Just Seven More Years Before We’re Back to Normal
When will the world finally get over COVID-19? MailOnline reports on new calculations which suggest that, on the basis of Dr Anthony Fauci’s estimation that herd immunity will require 75% of the world’s population to be vaccinated, it could be another seven years.
The coronavirus pandemic will drag on for another seven years at the current rate of vaccinations worldwide, new calculations predict.
It will take that long to reach Dr Anthony Fauci’s estimate for the herd immunity threshold of 75% of people inoculated globally, according to Bloomberg’s vaccination calculator.
More than 4.5 million vaccines are being administered a day, for a total of 119.8 million shots given worldwide.
The US has vaccinated 8.7% of its population thus far, at a rate of 1.3 million shot given a day. After a slow start, the rollout is picking up steam and saw a record 1.7 million people vaccinated Thursday.
Despite ranking sixth in the world for the pace of its vaccinations, the US is predicted to reach herd immunity just in time for New Year’s 2022.
But all of this depends on whether the vaccines are effective against variants like those that emerged in South Africa and Brazil, which appear to dull the potency of shots.
Meanwhile, Israel is shaming the world with the speed of its rollout.
It has already vaccinated 58.5% of its population and is on track to reach herd immunity within two months at its current pace of 135,778 shots a day, Bloomberg predicts.
The tiny island of Seychelles, off the eastern coast of Africa, currently ranks second in the vaccination race, with 38.6% of its population having gotten one or more doses of vaccines.
The United Arab Emirates, the UK, and Bahrain are also beating the US with vaccinations given to 11.8% or more of their populations – although the U.S. is closing the gap.
The UK in particular has sped ahead, with an earlier start, a better synchronised program and three vaccines already authorised there.
It has given at least one vaccine dose of vaccine to 15.7% of its population.
At its current rate of 438,421 shots given a day, the UK will reach herd immunity well before the end of the year.
Reports come daily of the ever declining numbers of infections and the ever speedier vaccine drive, the latest scheme being vaccinations at work. But amidst it all come various suggestions of mission creep that could see restrictions lasting beyond the vaccine rollout. The Mirror reports the claim of researchers at Warwick University that, due to the mutant strains, restrictions must remain in place until 2022.
The ongoing spread of mutated coronavirus strains mean restrictions can’t be lifted until 2022 despite the vaccine roll out, experts have warned.
Researchers at Warwick University used simulations to model what could happen if Britain is unshackled in the coming months, before presenting their findings to SAGE.
The paper, published on Friday, said despite nearly 11 million people across the UK having so far been inoculated, the unprecedented roll-out is “insufficient” to allow for a return to normal before the end of the year.
The scientists warn such a move could be catastrophic and leading to thousands more hospitalisations and deaths.
This is because there will still be a substantial amount of people who refuse or cannot have the vaccine, meaning transmissions could quickly soar.
While none of the jabs give complete coverage against the virus.
The paper says if the R rate were to remain at 0.8 and three million doses were being given each week and 95 per cent of those invited for a jab accepted, another wave could still hit before winter this year
Meanwhile, The Sunday Times reports that Chris Hopson, the Chair of NHS Providers, has written to Boris to warn against lifting the lockdown too soon, citing the need to protect the NHS.
Chris Hopson, the Chief Executive of NHS Providers, which represents hospital trusts, is to write to the Prime Minister to urge him not to lift restrictions until the number of new infections drops below 1,000 a day. It was 18,262 yesterday, with 29,326 people still in hospital, bringing the total number of cases to 3,929,835.
Hopson said this weekend: “We have crested the peak: but we’re only just beginning the descent. We’re still at a dangerously high altitude where the is still under great pressure and the thing that we know is that this descent in going to be much slower because people are taking longer to recover.”
The Scotsman reports that Deputy First Minister John Swinney has become the first politician to explicitly state that the completion of the vaccine rollout is not likely to be the end of restrictions.
At the coronavirus daily briefing on Friday Mr Swinney said it was important to be “clear” with the public about expectations around restrictions and the vaccine, and that there will be a need for restrictions “for some considerable time”.
Mr Swinney said face coverings, social distancing and travel restrictions may remain after the general population is vaccinated.
He said: “I think it is important that we are clear with the public that although the vaccination programme is going well, although it is becoming more extensive in the country, there will be a need for some considerable time – I don’t know how long that will be – for us to live with more restrictions and mitigations that we had before the pandemic…
“Some of the restrictions might have to be in place for longer than the completion of the vaccination programme, to assure us of the security of the population.
“Of course there will also be a emerging information about the efficacy and effectiveness of the vaccine, which we will only know as we see more of the application of the vaccine within society.”
National Clinical Director Jason Leitch added that vaccination is not complete until all countries go through their own programme.
“This is not about Scotland being vaccinated. It’s about the world being vaccinated,” he said.
He added that vaccines “for now, don’t change behaviour”.
Stop Press: Jonathan Sumption has a splendid piece in today’s Mail on Sunday, reminding us all that the virus is here to stay and we all (even SAGE scientists) need to learn to live with it.
Stop Press 2: Janet Daley in the Sunday Telegraph is worth reading too. She calls for Ministers to make clear what benchmark they’re using to determine when we’ll have achieved “victory” over the virus so that we can at least know when the goalposts are being moved.
Replying to Christopher Snowdon – Again!
Toby has written a reply to Chris Snowdon’s rebuttal of his recent piece in Quillette. Here are the first three paragraphs.
Christopher Snowdon has now done what he failed to do in his original attack on lockdown sceptics in Quillette: he has engaged with the main plank of the sceptics’ case. Our central argument, as I explained in my reply to his article, is that lockdowns cause more harm than they prevent. I cited the wealth of evidence that lockdowns are largely ineffective, as well as the equally voluminous evidence that they cause social and economic damage. And I did my best to show that while some of this harm might be a ‘pandemic effect’ rather than a ‘lockdown effect’, the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) that governments have made across the world have exacerbated this damage.
