitize”, social distance and what “strength” mask you wear.
Go out there and LIVE for as many years you have left.
I’m doing that already.
Let the zombies rot in their sanitized hell for the rest of their miserable unlives or for all eternity, I don’t give a toss.
But it’s not as simple as that is it. Live and let live.
We are the ones banned from cinemas, theatres, cafes, pubs, restaurants, museums, holidays, sitting on a park bench, seeing family, letting our kids go to school, letting them see friends and have parties and laugh, walking around the shops, going food shopping without either a lanyard or a very thick skin. For us. For our children.
If the restrictions ended tomorrow and morons wanted to stay at home and wear 25 layer and of masking over their face then fine. Let them.
But they are stopping us from living.
Exactly.
Still. live as much as you can. You aren’t living in perpetual terror of a bogey, so you are already better off than they are.
Yes, they are scared of a fake pandemic, while we are concerned about what’s behind it
Apart from the children
A friend of mine, Guardian reader, thinks it’s wonderful that a right-wing government should be making the protection of the vulnerable a priority. That ridiculous word “vulnerable,” which seems to apply only to people who might catch covid, is suddenly on everyone’s lips. It infuriates me. My husband has been in the local hospital since last Monday after smashing his hip on a patch of ice. On Tuesday he had a complete hip replacement. But now his temperature won’t go down and instead of getting out on Thursday he’s still there. All on his own in a room for two, Barton Fink corridor with blank doors as far as the eye can see, no doctors at the weekend only cleaners and dinner ladies, nurse gives him paracetamol and goes out again, and of course, no visitors. His mind is turning in a very dark direction. He has that tendency when things go wrong. He thinks he’s had an allergic reaction to the implant. He looks things up on the Internet and concludes he has all the symptoms. At one point he was imagining amputation and life in a wheelchair. And while they’re pondering his case he’s stuck. He’s supposed to… Read more »
I am vulnerable and never wanted lockdowns. I was left for 10 weeks without help in March because of the government’s actions. Now I’m struggling to get a grocery delivery slot, so zero is being done to help many people. I hope your husband is able to come home tomorrow. Shame on them for the way they treat people.
Oh come on, being 50% dead isn’t that bad is it? :;)
Hear, hear!!!
If they want to live in their sanitised and socially distanced bubble for the rest of their lives, let them. But let the rest of us get on with our lives.
Perhaps they can all move to Alpha Centauri.
Consider the miraculous disappearance of flu. What do our experts here think of it?
Possible explanations:
Who is’t tnat can inform me?(Hamlet , Act 1, scene 1)
Prof. Dolores Cahill says she’s sequenced numerous covid swabs and found them to be Influenza A or B. Remarkable how the Government can sequence when it wants to find a new strain to use against freedom and the economy, but isn’t sequencing to make sure that people aren’t really just getting flu as usual.
6
To my way of thinking SARS-Cov2 is this years flu virus, it may come out different in lab tests but in terms of human life and health there is typically one dominant respiratory virus in any one season and this year it is SARS-Cov2. The tragedy is that there has been so little done to identify why a small proportion of the people who get this virus have such a severe response when for so many it is much like a dose of flu.
Looking at Gruppenfuhrer Hancocks twitter list and just in the last day or so he has issued 22 tweets about vaccines and none about research in to SARS-Cov2 and none about treatments for the severe cases of Covid 19 disease. The failure to work on the severe effects that SARS-Cov2 can cause and the failure to develop effective treatment regimes for severe cases is a tragedy and an appalling failure by our ruling health junta. All the indications are that effective treatments are possible and could have been developed. But the megalomaniac in charge of our health sticks his fingers in his ears and shouts vaccine-vaccine-vaccine and the country descends further into madness.
This seems like an odd thing to say when flu is a killer disease. Around half a million people typically die of flu each year. In the winter of 1918/19 it killed many more people than World War Two.
Fair comment, I guess I was considering the way most people talk about flu rather than the actual stats. So people will often say oh I just had a bit of flu last week but I’m fine now and think little of it.
But is this a ‘small proportion’ of the people who get flu?
The IFR for flu is generally 0.1%.
Yes Steve you are correct, but the point people are making I think is that we have known that flu is potentially fatal for centuries even if we called it something different like” the gripe” but we have never previously destroyed our economy , children’s education , businesses ,other medical treatment etc in reaction to it . And it is not just flu that is a killer of , predominantly, the poor, the frail and the elderly, but just exposure to cold weather or climate is bad. The Lancet, about 4 years ago published a paper on the mortality, globally, arising from either moderate cold or moderate heat (in the context of the debate on climate change effects). Far above all other effects was that of moderate cold , greater than that of extreme cold or extreme heat surprisingly. So Govts that are destroying cheap heating (as Boris is) are fuelling (no pun intended ) a future rise in fatalities, totally avoidable, but not avoided, indeed deliberate . So, in conclusion, the reaction to the Covid problem is unique, it does not happen with “normal” flu, it does not happen with the known winter deaths of the poor and elderly… Read more »
It isn’t about a virus. QED
The half a million is little more than a guesstimate. If we tracked and recorded flu like we have sars-cov-2 then the flu numbers would likely be far higher.
They would definitely be much higher.
“But the megalomaniac in charge of our health sticks his fingers in his ears and shouts vaccine-vaccine-vaccine and the country descends further into madness.” All that’s true, but the vaccine subtext has shifted sharply, meaning that their predicted inability to deal with (as yet undiscovered) future variants means that we should expect the restrictions to continue indefinitely. Anyone else would be seeing this as a cast-iron justification for putting more resources into treatment options, but not our political leadership, for some reason.
All bar 4 I would say.
There’s stacks of it in Hamlet:
Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.