In his response, Chris starts by making a pretty big concession: he acknowledges that the reduction in human interaction brought about by draconian stay-at-home orders could be achieved by people just deciding voluntarily to change their behaviour. He seems to think that lockdown sceptics are in denial about this – that we believe infections will rise and fall within a given region, irrespective of how much human interaction there is. Virus gonna virus. But I know few sceptics who believe that. On the contrary, we have been arguing from the start that the approach of the Swedish Government, which advised its citizens to take various precautions but didn’t force them to, should have been the approach of the British Government. Indeed, that was Boris Johnson’s strategy until he performed a U-turn and decided to plunge the country into lockdown.
The idea that the alternative to lockdown is to do nothing – that sceptics’ just want to “let it rip” – is a familiar straw man in this debate, and not just when Piers Morgan gets on a tear. In one of the most influential papers produced by the modelling team at Imperial College – known colloquially as Flaxman et al and published on June 11th – the researchers argued that the lockdowns in 11 European countries, including the UK, saved 3.1 million lives. But that claim was based on the assumption that 95% of the populations of those countries would have been infected with COVID-19 in the absence of any NPIs. Setting aside the fact that pre-existing immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is almost certainly higher than 5%, it’s absurd to claim that people would have just carried on as normal in the face of a global pandemic if they hadn’t been ordered to change their behaviour by their governments. Indeed, this conception of democratic citizens – as mouth-breathing troglodytes who will march towards their own destruction without a benign state forcing them to act in their own best interests – is one Chris has objected to many times before.
Worth reading in full.
Vaccine Passports on their Way
The Telegraph is reporting that ministers are now considering a “targeted” vaccine passport scheme that would be used mainly but, it seems, not exclusively for travel.
Ministers are working on a “targeted” vaccine passport scheme to allow Britons who have been vaccinated to return to more of a normal day to day life.
The new passports could be similar to the yellow fever certificates which travellers must show at the border where the disease is rife.
Similarly in the UK, a targeted scheme could see people applying for proof that they have been vaccinated to carry out daily tasks, in the same way that motorists need a driving licence to get behind the wheel.
The Government has made clear that it is against a universal vaccine passport scheme on civil liberties and cost grounds.
However, some Cabinet ministers are understood to favour this targeted vaccine passport scheme.
The most common use will be to allow people to go away on foreign holidays, but a vaccine passport could assist people to take part in another activity, once they have been inoculated.
The success of any scheme hangs on whether being vaccinated means that it is not possible to transmit the virus to others. Ministers are eagerly awaiting the results of tests on the transmissibility of COVID-19…
The source added that a vaccine passport would win more backing if it were only required for specific tasks in the UK, or to go on holiday, where inoculations are required.
The source said: “Just as you need a passport to travel, then if it is linked to a particular objective [like travel] that might work.
“It is like a driving licence – you have a driving licence because you want to drive, you have a passport to travel.”
The source added that a targeted approach was preferred by ministers: “A lot of us would be nervous about liberty-curtailing complications. The system would be huge to administer.”
Worth reading in full.
Ministers have previously stated that there were no plans for vaccine passports, but with an increasing number of countries now looking to implement such schemes it seems realpolitik has triumphed. The concern is not so much about the necessity of having vaccine passports for international travel, but what else one might need the document for. ITV News has an example:
The system could permit a return for fans to sporting events, as long as they can prove they have received a vaccine.
At the Super Bowl in Florida, for example, a reduced crowd including 7,500 inoculated medical professionals will be allowed to attend at the weekend.
The idea could also be spread to other activities, such as going to restaurants, bars or the cinema, for example, with visitors being able to prove their vaccination with their vaccine passport.
As the Test and Trace app showed, it is possible to operate a similar system in hospitality establishments.
The Sandwich Generation is Feeling the Pressure
It is well known that the lockdown badly affects the young and the old, but less is heard about those in the middle. A report from the University of Southampton’s Centre for Population Change suggests that they too have struggled, as they try to look after older relatives on the one hand, and younger ones on the other:
The sandwich generation – those supporting both children and parents – are facing heightened emotional and financial pressures during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to findings from the Centre for Population Change (CPC).
The research by Professor Maria Evandrou, Professor Jane Falkingham, Dr Min Qin and Professor Athina Vlachantoni of the CPC and University of Southampton found that people whose living arrangements have changed because of the COVID-19 pandemic are more likely to experience increased stress and family conflict than those whose living arrangements have not changed.
As our population ages, it is increasingly common for people, particularly in mid-life, to be supporting older children, while also providing informal care for family or friends. These dual-carers often provide informal care for others as well as carrying out paid employment. The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the responsibilities of these individuals, and brought new challenges for those ‘in the middle’.
Worth reading in full.
New Lancet Study Suggests Masks are Ineffective
The Lancet has published details of a new study which investigates the transmission of COVID-19 between 282 clusters in Catalonia. Its focus is the role played by viral load.
Scarce data are available on what variables affect the risk of transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the development of symptomatic COVID-19, and, particularly, the relationship with viral load. We aimed to analyse data from linked index cases of COVID-19 and their contacts to explore factors associated with transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
The study was based on an RCT done during the initial pandemic in March and April last year.
In this cohort study, patients were recruited as part of a randomised controlled trial done between March 17th and April 28th, 2020, that aimed to assess if hydroxychloroquine reduced transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Patients with COVID-19 and their contacts were identified by use of the electronic registry of the Epidemiological Surveillance Emergency Service of Catalonia (Spain). Patients with COVID-19 included in our analysis were aged 18 years or older, not hospitalised, had quantitative PCR results available at baseline, had mild symptom onset within 5 days before enrolment, and had no reported symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infections in their accommodation or workplace within the 14 days before enrolment. Contacts included were adults with a recent history of exposure and absence of COVID-19-like symptoms within the 7 days preceding enrolment. Viral load of contacts, measured by quantitative PCR from a nasopharyngeal swab, was assessed at enrolment, at day 14, and whenever the participant reported COVID-19-like symptoms. We assessed risk of transmission and developing symptomatic disease and incubation dynamics using regression analysis. We assessed the relationship of viral load and characteristics of cases (age, sex, number of days from reported symptom onset, and presence or absence of fever, cough, dyspnoea, rhinitis, and anosmia) and associations between risk of transmission and characteristics of the index case and contacts.
It’s worth noting the numbers involved.
We identified 314 patients with COVID-19, with 282 (90%) having at least one contact (753 contacts in total), resulting in 282 clusters. 90 (32%) of 282 clusters had at least one transmission event.
Interestingly, they found that increased risk of transmission is associated with higher viral load, household contact and age.
The secondary attack rate was 17% (125 of 753 contacts), with a variation from 12% when the index case had a viral load lower than 1 × 106 copies per mL to 24% when the index case had a viral load of 1 × 1010 copies per ml or higher…
Increased risk of transmission was also associated with household contact (3·0, 1·59–5·65) and age of the contact (per year: 1·02, 1·01–1·04). 449 contacts had a positive PCR result at baseline. 28 (6%) of 449 contacts had symptoms at the first visit. Of 421 contacts who were asymptomatic at the first visit, 181 (43%) developed symptomatic COVID-19, with a variation from approximately 38% in contacts with an initial viral load lower than 1 × 107 copies per mL to greater than 66% for those with an initial viral load of 1 × 1010 copies per mL or higher.
But just as interesting is what they didn’t find.
We observed no association of risk of transmission with reported mask usage by contacts, with the age or sex of the index case, or with the presence of respiratory symptoms in the index case at the initial study visit.
Worth reading in full.
How Deadly is the Kent Variant?
We were warned last week that the Kent Covid variant B.1.1.7 may be more deadly that previous variants. Grim news, but a complicated story. Deaths associated with the new variant are rising, says Nature, but questions remain as to what is causing this.
Scientists have released the data behind a British Government warning last week that the fast-spreading SARS-CoV-2 variant B.1.1.7 increases the risk of dying from COVID-19 compared with previous variants. But some scientists caution that the latest study – like the Government warning – is preliminary and still does not indicate whether the variant is more deadly or is just spreading faster and so reaching greater numbers of vulnerable people.
The latest findings are concerning, but to draw conclusions, “more work needs to be done”, says Muge Cevik, a public-health researcher at the University of St Andrews, who is based in Edinburgh, UK.
Nature reports on a study into the variant, which is now dominant, carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) which suggests that the additional risk, if it exists, is chiefly borne by vulnerable groups.
To investigate whether the lineage causes an increased risk of dying, Nicholas Davies, an epidemiologist at the LSHTM, and colleagues analysed data from more than 850,000 people who were tested for SARS-CoV-2 between 1 November and 11 January but who were not in hospital.
Despite the fact that the B.1.1.7 variant was new, the researchers were able to identify people infected with it because of a glitch in a standard diagnostic kit used in the United Kingdom. The test normally looks for three SARS-CoV-2 genes to confirm the presence of the virus. But, in the case of B.1.1.7, changes to the spike protein mean that people who are infected still test positive, but for only two of these genes.
The team found that B.1.1.7 is more deadly than previous variants for all age groups, genders and ethnicities. “This provides strong evidence that there indeed exists increased mortality from the new strain,” says Henrik Salje, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the University of Cambridge, UK.
However, Cevik says that the small number of deaths among young people included in the analysis is not enough to conclude that the new variant hits all ages equally. “It seems to really be affecting older age-groups,” she says.
This is to be expected, given that the chances of dying from COVID-19 increase significantly with age, says Tony Blakely, an epidemiologist at the University of Melbourne, Australia…
However, there is simply not enough data to draw firm conclusions.
Cevik says more data and analysis are needed to conclude whether the variant is more deadly than other lineages. For instance, the latest study doesn’t consider whether people infected with the variant have underlying comorbidities, such as diabetes and obesity, and are therefore more vulnerable and at higher risk of dying, she says.
The study also covers only a small fraction of COVID-19 deaths in the United Kingdom – some 7% – and the effect could disappear if deaths in people tested at hospitals are included, says Cevik. Preliminary work by other groups has not found an increased risk of death in people admitted to hospitals with the new variant, and this complicates the latest results.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Matt Ridley has an interesting piece in the Spectator about the evolution of COVID-19, which, he says, is far from random. He thinks it’s possible that the lockdowns have been responsible for the emergence of the new, more transmissable variants.
Last week the Financial Times carried an article about the huge but surprisingly mild epidemic of Covid that India is suffering. It quoted one doctor as saying that “we are seeing a lot less severe disease than the rest of the world, and a lot more asymptomatic infections” and another that “it’s pretty generally accepted that in India, we have a very mild form of the virus”. There are lots of possible explanations, but because lockdowns have been mostly ineffective in India, could it be that mild variants have done well and an attendant-borne evolution to greater virulence has not happened?
Poetry Corner
In the Lockdown Sceptics Newsletter of January 26th, we published the poem Meh, which was written by 14 year-old boy who was feeling suicidal. Today, we have a positive update, together with a new poem, from his godfather.
First, I wanted to let you know that my godson has been doing so much better this last week or so. Obviously it’s early days to say conclusively that we’re completely out the other side, but things are looking up.
After his mum and dad did some asking around, it turned out that there were a number (majority) of parents at his school who were also worried about their kids right now, and consider dealing with that to be a priority over protecting themselves from a virus (thank God).
So, they’ve set up a little network, and this week he’s managed to sneak over a couple of friends from school to stay; they have a little dormitory scenario going on, and they’re all doing school together in the same room during the day. I think the plan for next week is to do the same again just at one of his friends’ houses! It’s a complete disregard of the rules, it’s genius, it’s made such a big difference, and I love it.
Second, and much less important or fun, I wanted to share a new poem with you (below).
Let Me Be Free
I don’t want to see another masked human being,
I’d much rather smile and see others’ feelings.I don’t want to hide, to cower and shelter.
I’d much rather greet, hug and gather together.
I don’t want to tune in to Zoom for my work,
Buffering, breaking, and all else that irks.I’d much rather see my colleagues in person
than turn on my camera like some Orwellian classroom.
I don’t want to spend a single day more
Bat in my hand hitting balls at a wall.I’d much rather be down at one end of a net
With a friend, or a foe, or a guy I just met.I don’t want to ever be socially distanced
At a gig, or a game, in the pub, or in romance.I want to be close, to be loved, be connected,
Not bubbled, not spaced, not apart, nor ‘protected’.I want to be trusted to make my decisions,
A part of society not rife with division.I want to be free, know my life is my own,
I’m done with this nonsense and with being alone.
I just want to be happy, to dance and be merry,
Not locked in my home, anxious and wary.All that I want is a chance to be me,
With my place in the world, just let me be free.