God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another
Madness in great ones must not unwatched go
To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand
I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space
It is not, nor it cannot, come to good, But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue
If your mind dislike anything obey it
And most appositely:
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man
But the Shakespeare quote that keeps occurring to me is from Lear. Every day I wake up and think this shitshow can’t get any worse, I recall this:
And worse I may be yet: the worst is not
So long as we can say ‘This is the worst
How about this from Measure For Measure,referring to Matt Hancock
“But man, proud man, Dress’d in a little brief authority,Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d—His glassy essence—like an angry apePlays such fantastic tricks before high heavenAs makes the angels weep;”
Yes, like Lear; ‘A dog’s obeyed in office’.
I’ve always had a deep respect for Measure for Measure, and found it deeply moving, especially the ending. SAGE and Angelo have parallels.
The other quote I always think about today: ‘Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale.’ (Spoken by Sir Toby, no less.)
Absolutely, definitely no.3.
Without question.
100%.
3 if the comments on this story are anything to go by https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9206071/Flu-wiped-lowest-level-130-YEARS-seasonal-virus-plummets-95.html
The bat cold spreads like its cold siblings so it is not surprising it is better at knocking off 82 year olds
However flu will have the last laugh as T-cell cross recognition is a thing with Coronaviruses
There are virtually no symptomatic differences between Covid and Flu – they can only be told apart by testing. I don’t trust any PCR test run for much more than 25 cycles as flu patients could easily have tiny amounts of SARs-CoV-2 viral particles in their noses and throats too. That leaves antibody tests: the ones done for SARs-CoV-2 show low levels in the general population; has any similar widescale sampled serological testing been done for Influenza A and B? Might explain a few things.
Certainly not 4. It’s biologically illiterate. It is like claiming that red squirrels have been driven out by increased pest control, introduced to tackle the greys but sadly ineffective against them.
Actually reds are driven out by greys. Human activity (after introduction of the greys) is irrelevant.
The difference is that it is possible to kill squirrels. Shooting the little covids with a twelve bore is less effective.
I’ve woken this morning to discover I may have asymptomatic flu.
I will of course ensure that I self isolate with plenty of ‘medicinal’ fluids.
Can anyone point me in the direction of my local flu testing centre and a reasonably priced off licence, please?
To be fair on those who are picked up for minimising the seriousness of flu, people will say ‘I had flu last week’ when they had a cold. There is a lot of imprecision around ‘flu’ as a concept. It continues to hold mysteries.
A very interesting article in BioMedCentral Virology Journal on The Epidemiology Of Influenza. The relationship with VitD and latitude is also covered. Worth checking out the early C20th methods for transmission research if nothing else.
It’s a review/update on British epidemiologist, Edgar Hope-Simpson’s search for a parsimonious explanation in his study: The transmission of epidemic influenza (1992). Very interesting questions are asked. Spot the enigmatic pulled study claiming flu provoked by VitD suppression among other things.
Thanks to @Nessimersion for pointing to EHS.
https://dailysceptic.org/2021/01/24/latest-news-264/#comment-376351
https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-422X-5-29
Let’s say you are driving to Manchester from London. In the old days you would have gone through Birmingham (let’s say). Well, what happened to your trip to Bimingham? It’s been subsumed in the longer trip to Manchester. So the trip to Birmingham has disappeared.
And indeed what is the result of all those flu vaccinations? Were they not intended to get rid of flu? Well, they’ve worked. All those trips to Birmingham (resulting in a brief but nasty stay) are now part of longer journeys to Manchester resulting unfortunately in the final journey’s end. But at least you didn’t stop in Birmingham.
PS Nothing wrong with Birmingham, it’s just an analogy!
I go with number 5, because this is the impression that I get from lots of people. The mere mention of the word sends them running and hiding under the nearest bush. I have asked why they think that it is so much worse than flu but have not got any coherent answer.
The vicar’s husband today was trying to convince me that masks and distancing had banished the flu because of something he’s read. I told him flu had vanished in Sweden too and dominant viruses can drive out others.
I was going with numbers 2, 3 and 5 but on second thoughts, number 6 is all you need.
Fake news from the DM
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9205563/Furious-backlash-EU-vaccine-rollout-fiasco.html
Top comment: “Pardon. They not rioting due to vaccines, but to the restrictions. Everybody has had enough of lockdown.”
A very clever headline so they can deny lying.There was a furious backlash against what the EU did in Northern Ireland and there is rioting across Europe.They are not connected.
Good to see the readers of the DM calling them out.
This is what we are up against.Institutional lying from the Government and Media
Disappointing to see the great reopening amount to nothing, but it was never gonna happen as unlike Italy, it was entirely boycotted by the MSM.
No business is going to risk fines on top of their already crippled situation by being the only one to open. It worked in Italy purely through strength in numbers. I spoke to many people over the last few days and nobody had ever heard of it, nor to be honest had they heard of the Italy uprising, the protests and riots across the continent or any dissent at all.
A family member had heard of Macron denouncing the efficacy of the vaccine but immediately told me proudly this was because the French were jealous of the UK vaccine programme. Exhausting.
Until the media story changes, NOTHING will change.
I disagree that the media need to get behind it. The issue is furlough buying compliance of the population. If this safety net was taken away we would start to see visible resistance and anger forming. Until furlough is stopped I suspect nothing will change.
Yes spot on. UBI or Furlough. The Hindoo’s magic money machine. Take that away and you have civil unrest.
And Fishi knows that all right, even if he’s incapable of adding two and two in pounds and pence.
The whole thing c/would never ever have happened, if governments still had to pay interest and central banks weren’t allowed to buy their bonds.
As always, this will end in an hyperinflation induced bankruptcy and a currency reform, but until then, the tap remains open, bribes can be paid and lockdowns and coercion will continue.