Round-up
- “Did the COVID-19 virus really escape from a Wuhan lab?” – The ‘wet market and pangolins’ Covid origins theory is becoming increasingly questionable, write Matt Ridley and Alina Chan in the Telegraph
- “How did Britain end up with the worst COVID-19 death rate in the world” – The Mail on Sunday investigates what went wrong with Britain’s Covid response, everything from lockdowns to testing
- “When will life return to normal? In seven years at today’s rates” – The original report from Bloomberg, suggesting that it’ll be seven years before the world is back to normal on the basis that this requires 70-85% of the global population to be vaccinated
- “Care home manager is left homeless after she was sacked for hosting Christmas day lunch” – MailOnline reports the case of the socially-distanced feast that cost a care home manager her job and her home
- “Fight against ivermectin begins” – There’s no evidence behind Merck’s recent statement denying ivermectin’s “potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from pre-clinical studies”, says the Swiss Doctor
- “Dear Deirdre, I can’t cope with stress of home schooling and trying to run a small business” – The Sun‘s agony aunt hears from a reader struggling under the stress of Lockdown 3
- “The cruel reality of online ‘school’ in a 12th floor flat” – A fly-on-the-wall report on the travesty of education experienced by nine year-old Simon, in the Conservative Woman
- “Covid Galore” – As Matt Hancock reportedly drew inspiration from the film Contagion, Alexander McKibbin suggests other films that Cabinet Ministers should be watching
- “On Profiteering” – A word much used in war time made a comeback in 2020, says Angelique Richardson in a blog piece for the London Review of Books
- “CofE in post-pandemic crisis?; Anti-Lockdowners win debate at Cambridge Union” – The latest episode of the Irreverend podcast covers the victory won by Team Lockdown at the Cambridge Union
- “Is it luck? Top health boss Caroline McElnay’s theory on lack of community cases” – New Zealand Herald report on the string of people testing positive for COVID-19 after being released from a quarantine facility
- “The Mainstream Bubble” – An interesting piece by prominent German broadcaster Ralf Arnold’s (not his real name) on the decline in journalistic standards over the past year
- “Lockdowns have depleted capital in all forms” – Lockdowns are an attack on capital, the effect will be devastating, says Jeffrey A. Tucker on the AIER blog
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Five today: “A Pub With No Beer” by The Dubliners, “Oi! Oi! Oi! We’re Going Down the Pub” by the Borderers, “How Soon is Now” by the Smiths, “It’s the End of The World” by R.E.M. and “Freedom Song” by Thin Lizzy.
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, from ABC7News, a new insight from San Francisco, the capital of woke: Acronyms may just be a white supremacy.
First the San Francisco School Board decided to rename 44 schools because they are named after people with ties to racism or slavery. Now the Arts Department has taken a bold move by changing its name, “VAPA”, because they say, “acronyms are a symptom of white supremacy culture”.
Schools have yet to reopen in San Francisco, but their Arts Department has continued to work toward ensuring that all students have access to quality arts education.
The Director of that Department said, “We are prioritising antiracist arts instruction in our work.” So they got rid of the acronym “VAPA”, which is short for Visual and Performing Arts.
From now on, they’ll simply be called SFUSD Arts Department.
“It is a very simple step we can take to just be referred to as the SFUSD Arts Department for families to better understand who we are,” explained Sam Bass, Director of the SFUSD Arts Department.
In a letter, he explains that acronyms are a symptom of white supremacy culture.
“The use of so many acronyms within the educational field often tends to alienate those who may not speak English to understand the acronym,” he added.
That’s based on a 1999 paper written by author Tema Okun titled “White Supremacy Culture”. Okun told me that, “Our culture perpetuates racism when things continue to be written down in a certain way.”
But the San Francisco Unified School District uses so many acronyms on a daily basis that if you go to their website there’s a section on how to find what their acronyms or abbreviations mean.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Breitbart has a piece on the fallout from University of Leicester’s decolonised curriculum, which has seen a Professor hand back her honorary doctorate, a letter of protest from the British Academy, and a call from the University and College Union for a vote of no confidence in the Vice-Chancellor.
Stop Press 2: On a similar note, the WSJ reports that over in the USA big business’s support for the BLM protests and general wokery is costing them Republican support.
“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.
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: Masks have gone nuclear. Cambridge News carries the story of a company in the city that makes face masks using filtration technology designed by the Ministry of Defence for chemical, nuclear and biological warfare. They are doing rather well at the moment, providing masks to customers in 110 countries.
Stop Press 2: In guidance that seems designed to demonstrate that public health officials do not have much contact with regular life, some States in the U.S. require that masks be worn for high school basketball. Unsurprisingly, reports the Daily Herald, this is easier said than done.
Are masks on right? What experts, high school basketball coaches and players say
Daily Herald Preps, Twitter
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 was the first and WHO-recommended PCR protocol for detection of SARS-CoV-2. 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 also submitted a retraction request, which was rejected in February. UPDATE: The retraction request has been rejected.
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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Hello
VIDEO Italian MP Sara Cunial Speech On Bill Gates Insider Paper
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx6KlEmnQxY&t=0s
Wow. Amazing speech
Woohoo. Silver medal. Comments are usually much earlier than this!
That’s Sunday morning for you. People will still drink whatever happens with the pubs…
Today the Telegraph is reporting that they are looking at vaccinating at the workplace. Have we now entered the shower blocks are awaiting the zyklon b moment. Time to resist and get these bastards on trial.
Hear hear
This appears to be part of a strategy to make it as easy as possible to take the vaccine and as hard as possible not to take it, without mandating it (which I understand is against the Nuremberg code and even the most compliant of government followers would surely start to question the human right issues involved?). The online date checker https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/vaccine-queue-uk uses an uptake figure of 70.6%. Although it doesn’t say how this figure is estimated, it probably is reasonably accurate and I’m guessing way too low for the Government liking. Also, I did a yougov chat the other day. After each question it tells you the percentage for each answer eg. When would you open all restaurants bars? Now: 11% next couple weeks: 10% … and so on (I didn’t really pay any attention after these two replies) but on the vaccine question with the possible response “ I haven’t received it and I won’t” it gave no breakdown of responses. This is really strange because every other question has ALWAYS given this breakdown. I can only assume it is much lower than we are lead to believe or trending downwards. I must admit I have moved from… Read more »
I’m a conspiracy theory sceptic. I tend to think that there is now an ulterior endgame which is maximising the already astronomical profits of the pharmaceutical and medical supply industries. They obviously have the most efficient lobbying machine worldwide and probably can’t believe their own success. What are the politicians getting out of it? Power. Politicians have used draconian measures to enforce vaccination all over the world – It was compulsory to be vaccinated against smallpox from 1853 until 1907 after decades of resistance. I fear we have seen the end of the golden age of individual liberty. Thanks, Boris.
Posted before, but worth repeating: https://healthcare-in-europe.com/en/news/european-parliament-to-investigate-who-pandemic-scandal.html “European Parliament to Investigate WHO and “Pandemic” Scandal The Council of Europe member states will launch an inquiry in January 2010 on the influence of the pharmaceutical companies on the global swine flu campaign, focusing especially on extent of the pharma’s industry’s influence on WHO. The Health Committee of the EU Parliament has unanimously passed a resolution calling for the inquiry. The step is a long-overdue move to public transparency of a “Golden Triangle” of drug corruption between WHO, the pharma industry and academic scientists that has permanently damaged the lives of millions and even caused death. The text of the resolution just passed by a sufficient number in the Council of Europe Parliament says among other things, “In order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies, responsible for public health standards to alarm governments worldwide and make them squander tight health resources for inefficient vaccine strategies and needlessly expose millions of healthy people to the risk of an unknown amount of side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines. The “bird-flu”-campaign (2005/06) combined with the “swine-flu”-campaign seem to have caused a great deal of damage not only… Read more »
The Report (written by Paul Flynn) is worth reading as showing up many of the same features as the Covid scam.
Note – as far as I’m aware, no MSM source has picked up on the clear parallels from 2000 – a really basic piece of background for real journalism.
(The Council of Europe is not an EU body, BTW)
The short article linked makes for stunning reading. I know Wodarg is still very active but what of Engdahl, the author?
And do you have a link to the report by Paul Flynn?
http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/
Engdahl has written extensively on a lot of the geopolitical background to a lot of what is going on though I don’t know that he brought his acumen to the Medical fraud like he has to Big Ag through to GM etc.
His email reports are worth signing for.
Those earlier 21st Century pandemic hoaxes were dummy runs for the present massive Corona virus scam. This time the globalists and their cohorts in government are in it too deep to back off, so they will push their depopulation project to the bitter end. For most of us this will mean an early death, brought about at the point of a needle.
Every drill served to bring lockstepping into gear.
Then when it went ‘live’ the rulebook was switched to a power coup – ‘lockdown and shutdown of global economy.
This is not in the science, but is in Rockefeller preparations back about a decade ago.
Indeed it was. They feel obliged to warn us and in their twisted minds that somehow makes us complicit in our own demise.
I don’t know what is in their minds Rowan. i don’t think they ‘warn’ so much as set out their intention, as a form of magic or mind manipulation. Which does twist our imaging of our reality and which we enter into or give consent to , at levels we are generally unaware of – perhaps because we like to mask over fears, hates and guilt in a cover story that is kept rolling by the opportunistic parasite to fear as exploitable?
Hmm, I wonder if this is in part some sort of a fightback by the global depopulation people after the little man voted for first “Brexit” and then Trump in 2016?
Whatever else you can say about these events, I think we can be reasonably sure that they were not part of the script for globalist depopulators. Maybe they will aim to take no chances in future?
The key phrase there is ‘ academic scientists’.
Them as can, do. Them as can’t, teach.
I agree – I’m going to wait a couple of years at least to see what the fallout of this vaxx is. After the 2nd dose rollout there could be more severe adverse reactions that the gov can’t cover up so easily (maybe why the delayed it??).
There is something about the huge propaganda campaign that my gut instincts tell me there is something not right, and I think there is an unfolding story that needs to be exposed.
My friend and her husband were at my house on Friday evening for supper. He’s a fit, still working 72, and he’d had his jab that afternoon. About 9pm, felt cold, rapidly became very shivery, faint and unwell. Was taken home half an hour later and has felt awful ever since, just beginning to improve now. If he’d been 90 and frail, that might have been different.
Nobody advised him that the AZ vaccine isn’t being given to his age group in many countries, or that people who have had covid might get a more severe reaction. He had covid, felt rough for a week with symptoms and a positive test, in early January.
I can foresee problems if AZ continues to be given to the elderly and frail, but nobody is “modelling” that.
The problems with these flawed vaccines are very serious and won’t go away. That anyone, is contemplating taking any of these toxic concoctions, is good evidence that brainwashing works.
There have been no medium term or long term trials and there is no evidence of their efficacy in preventing Covid-19, whatever that is, or of the vaccines preventing its transmission.
https://prezi.com/i/gw4zv2c_cwrb/anecdotal-experiences-cvv/
“If he’d been 90 and frail, that might have been different.”
... or not even that.
Some here have been suckered into thinking that it’s a good idea to vaccinate the vulnerable for ‘protection’. My analysis (as one of the ‘vulnerable’) is exactly the opposite. There is no way that I am going to take part in a trial of vaccines that have skipped important prior parts of the normal testing regime.
Your analysis is on the right track, but we all need to remember remember that the vaccines are only doing what they are supposed to do when they kill the vulnerable. The mass killing is happening right now, though you would never know it, listening to the government and the complicit media.
https://prezi.com/i/gw4zv2c_cwrb/anecdotal-experiences-cvv/
Question: has there ever been a vaccination roll-out that includes people who have already acquired natural immunity? The personal risk calculation if you have had covid is literally a no-brainer – almost 100% certainty you are immune against whatever lower figure the vaccine promises + any adverse effects. Yet WHO now says achieving herd immunity in the general population by natural means is ‘unethical’.
“If he’d been 90” – or indeed 100 for that matter.
Did we ever find out about Captain Tom Moore, or is it one of those things that will never be proved decisively one way or the other? Quite worrying if information relating to it is being deleted anyway.
My gut instinct has been telling me since last March something not quite right about this.