I save lives by not killing people.
Granny saver.
…who wear masks.
Apologies to all, looks like lockdown will never end until.
not going to happen, because i’m never having the poison.
So selfish. I’m in the next bracket below that in my 40s. Never having it either. Think we might end up sharing a hotel cell. I’ll bring the snacks?
That would be me also..Ill bring the game Risk..
I was emailed an offer of the jab, last week, (which I’m not going to take). NHS logo, badly written and sent from Ann on Outlook!
I ‘ve asked Ann to prove this is legit. No reply.
It’s fake, loads of these going round. The NHS will write to you or your surgery will text.
Yes you get first a text. Then the letter arrives. I ignored both. Not ingesting poison when my immune system in 99.7% effective and I exercise every day. What will the poison do? Take it to 99.71%? Or make me ill and unable to work or function, counted as a ‘success’ by Pfizer in their stats.
I received an email from the NHS yesterday offering me a jab – looked pretty official with a long registration number etc. Only problem is that although I do have a flat in Scotland, I am resident in Belgium, don’t have an NHS number and have never visited an NHS doctor!
Lots of scams out there!
I’ve offered to give Ann a jab but, also,no reply.
Me neither
I was 50 last May and thanks to covid bollocks I have missed a whole year. So I am really 49. They can stick their snake-oil where the sun don’t shine.
Then again, as long as this disastrous nonsense persists, you won’t be getting any older.
49 FOREVER!
If a man in a dress can self identify as a woman then I can identify as a 25 year old
Your selfishness typifies this situation. You may as well go outside with a cleaver and start chopping up grannies.
I turn 50 in May and think the best present you could all give me is to hurry the fuck up and get juiced up so my chances of dying from this dreadful disease and its lemsipesque remedies are dramatically reduced.
Don’t pay any attention to conspiracy theories concerning deaths and ADRs from jabs – Norway, who the fuck are they? Gibralta? Don’t make me laugh, my compost heap is bigger than that rock. Italy don’t even bovver counting them they’re so few.
Do your duty. Every life matters, especially mine.
I’m with you comrade!
Referring to deaths resulting from the responses to the coronavirus as “indirect” (as the government does) or as “collateral damage” (as this edition of LS does) is misleading at best. These deaths are not unavoidable, unforeseeable, unintended, regrettable consequences of a necessary and well intentioned policy response. On 10 April 2020 at the Coronavirus Daily Update Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, admitted that the government had not made any attempt to assess how many people would die as a result of the government’s lockdown measures. This was an admission that the government had adopted an irrational, irresponsible, incompetent approach to policy-making on this issue. The government has, at best, been wilfully blind when it comes to the harms it has been willing to inflict upon the people in the name of combating this virus. It was obvious in March that the government’s approach would cause more harm than the virus ever could. The government has produced a series of assessments of what it calls both direct and indirect deaths as a result of the virus. The first of these was dated 8 April 2020 – two days before Matt Hancock’s admission. That assessment only came to public attention in May… Read more »
I was wondering about this, the only state lives lost in the opening piece. Surely a life lost to cancer at 30 isn’t the same as one to Covid at 82.5. Where’s the direct QALY cost benefit?
It’s only mentioned at the end for deaths due to economic recession, something like 1.3million qualys. At most the number for current death toll ‘with’ COVID will be 100,000 due to age of deceased. So secondary years lost is massively more.
These are good points. LD deaths and suffering may last years. Add in the economic carnage. Burning down the village does not seem to be an intelligent response to a virus.
The same plot in the movie “outbreak” with Dustin Hoffman & Morgan Freeman. The difference being there was a deadly virus to defeat.
Don’t forget thaf a certain nember of SAGE tried to suggest last week that all the victims of covid would have lived another 10 years, when he made the statement that they had lost 1 million qualys.
Might give an insight into their modelling comparison.
It’s the methuselah model, consisting of 900 random number generators, the output of each is added together, add the year, divide by ‘e’, multiply by ‘pi’, subtract Planck constant, raise to the power ‘i’, take the 4th root add the first number you think of, all raised to the power of the Hubble constant. This is all run on a ZX spectrum in basic.
The victims could have spent another 10 years drooling in a care home bed or being in and out of ICU. As most Covvictims really die of their many comorbidities and the average care home “stay” is 23 months this seems unlikely taken as a whole.
Not only should the calculation be made in terms of QALYs, but the calculation should have been done prior to making the policy decision. This is how any rational, responsible, competent policy-maker would have approach the problem; it is exactly what the government has consistently chosen not to do. The legislation for lockdown version three explicitly has no impact assessment.
And there has of course been a very deliberate muddying of the waters right from the start regarding responsibility for decisions taken. Only following the science, advisory advice only, different thoughts leaked in the media to see response etc different advisory committees quoted etc.
Even if you don’t quality-adjust, the simple numerical life years lost equation is surely obvious to anyone with an iota of insight.
The 20-something suicidee v the 82yo with a PCR positive in the 28 days proir to death.
Mention QALYs (which after all the only way that NHS treatments can be shared out) gets you a label of being uncaring and wishing to see older people dead. The argument goes that the average age of death is approximately 81 and that of Covid 82 (can’t remember exactly) but what is to say that the person who died at 82 didn’t have another 10 years of life in them! This is how Lord Sumption got into ‘trouble’. It’s very difficult to counter these rather circular, emotional arguments in this very heated period we live in.
According to the ONS the average life expectancy of an 82 yr old man is 7 years. (For women 8.5 yrs but they are only half as affected by Covid than men.) 10 seems a stretch in which case. Also you would need to look at the average life expectancy of an 82 yr old man with 2+ comorbidities. This would not be 7 years. The covvictims are not all hale and hearty elderly.