My thoughts exactly Penelope
The end game is depopulation If very fat cats get even fatter on the way, then that’s just a bonus.
Spot on. There is a question of trust in this. And you could write a book on the false promises during Covid coming from these people, and the vaccine roll out is pure propaganda.
Zip through the old bbc listening +80’s with the jab most of whom have not really given consent and think stupidly this will free them and allow visitors. Now you hit us mob. The bbc is a pile of shite and I don’t get my news from msm. Now you are in trouble, you ain’t injecting that shit in me. Come back this time next year after I see what has happened to the people you have injected with your experimental vaccine then perhaps we can chat. But probably not!
Totally with you and other comments above. I’m not having that shit injected into me either.
Yes, I noticed that too! You get instant feedback on every question except that, and I also assumed it was because the answers were not to their liking or they didn’t want to risk having real-time feedback on it! Interestingly the 38 degrees promotion campaign for mass vaccination also seems to have stalled somewhat. You have to ask why a campaigning organisation chose to campaign to support government policy in the first place, but at least I know now never to donate to them.
I can’t remember who I got the ukgov tip from, but I do recommend everyone to join up at http://www.yougov.chat – yes the questions are rigged and it is a drop in the ocean, but you can see how goverment is thinking and very occasionally you are allowed to cut loose with a rant. Which is quite therapeutic.
Why did all the reports of Captain Tom being one of several ‘celebrity’ recipients of the vaccine strangely disappear? The report in the Daily Mail, and on Sky among others, suddenly reappeared without his name.
I think the reason it disappeared is quite evident really.
The end game is massive depopulation. The Georgia Guidestones are now springing into life.
Part of which is selling the fear of such as the voodoo or ‘nocebo’ effect of our own self-destruction.
Discerning what MY choices are and living them, is MY responsibility and freedom to live the experience of.
The mind control agenda hijacks the unwatched mind with fear and guilt – to offer solutions and cover stories by which to hide in their racket or agenda.
The study of the manipulation of the mind and its weaponising to social engineering and now bio-tech – is deceit and coercion.
It is said that you cannot cheat an honest man.
If fear is profiled and targeted as a means to hack our mind, it is already active within the mind of the ‘target’ but often ‘subconscious’.
Bringing our fears to conscious awareness is a way of closing ‘back doors’ through which to be taken for a ride.
What is my ‘endgame’?
I don’t think like that but what is my active purpose in life?
To be driven and compelled by masked over fears of which I have no real awareness and therefore no freedom of responsibility?
Nope!
😉
Apart from degrading health to further dependency on drugs, and the eugenic appetite for culling ‘inessentials’. The open agenda is to establish a biosecurity state (global Inc) as part of underpinning a ‘new industrial revolution’ (sic). This will operate hand in hand with Carbon guilt units, and equity solutions balancing past or ‘systemic’ hate to equalise anyone whose daisy grows taller than system parameters dictate as vengeance masked as fair. That there are many opportunistic threads or narrative beliefs to the bandwagon, I also see a hatred of life that delivers the living to its own destruction. And I do not see any qualifications in the WEF and pals for holding and maintaining the conditions for living – regardless the mask of virtue signalling PR. The resort to AI system modelling is not governance, but the outsourcing of innate intelligence to an alien will. I don’t need to posit alien species here but the externalising of creative freedom to ideals, idols and system models. I don’t mean creative as anything here BUT freedom. The perspective we appreciate and extend is the result of the meanings we each and together accept and extend to each other and our world. NOT the other way… Read more »
That’s a great idea.
What do they do when someone has a severe allergic reaction??
You’d like to think there’d be adrenaline, oxygen, a defib and an anaesthetist with a crash trolley on hand to deal with it!
I would like people not to bother with them in the first place, but stupid is as stupid does. Asking for decent medical facilities at the scene of the vaccination crime is akin to rearranging deckchairs on the sinking Titanic.
They sometimes die before anyone can do anything about it; that nurse who collapsed on camera did subsequently die within an hour or so. The locals did their best to follow up what happened to her and the local media carried her obituary.
Her case is clearly an unusually-severe reaction to the adjuvants in the vaccine rather than the mRNA component, but if that happens to you, then good luck getting it out of your arm before it kills you.
The evidence that all is not well with the vaccine is staring in the face of any investigative jourmalist.
The ONS statistics show that, whereas care home/hospice deaths this winter without Covid are running at a steady figure of 2,400/week, the ‘with Covid’ deaths have accelerated from around 600/week in December to 1,000/1,300/1,900 in the first three weeks of January, when these residents were receiving vaccines.
I know those on this site are aware, but I tried posting this below Janet Daly’s DT article referenced ATL, and it seemed to displease the censors, as my comment didn’t appear.
Look at the US VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) for the US situation. I looked a few days ago and there were 1234 severe adverse reactions (anaphylaxis, …, death) reported. I have just checked and it is now 1791. 75% of them are in the age band where SARS-CoV-19 is not a serious problem.
https://medalerts.org/vaersdb/index.php
Select covid in ‘vaccine information’ and ‘severe’ in ‘event characteristics’. Specific adverse events can be selected in section 2.
Israel, with the highest reported vaccination rates is still seeing rising cases.
Translate: http://www.maariv.co.il/corona/corona-israel/Article-818246
I posted a similar comment, with reference to a local care home, on Con Woman but no one there was at all interested in the increased deaths after vaccination. Strange.
They ARE killing them on purpose
Yes, it is quite clear that the deaths are wholly intentional.
The Covid event has always been about vaccines and the vaccines have always been about depopulation. The genocide is happening right now and the vaccinated who don’t die quickly will be the unlucky ones, as they will face a slow painful death over the next year or so.
https://prezi.com/i/gw4zv2c_cwrb/anecdotal-experiences-cvv/
Constitutes a crime against humanity surely, if you can nail them on it. Or will the evidence disappear into Room 101?
Right along with the election fraud. No court will take it. 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
It seems not to be going well in Israel, probably the most heavily vaccinated land.
“Time to resist and get these bastards on trial.”
What? With the level of continuing support for lock-ups? And the sort of defensive tone that we see now in the presentation of this site’s items that I’ve mentioned?
Pigs flying, I fear. There’s massive ground work to be done – even after almost a year of this delusional shit-show!
Sorry to be less than celebratory – but let’s keep real.
I agree about the defensive tone!
Although you and RickH seem to think differently, it is actually well past time for the bastards to go on trial. What the zombified lockdownistas think about things is not the point.
Same depopulation same result. Probably same globalist filth doing it too
I agree with you that the Nazis were using “the science” to justify their crimes against humanity which is why we should all be very wary of any government touting “the” science when true science is a process. I also don’t compare the vaccination programme with the gas chambers because the people are begging for the former whereas the victims of the gas chambers were not there of their own free will and begging for the gas treatment.
so discouraging that almost everyone i know is all for getting a vaccine, masks lockdown .
However, I have to say that I find it difficult to find any moral or intellectual value in comparing the vaccination programme with the gas chambers.
I wouldn’t have thought it was over difficult. The vaccines are already causing people to drop like flies.
Too right it was the “science” of the day. Quite startling some of the “science” in early twentieth century encyclopaedias. And today as then, many will never even consider that the “science” could be flawed.
The Matt Ridley article in The Spectator is interesting. My partner and I were discussing this notion a few days ago as to whether the lockdowns had caused natural selection to favour possibly more virulent strains to emerge. we were wondering if anyone was studying this possibility.
It seems pretty obvious to me, like the idea that sloshing hand gunk around will encourage superbugs, or the idea that billions of discarded face nappies are bad for the environment. Both of these have been worrying me for months, as I nauseatedly pick up nappies (using dog poo bags) and dump them in bins. But if the Gods of Sage are not worried about such trifles, who am I to argue?
I’ve had my brekker, so go ahead.
Reminds me of the seafood starter I had when I last went out for a meal
Good grief!! If that was only 20 minutes I shudder to think what it will be like for say an hour.
That said I remember a German children’s charity doing a test on masks worn by children for 8 hours and the results were even more disgusting than that!
And people are wearing the same ones again and again.
I take my wife’s “face-coverings” off her and bung them into the washing machine on a regular basis, as she started coughing through the day. She went for a lateral-flow COVID test which was negative, so it wasn’t that.
If a person was cooking food, professionally, I remember WAAAAAAyyyy back when I did training to flip burgers, if you go for a smoke, wash your hands before coming back to work, don’t touch your face/mouth/nose when you are working. This to to prevent possibly causing food poisoning. Fair enough, now in FN hell, food workers are forced to wear em all day, ALL DAY! They are wearing the cloth FN they had in their pocket/locker/under the counter/etc ALL DAY EVERY DAY.
THEN…..wait for it……THEY TOUCH AND ADJUST AND FIDDLE WITH AND REMOVE AND REPLACE AND STROKE AND FONDLE THEIR BELOVED FN THROUGHOUT THE DAY.
WHILE DOING YOUR FOOD!.
Mummmmmmmmm
Mental.
Yes, and then you have all the delivery drivers pull masks up around their faces, handle your delivery to your door, mask off, back in/on vehicle and on to the next. Repeat gawd knows how many times over many hours sometimes.
Same with all the muzzled in shops “adjusting” them, then picking up stuff from the shelves to look at it, and putting back again.
Utterly disgusting.
All while wearing gloves that „keep everyone safe“. Adjust mask, fiddle with glasses, pull up your pants, scratch forehead, diddle on your phone (which also went to the bathroom with you)….BUT GLOVES KEEP US SAFE. And so do masks. 🤦♀️
Thanks. Have just sent it to my lockdown supporting, mask wearing Dad. Hope he enjoys it!
Why not post to. your MP particularly if they support lockdown. I feel absolutely enraged when I see the disgusting things being discarded. Just wish I could catch someone in the act of doing it.
Knut Wittkowski also believes that the lockdowns have enabled various mutations to develop: https://www.bitchute.com/video/1XomAFJEbMbZ/
It’s only speculation on his part as well, though.
The virus is a rapidly mutating RNA virus, just like its cousin, the common cold coronavirus (still waiting for the vaccine for that). There were ~78,000 variations worldwide in early 2020, with at least 300 in the UK. With that number of variations, it is inevitable that a more than average number of people will die of/with any one particular variant on a given day – hey presto, deadly mutation! Rinse and repeat ad infinitum courtesy of vaccine-promoters aka most of SAGE.
Dr Lee wrote an article back in May suggesting such a possibility. Quite how it would be possible to study or prove this theory is well above my pay grade.
If you deny a virus a host it will look for other ways to transmit ie mutate. So yes locking people up, using copious quantities of disinfectant and hand gels could indeed persuade little Coroni to become a big Coroni and make up for lost time!!
Yes it was a mild virus that we have turned into something worse. Wouldn’t that be rich that your untried new lockdown measures created the problem. Oh the irony!!
You’re doing the goverment’s job!
The crude case fatality rate was 20% in April 2020. It had dropped to 2% in September, and is now at a level where they are merging it with flu/influenza deahs to get scary figures. Natural selection favours survival of both host and pathogen. Your body is infected with countless bacteria all co-existing with the host, your body.
This is from “The rules of contagion” by Adam Kucharski, my added emphasis:
”The pathogens behind diseases like flu and malaria are actually made up of multiple strains, which continuously compete for susceptible humans. Why doesn’t one strain end up dominating everywhere? Our social behaviour probably has something to do with it. If people gather into distinct tight-knit cliques, it can allow a wider range of strains to linger in a population. In essence, each strain can find its own home territory, without having to constantly compete with others”
To me this suggests that by limiting multiple interactions between people through the lockdown the number of individual strains has increased significantly, so instead of a few strains existing across the population we have high numbers of different strains.
It was obvious before lockdown that would be the consequence. It was being discussed then. This was predictable and predicted.
Mutations kill they don’t add value. Genomes are software. No software does not randomly add value and ‘natural selection’ is jargon. The variants will lose functionality and thus avoid the vaxx. This is what happens with the normal flu. This is why the normal flu vaxx is so ineffective.
More virulent, but less deadly.
Aka the common cold or flu.
There is no evidence of new strains being more virulent. That’s just part of the Panic narrative.
In general terms, developing virus strains become less virulent – it’s evolutionary sense.
Weird experience this morning. LDS came up with a piece by Tony refuting some of Snowdon’s drivel. Nothing else at all. No comments.