But how did the morons at sage get to a number of people SAVED? This has to be another model? Are you saying you have definite proof that lockdowns stopped someone catching the virus? Oh now wait. I see it. You said 250,000 people would die, 101,000 have died so therefore you have saved 149,000. Hahahahahaha. You cannot be fucking serious. You cannot say the over 100k deaths are offset by your savings!! With proper medical care NONE of those people would have died. It like you personally have put a gun to their head and shot them.
The answer to all these sorts of questions is always Sweden.
I’d have more faith in this whole fiasco if Professor Ferguson had just said “I’ve been all over this 18 year old model” and left it at that.
The flesh is weak kinda thang.
I am bit surprised that there is no link to the relevant SAGE publication, which I posted twice yesterday:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dhsconsgadho-direct-and-indirect-impacts-of-covid-19-on-excess-deaths-and-morbidity-december-2020-update-17-december-2020
Which can be usefully compared (as I mentioned in my post) with the assessment dated 8 April 2020 (although it wasn’t published until June), which estimates twice as many “indirect” deaths and that’s just from lockdown version one.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/892030/S0120_Initial_estimates_of_Excess_Deaths_from_COVID-19.pdf
Even if the government figures are accepted at face value: that 100,000 died “of” rather than “with” covid, and even if it then accepted that without the lockdowns, this could be double, by saying that over 100,000 will die as collateral damage, shows, on the best analysis and accepting all government data at face value: nil gain. Same final tally.
This is the at-face result. Accepting everything the government says: that they do not over-estimate deaths from covid, and they do not under-estimate the collateral damage. This is their BEST position.
And notice it was released on Friday, when governments try to bury bad news.
Analysis has not even started yet on these numbers. Objective analysis and comparisons with the rest of the world will be lovely.
The most disturbing part of all this for me is how well people have adjusted. My peers are not in the slightest bit bothered that we have had to order saturday night food outside of a premises with a mask on (them not me). Nor are they bothered that every time we meet up we are breaking the law. Nor are they bothered that any form of socialising has been shut for the best part of a year. Nor are they bothered that barriers to travel are propping up everywhere. Nor are they bothered about the vaccine.
They simply don’t give a shit. They think that somehow the measures are justified and somehow things will just go back to normal. They have no idea of the suffering going on around them. They have no idea of any alternative facts to that of the mainstream media. I am past the point of rage and frustration and I am at sheer apathy. If no one around me can recognise this madness for what it is then what can you do and what is the point in getting angry about it?
I send a friend anti lockdown stats, opinions, essays etc. Reply “not interested”
I have on various occassions shared my opinion, only to meet the following week and realise either they have taken nothing in or disregarded what I said. I no longer make my opinion heard.
Been there, done that.
I find this difficult every time, and it’s impossible to prove either way I’d guess. Say we do go back to 2019 normal, was that because so many made a fuss and stood out, would life have reverted if 100% of people went along with it?
I’ll take comfort in standing up for my rights (and frankly those much worse off than I), enduring the torture of fighting back this last year and the toll it’s taken on me, because it was right, not because it was easy.
I’ll just have to live with not knowing if it was needed.
Resist is all we could ever do. What concerns me most is that people will be happy if they get a bit of the old normal back – they’ll settle for that, such has the Overton Window been shifted.
It only took 10 months and here we are. Some were even less to accept it.
I’m surprised your friend hasn’t un-friended you. That said a simple “not interested” suggests someone shutting themselves off from the outside world as their only means to mentally cope; prima facie evidence that your friend has an undiagnosed mental health problem. Suggest they see* a doctor.
Obviously they can’t SEE a doctor, but if they are lucky they might get a telephone consultation.
“Not interested” is quite common among “clever” people of my acquaintance
My diagnosis – they are in denial, or resent the sacrifices made and desperately want them not to have been in vain
Makes a change from ‘mumbo jumbo’ –
Nailed it.
My 22year old student son asked me if I thought things would ever get back to normal, we talked about it for a while and his conclusion was that as long as it gets back to the reduced restrictions we had in the summer he would be OK. I wanted to cry.
Keep at him. Don’t let him be brainwashed. Listen to his opinions and then destroy them with facts one by one. Add in the emotion of building a firm, mortgaging your life to make it work, then having it all wiped away, ruined financially and leaving the owner in a depression so deep he kills himself.
Is it worth it though?
For me I will never accept the new normal so I will be forever be dissapointed, but if others can fully accept it then in a way I envy them.
I too envy those who can accept it. Those like my husband. He’s a sceptic, but he just gets on with his life, which has not been affected apart from the inability to go abroad.
In contrast, my life has been totally destroyed by this cr*p. Everything that gave it colour and vibrancy has been taken away so it is deeply personal. And the strain it is having on me is immense. I’d love to just accept it, move on to doing different things, but everything I’ve thought of doing to replace what I have lost, has just not been possibly.
Added to that, the parallels with Nazi Germany in the 1930s is just too strong. Maybe that it what makes it so difficult. I can see but cannot see what to do to stop it.
I’m in the same situation, my husband just gets on with life, he is starting to get upset with it more this year as that’s another holiday cancelled and it wasn’t leaving the country, he celebrates his 60th shortly and we would have loved to have booked a hall and given him a party with all his friends and family, now that’s cancelled but he still carries on. I do envy him that and I really hope his optimism continues.
There may not be a lot that we as individuals can do, other than to resist where we can and absolutely no voluntary testing or vaccines.
The new normal will be a very slippery animal and will be continually evolving into something that is always less tolerable.
I agree. I’ve often thought I would be much better off if I can accept the situation and adopt the ‘it is what it is’ mindest of many people I know but I just can’t. Knowing how utterly unnecessary lockdowns and the majority of measures have been keeps gnawing away at me.
Boiling frog effect.
If your friends had been ordered to live like this a year ago they would have been on the streets protesting,but because the restrictions are made Piecemeal and the hope of normality is just over the horizon but never reachable they have been conditioned to accept the new normal.
Remember we are governed by behavioural psychologists now.
Yes, it’s been remarkably effective and as you say they are ready to accept their newnormal.
Unfortunately, those people are comforted by the promise that things will return back to how they were. Little have they noticed that the carrot is on a stick that that grows with the lies like Pinocchio’s nose.
I am witnessing the same. My last friend on Facebook that I haven’t put to ‘sleep’ for 30 days started a post of, ” do you remember when we could go………? ” It’s as if they’ve accepted being imprisoned and they have sleep walked into the jail their government put them in and none of them have woke up properly or are even that bothered that to do any of the things they could do are ALL now illegal.
One mentioned the beach which is 16 Miles from them and it is now forbidden as they don’t live in that council area, why don’t they just go?
all a fairly predictable consequence of PASS.
THE NORMIES JUST DON’T WANT TO KNOW!
***********************************************************
If I had a penny for every time a close friend of family member has said either exactly that phrase or something slightly different that means the same thing…I would have about £1.23 or something like that. Which is quite a lot.
It’s like Stockholm Syndrome isn’t it?
Lord knows what they will be like if and when we manage to get back to how it all was back in January 2020.
I have pretty much given up on many people I know, they’re not interested and trying to reason with them is like trying to get blood out of a stone.
Stockholm syndrome needs renaming, China syndrome is already taken for nuclear meltdown.
Exactly what I was thinking. Stockholm Syndrome is most definitely inappropriate in both ways. We need a new name to mark the disgusting behaviour. London syndrome maybe, but Whitty Syndrome might be better. Immortalise the bastard’s name.
I understand the king of Sweden has it!
I wish I could not feel angry – my anger grows every minute of every day
It was making me miserable. I’ve had to try let go but it’s bubbling underneath alright.
Yes, strange; I have learned to “allow” myself a slow simmer only, as I don’t want it to damage my health, but equally I want to hold on to the memory of the evil that has been perpetrated upon us.
I have been told by one of my best friends that he can’t talk to me as his wife realised I’m a sceptic and its not right for him to be a friend with a anti carer,granny killer,selfish,covidiot ,science denier. I have known him for 26 years..
He’s a prisoner of his own marriage! Probably a lot of it about right now.
Let him go, it’s not worth the hassle.
aye, along with Prof Carl Heneghan who O’Brien won’t debate
I can’t remember exactly when I stopped caring.
Humanity and the future are lost.
Most of my attempts to nudge people to open their eyes to the dire circumstances under which we are ‘living’ are swallowed up in a black hole of denial. Almost no replies. Exceptions mostly like “please stop sending emails to me” and “I have my own sources of information”.
I think it is better to work anonymously using stickers, leaflets, pamphlets &c. The various stickers I have had on my car (since May) have elicited comments on several occasions, obviously nowhere near as many as I would have wished, but they will have been seen by scores of other people.
NICI: No interest, curiosity or imagination.
I understand it is common among prisoners to get used to being in prison and long term prisoners don’t want to be released. People who have been in prison a long time have difficulty adapting to freedom after being released. If long term restrictions are in place a long time, the government hopes people will see these restrictions as totally normal and get used to them. It would be interesting what would happen if these restrictions were lifted completely at once. Would people be able to adapt. Would people be so used to restrictions, would they find it difficult to do things such as having visitors in their house.
It is an interesting point reminds me of brooks from Shawkshank redemption. Will they need to be told to take off their mask like he was told to take a piss.
I agree JHUNTZ. Most of my colleagues are the same. Many of them are trained/training in psychotherapy (I should say ‘training’ because it’s online, so wft are they actually training in??).
I’ve recently had the realisation that these colleagues don’t believe in anything.
They peddle the same unthinking and unfeeling rubbish they hear elsewhere. No critical perspectives, no rudder, no gut, no mind. Empty.
I’ve no idea from what place they live their lives. Their agency is like a deflated balloon.
When one of them asked me this week how I spent my spare time, and I said ‘meeting up with friends’, his response was ‘oh, in your bubble?’
Yeah, if the only way to conceive people socialising is to think of it in that odius term bubble, then yeah. I just said ‘yeah, one of my 15-20 bubbles’.
These people scare me.
I have no idea how they’ve adjusted to using that term so easily. I have no idea what it means and have no desire to find out. As you say vacuous individuals, empty of orginality.
bubble wrap – the government is putting everyone in it, don’t you know – for their own safety of course…
I’m sick and tired of hearing about people having a good lockdown.
Charles Walker said that in one of his recent speeches – good man
All good lockdowns come to an end.
That fellow in the original Dunkirk film (played by Richard Attenborough) who was having a good war and said it’s all a phoney anyway. And got a right ticking off from someone for whom it was all too real. I suppose we will be having our own battle of Britain soon enough (or at any rate millions of people who have been relatively comfortable off so far may get a good deal less comfortable).
Exactly my experience except i refuse to be silent. I am persona non grata with ‘friends’ now
So nothing about the Great Re-opening ?
Why not create an interactive dossier here of the people who are responsible for this farce ? locations, contact details and details of their financial interests. There will be hundreds of criminals/nurembourg style trials but the top 5 for now are obviously – johnson, hancock, whitty, valance and ferguson. These reptiles need to know they will not have the opportunity to rest easy on national honours for the rest of their miserable lives.
O’Brien, Sturgeon, Starmer….anyone who wanted a ‘harder LD’ when evidence and common sense says that LDs make everything much much worse from the way a virus interacts with our immune systems, to the economic-mental and physical destruction we are now living through.
I’d love to see a list of people – cronies probably – who are benefitting from all these billions of pounds.
Contracts for testing centres, the makers of testing kits, the suppliers of PPE, laboratory owners, connections to big pharma. And on and on.
Has anyone been keeping a file I wonder.
Zoe Harcombe has a good feature on this. You should be able to find it on her website.
Someone has already mapped them out. (Something)Kitty I think. Somene here will have the link. It’s a big and deep trough!
The actual forum would work better for that.
I’d rather have the blood of 82 year olds with significant comorbidities on my hands dying of an unstoppable virus than the blood of young people dying of suicide and preventable diseases. Lockdown fanatics forget there is always a balance. You can’t have EVERYTHING. It’s one or the other, not both (or neither in this case).
Neil fucking O’Brien is rocketing up the list.
Right out of 1984 that knob gobbling arseling. A know nothing MP – so what is his game? Notoriety, fame, ally himself to (fake) science? Re-election? Maybe a run at the Leadership? Gobble his way through the Cabinet?
Sheeple would never be so critical of course. They will probably identify O’Idiot from 1984 as a ‘scientist’, not a knob polishing politician.
He’s trying to ingratiate himself with the leadership. It’s transparent.
The strange thing is that , going by his Wiki entry,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_O%27Brien
he seems to have a sensible grasp on right of centre policies :eg: more money for small village schools , avoiding massive , unplanned estate development , increasing punishment for the career criminals , the 10% of the population that commits 50% of all crime.
So why has he become such a lockdown fanatic it seems contrary to his previous political thinking? Perhaps matt below has the answer
Because why not. Nothing will happen to him, its not like we hold our politicians to account for things they say anymore. Unless of course you have misgendered someone on twitter, or have an old photo of you in fancy dress as an Indian, or you said something about an LGBTqrsruv+ that was rude. Then you said you did not agree with blm. Then suddenly the mob come for you and you are cancelled.
Isn’t it interesting that O’Bunnykiller views are definitely killing innocent people because of lockdown and there he sits unchallenged. Why is that? Because we have no voice. Most of our support is whispers and quiet conversations. Not screaming like that asswipe Piss Morgan. If you stick your head up on twitter you will get cancelled by the mumsnet morons. I only know one lockdown zealot out of all my friends. But I know none of the non believers would go on a march.
That’s the odd thing in all this. I had a fair bit of respect prior to all this for Johnson and Gove – they seemed to have sensible and workable views on things like Europe and education for example – but I can never, ever take them seriously again after this. They seem to be either caught up in hysteria, or in the control of dark forces – neither is a desirable quality in a national leader.
He’s in for a shock. The tide is turning and for him to nail his colours to the mast so brazenly – at this time – screams ‘idiot’.
He reminds me of Uriah Heep. Possibly angling for a promotion by toadying up to Johnson & co.
Someone needs to remind him that he’s more likely to get a P45 from the electorate rather than a promotion.
So the government suggest that absent measures the COVID death toll would be about 250000. And the lockdown deaths, by their calculation were about 100000 (so far – lockdown deaths will continue long after lockdown!). So we’re talking about saving 150000 lives (COVID without lockdown-lockdown deaths), over 2 years, around 75000 a year. We’ve had pandemics in the past of 40000 (1999-2000) and 80000 (1968). It just wasn’t worth it.
Especially as there are immaterial harms to lockdown as well; violation of rights, lack of ability to flourish, mental health decline.
They claim 100,000 of/with the virus, this is meaningless, we haven’t cured death yet and very much so for old age with comorbidities.
They claim CV 19 killed 100.000. No data validation or stats analysis supports this number. Maybe 50.000 dead from (Not with) CV itself a member of a very large flu family with shared symptoms (I coughed therefore I have Covid?)..
50.000 are dead from underlying conditions nothing to do with CV 19 but given that the MCCD process was radically altered in March 2020 (the fake news never discusses this), CV is added and then the entire death is categorised as CV.
So: 50K from CV + 100 K from non-CV (and climbing).
We can conclude that we have burnt down the village to save it.
On Woke Nonsense: I watched the Ghibli animation Arriety the other day. Pretty sure none of the voice actors in any language were six inches tall.
just been watching last nights Match of the Day. The crisp man proudly announcing that next month is LGBTetc history month. So expect wall to wall BBC promoting this. Note that although they discussed the racist tweets against Rashford they seem no longer to be showing the BLM kneeling at the start of the games. .
Oh and as for Arriety, the Japanese are not very tall. so the original version might have been woke.
Such tweets could as easily have been posted by the 77th False Flag Brigade as by some cretinous retard who actually meant them, though.
.
It’s a bit of an empty victory isn’t it
Me too, I was following the local city group on Telegram and as far as I can see, one hair salon opened. I must admit I wasn’t optimistic though, partly due to timing (weather’s not great, deaths are up, MSM fear factor ramped up to 11). The other differences I can see between #iapro / the rest of Europe are that they seemed to be led by businesses themselves whereas our movement was led by people wanting businesses to open. I understand also that in Italy etc the businesses had to open or literally starve, there was less of a safety net (not saying that ours is great for everyone but for a good few it seems to be enough).
A powerful narraative. It and others like it will form part of the dreadful history of how a free and independent ntion becme gradually enslaved and a force once generally admired became the instruments of oppression . Civilisation really is only a few microns thick..
Exactly right. It’s easy to judge others from a position of safety yourself. The issue of numbers is always crucial for dissenters – if there are many then it is relatively safe to stand up and be counted but if there are few, those who do stand up will be hammered with the full force of the state.
There is prevailing and all-pervading cowardice in this country, but it is in those who are willing to let the state take away their freedom out of stupidly disproportionate fear of a disease, not in those who are willing to resist but fear the very real consequences of doing so.
That said, this mass failure of our culture and our people needs to be overcome somehow. The fight must go on, and rather than lashing out at those who are especially vulnerable to the state’s enforcement and rightly fear to put themselves on the chopping block, our anger should be focused on the perpetrators and those who willingly conform and obey. And we should support to the full extent of our ability any few who do stand up.
I agree.
And I suspect many will have been cowed by the zealousness of the police in going after people who don’t conform, not just issuing fines, but physically assaulting them. Too many have shown what bully-boys they are.
“When we see people putting themselves or others in danger, we won’t waste time trying to reason with them.” (Ad on Talk Radio just now).
In other words, if we see someone trying to see what they’re doing by lowering their face masks for a moment because their glasses have steamed up, or just to get a breath of clean air, we won’t hesitate in wrestling them to the floor and handcuffing them. That’s not a complete over-reaction at all.
What about blowing your nose?
safety in numbers is true. i only recently after many months [ lose track of time in lockdown crazy world time] met 2nice peolplewho already have a group going shopping without masks [ and run into a lot of abuse for it]
am just waiting for thier phone call so i can eagerly join them
A lot of the activity of the state and other propagandists and manipulators is devoted directly to trying to keep dissenters feel alone and isolated. That’s as true of the coronapanic pushers as it is for the woke pc “no platformers” trying to exclude dissent from the public square.
yes, I remember how the metric martyrs were hounded by the authorities, but market traders who didn’t make a fuss andbut quietly continued to serve people in pounds and ounces were left alone.
Glad to see you back, kh, and point taken about small businesses. Wish they could get together, though, snd be less ‘small’.
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said.
I get the impression that plod and councils would be only too happy to remove trading licenses, prosecute or fine business owners. That they’d be starved of business rates later on won’t matter to them.
I do sympathise. It has to a vast majority, or none.
Good observation about European businesses doing it for themselves.
Communication is the main problem here – which of course was the idea!
Here in Southport, Birkdale village had a few independent shops open, card shop, antiques, a fireplace showroom etc, but Southport town centre dead, apart from the usual chain emporiums.. cold day tho!
Absolutely – I do not blame any business for not opening yesterday; I visited 2 towns preparing to spend money in any that did risk it, but didn’t find any. Some places have found ways to operate online, others sell takeaway coffee/food which didn’t appeal to me yesterday as it was freezing and there were queues. I’m not on Telegram so not up to speed with such protest movements.
Sorry you had this unnerving experience. Scary times.
I could not agree more with this:
“I have never feared the police/authorites before, because I am a law-abiding decent person, but I sure as hell fear them now. And that consideration is probably uppermost in a lot of minds right now.”
So the collateral damage from lockdown is 100,000 plus the economic and social damage. That means for lockdown to be justified in should at least have saved 100,000 from a covid death. Is that likely?
If people are dying from collateral causes doesn’t that put the death rate below the seasonal norm anyway?
Please tell me that I am not dreaming all this.
LDs don’t work, so in essence you are right. The Gov’t has murdered, yes murdered 100 K people. 82 is the avg age of CV deaths. We could have isolated the over 75s and those with poor immune systems. We didn’t. The idiots burnt down the village to save the NHS. So they murdered 100 K people. Maybe 50 K died from CV. Another 50 K with it or the flu.
They didn’t do it to save the NHS – they may be stupid but they’re not THAT stupid.. what they actually did it for may well emerge in the months to come but it’s clearly not about health.
Yes – see my above point. The NHS could have been doubled in capacity in the last ten months but instead it has been allowed to lumber on as inefficiently as before.
Especially as it’s actually two seasonal virus periods, not one – 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 so halve it and you’ve got two normal flu years.
Yes and particularly so since the winter of 2019/2020 had been exceptionally benign in terms of reported flu deaths.
When reading this, please bear in mind that a conspiracy is only that if it is untrue! I enjoy Lockdown Sceptics very much but when thinking this morning about the whole situation we all find ourselves in – and I think about little else, I wondered whether the time had come to accept that this situation cannot be reversed with logic, by looking at studies and graphs, by countering the governments arguments? What if they really don’t care about the damage to the economy because someone, somewhere has said they will pick up the bill? What if the best way to produce a society that does what it’s told is to destroy it’s younger generation, making them depressed/suicidal, feel there is ‘no hope’, take any ‘fight’ out of them. I could go on and on but if all this is done with a purpose in mind, appealing to their better nature about the damage to our children and people’s health will get nowhere. Do we really believe that our government is so, so stupid that they couldn’t see after the first lockdown, the costs of lockdown in the economy and mental/physical health. After all they run the NHS and knew… Read more »
Once you realise we have been subject to a coup then everything makes sense.
The only thing that is up for debate is the aims behind it.
Absolutely. When I realised months ago that this was not about a virus but about politics and theatre, I felt much happier
It’s “about a virus” at least in so far as the virus has been used as cover
Until people get into their heads a more accurate picture of the actual risks and impact of the virus, it will be hard to make them believe governments around the world are not acting in good faith
I wish I shared your happiness. When I realised the lunactics were running the asylum I became depressed and still am.
Happy seems a strange word…
It’s a coup alright by the Health Fascists. They have taken advantage of the intellectual vacuum at the heart of government and they won’t stop now. ‘Protect the NHS’ is the new swastika, next it will be ‘Stop smoking, protect the NHS, save lives’ then ‘Stop drinking, protect the NHS, save lives’ Stop eating fatty foods, protect the NHS, save lives, ad infinitum …..
Protect the NHS and Covid are the pretext.If it was really about a virus don’t you think the government would have strengthened the NHS for the ‘second wave’ it’s not like they didn’t tell us it was coming and money seems to be no object these days.
Exactly – that is a big red flag. Early on there was a feeling that we could cope by bolstering the NHS (eg with the one million auxiliary volunteers, the Nightingale hospitals, the Dyson ventilators etc). Then this gradually got dropped and all we get told, all the time, is that lockdowns are the only way to protect the NHS.
But why? By this time the government could have recruited and trained (by conscription if necessary) hundreds of thousands of auxiliary nurses, or poached them from third world countries (they’ve never worried about doing that in the past). They could have built a Nightingale hospital in every major city.
The fact that they don’t suggests that they want a permanent justification for lockdowns and/or they know it’s a load of BS and don’t want to spend any money on it, choosing to bribe the populace instead with furlough payments.
And what has never been explained when pro-lockdowners bleat self-righteously about shortage of staff to man ‘the Nightingales’ is why 40,000 medically qualified volunteer staff have never been offered jobs.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9097533/Red-tape-blamed-5-000-40-000-retired-NHS-workers-volunteered-given-jobs.html
Yes, same with the 1m. NHS volunteer auxiliaries – most of them never even got called back. The BBC did make some noises on this to be fair, but I haven’t heard anything about this for months.
Imagine if Kitchener’s volunteer army had been told ‘don’t call us we’ll call you’ in August 1914!
Yes, but that (WWI) was a willing, satanic sacrifice, so they had no issues with that. They didn’t want to actually save lives, just as they don’t want to do so now.
Hell has no limits.
Neither has stupid, when governed from hell.
Good Morning! Welcome aboard the bus, if you look out the left window you will soon see the full evil of and omnipotence of the new global governance cathedral they are building next to the vaccine factory. In a few moments if you look out the right window you will see a black granite cube, 1000 feet high. This is the HQ of google, twitter, the CIA, the BBC and other world media organisations and intelligence organisations. Once we cross over the bridge we will pass a new hospital, empty of patients, provided by Black Rock. Look in its car park, a mortuary full to bursting with the wrong kind of “patients”. After we pass the old shopping mall, now a ruin, we will soon see the prison, as we get over the hill, filling the valley beyond as far as the eye can see. Look out for the drones too. Sometimes you can hear them shooting and if you are lucky at night you can see the tracers! We can go through the area after we do the usual checks, please loosen your belt so as to save time at the checkpoint. The guards can get a bit aggressive,… Read more »
Was our government stupid? Well here’s the thing. Sir Unbalanced absolutely KNOWS this is bullshit. He KNOWS viruses don’t come in waves, he KNOWS vaccines don’t stop the spread of the disease. He KNOWS lockdowns have never been used before and can see from the results they didn’t work. He KNOWS the pcr test is not fit for purpose and that a cycle rate of 45 will pick up the cold you had when you were 12. If Mike Yeadon knows it so does Sir unbalanced.
So I Could possibly accept (not that I will) that politicians are being misled but the Chuckle brothers! Never! Them MF’s KNOW this is all wrong and are just lying their tits off! First ones up against the wall.
Sorry looks like i’ll be posting a few of these today. Get yourselves onto r/newnormal its a good laugh at all this COVID madness.
r/newnormal ?
r/nonewnormal actually. Quite the error that. Thanks
It wasn’t intentional. Was asking what it was…sorry I wasn’t clear.
It’s a reddit thread (form of social media). You can google it and it will let you view without any details. Bunch of folk slagging the new normal and doomers.
Cheers. Have joined 👍🏻
Thanks for the recommendation. There’s some (very needed) hilarious stuff on there.
apparently, flu is ‘almost wiped’ out (MOS), and the comments conclude that its because of distancing, masks and hand washing, but no explanation about the apparent increase in Covid
See my comment esrlier.
CV ‘mutates’ into a bird. It flies and shits on the population. etc etc. You know science. Flu killed by diapers. CV not (it is airborne, tough, resilient, variants…).
In the times as well.
Pure doublethink.
Actually the top comment (2483) on the story by a reader is Lying toads ! They will have labelled it as Covid instead !
Flu has also been ‘wiped out’ in Sweden and Belarus, but not in Cambodia, which has recorded not a single covid death.
All the evidence from the multiple scientific papers, Sweden, Belarus etc is that lockdowns do not reduce covid deaths.
But perhaps based on government figures we can deduce at least 100,000 have died/will die because of the indirect affects of lockdowns.
So lockdown has killed 100,000 or put another way the number of avoidable deaths is equivalent to over 150 avoidable deaths per MP who didn’t vote against lockdowns.
Nice use of maths 👍🏻
The hundred thousand figure is an obviously a substantial under-estimate. Just consider, for example, the care home scandal, which in lockdown version one alone resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. Or consider the estimates for cancers that have gone undiagnosed, which is in excess of fifty thousand deaths. Indeed, the government’s first assessment in April estimated two hundred thousand as a result of lockdown version one.
Canadian legal challenge to the Empress Justina – the love child of Fidel Castro. His mommy was a whore.
The gross legal violations must be punished. Isolation camps exist in Canada (11). These contravene a wide variety of statutes. You test negative. You are not sick. So the bastards put you into a hotel or a camp and make you pay for it. There is no logic, no health imperative for any of it.
Didn’t she bang the Rolling Stones?
as in, in a train??
https://www.opindia.com/2021/01/australia-nsw-government-mutual-masturbation-sex-covid-19/amp/
Posting this again because well done to this lady for standing up to the police and making a sale at the same time:
https://twitter.com/londonistar/status/1355601863253622789
Also, it isn’t and wasn’t ever a war. The terminology needs to be dropped.
A war against us.