Then the whole thing vanished and yesterday’s LDS reappeared.
For a long, long hour I felt cut off from the Community that keeps me sane. Horrors!
Did I dream all this?
No you didn’t dream it
Phew! So I’m no barmier this morning than usual. That’s a relief.
It was a good refutation.
Nope – you didn’t imagine it. I was surprised to find I got a “place of honour” – as 2nd person to make a comment this morning and my comment has vanished too.
i think yesterday admin said they are making changes on the servers – so they may be some ‘odd’ moments as things are transferred or whatever. Nothing to worry about.
This snitch gave their name
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-55965185
The vile cow.
But the article strongly suggests that resentment is simmering in the gulag. Let’s hope it soon comes to a fine, rolling boil.
Not allowed to travel to exercise. Yeah. As if.
As first comment got lost – along with first of today’s newsletters. Reprise time – and the Covidians (who deem MoneySavingExpert forum as one of their natural habitats) are currently getting their knickers in a collective twist on a thread there. Said thread being a person saying how they are staying in a holiday home currently (but THEY are entitled – because their home is being renovated) and wondering whether they dare snitch on those staying in the other holiday homes. They are clearly exploding a gasket in frustration – as they’d obviously love to feel free to snitch without consequence. Others on the thread are advising them to snitch regardless and not take account of any instant karma they might get coming back at them. My personal take on snitching – I thought it was a darn good opportunity to set things off on the right foot with some new neighbours of mine by making it plain I don’t do snitching.
But they were all having their homes renovated.
The Russell conjugation at work.
Many years ago, Jeremy Clarkson characterised people with that mentality as “The kind of people who have a subscription to “Which?” He was spot-on. Tight-arsed. Crabby. Joyless. Self-righteous.
Since we are forced to pay for the BBC it should be the law that there are unfettered comments below each piss poor article these motherfuckers print. They shouldn’t be allowed to censor the public. We’d maybe see a change of thinking if these lying tossers saw just how the people think about the woke pish they pump out like semen into the arse of society
The Beeb are evidently finding that whenever they allow comments, they get sceptical ones. So no comments allowed.
The BBC is dying.
Not FAST enough. We need to KILL IT MORE, harder KILLERATION for the BBC
Give it enough Rope. It will take it.
I’ve stopped funding the BBC now. Have cancelled my tv licence.
Teacher. Anybody surprised?
Should a runny nose be added to the official Coronavirus watch list?GPs write to Chris Whitty about Covid patients presenting with flu symptoms Just a thought but could it be flu?
Next up. The great compulsory Lemsip rollout.
That’s the “vaccines”.
More likely it’s a cold. People who actually have flu are too ill to see a doctor – they stay in bed. A runny nose? It’s just a cold.
And many colds are caused by a coronavirus….
Colds ARE coronaviruses.
Some are, some are rhinoviruses
Some are adenoviruses. Or RSV.
some are mysterious unknown viruses…
This is a long read but a VERY clear breakdown of all viruses known to cause upper respiratory tract infections (as they used to be called before they were renamed “COVID”) and why they are so vaccine resistant. If this doesn’t prove to ANYONE that this whole “virus” has been co-opted to push an agenda, they are simply brainwashed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2292575/
Or a cold?
I just commented on this DM article: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9232723/Scientists-NHS-chiefs-say-Covid-infections-drop-1-000-day-lockdown-lifted.html
“German government wanted repressive measures. I quote: “The Federal Ministry of the Interior engaged scientists from several research institutes and universities for political purposes in the first wave of the corona pandemic in March 2020. It commissioned the researchers from the Robert Koch Institute and other institutions to create a calculation model, on the basis of which the Ministry of the Interior Horst Seehofer (CSU) wanted to justify tough corona measures.
This emerges from more than 200 pages of internal correspondence between the management level of the Ministry of the Interior and the researchers, which WELT AM SONNTAG has received.” […[ “In an exchange of e-mails, the State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior, Markus Kerber, asks the researchers who have been contacted to develop a model on the basis of which “preventive and repressive measures” can be planned.”
Did Johnson do the same?”
Comments are moderated. I wonder why?!
Well Mr Smith, it looks like your broken leg has healed nicely.
So I can take the cast off now? It’s been driving me mad you know.
Well no. I’m afraid that we just don’t know whether you might break your leg again one day, so you’re gonna have to keep it on a while longer.
Oh no. How much longer?
Another year or two should do it. Can’t be too careful.
Besides, if you go out without a cast on your leg you’ll be responsible for everyone you meet breaking their legs as well.
Ironically, keeping the cast on too long will lead to adverse events such as muscle wastage, and reduced bone density. The latter will induce pathological fractures when/if the cast is finally removed. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, to the delight of Prof Feargoeson and His Mad Modellers. Their first big hit is called ‘Fixing the world to our model’.
If you go Howard Hughes, it is a one-way street. Never go full Howard Hughes.
The comments in today’s newsletter about how long before we ‘get back to normal’ indicate to me that humankind has become much too arrogant, presumptuous and generally full of itself in it’s relationship with the natural world. Many seem to think we know everything about this virus and can tell what it is going to do, how it is going to do it and can control it by our clever human actions. To my mind history teaches us that viruses do not hang around for 7 years, where do they go? why do they go? we do not know, we must be humble and learn to live with this virus until it decides to go. I must admit I thought it would have gone by now but it has proved quite persistent but I still say that at some stage we will be saying ‘whatever happened to SARS-Cov2? We are not in control of nature or viruses, in my area of agriculture and horticulture, look what happened when we tried to exert total control with drugs and chemicals, we are now having to relearn how to work with nature. “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”… Read more »
The virus will be with us for as long as the powers that be continue to use the fraudulent PCR test and the media continue to misrepresent statistics.
“The virus will be with us for as long as the powers that be continue to use the fraudulent PCR test and the media continue to misrepresent statistics.“
I will use that elsewhere – if you don’t mind.
Feel free!
Don’t confuse the pathogen with the political response to it. The virus doesn’t care one whit about man’s puny attempts to stop the waves. Lockdowns, masking, inappropriate testing, etc are all political devices intended to achieve a desired political outcome.
It is rumoured that the Covid virus is now totally fed up of the endless charade and it wishes to revert to its original persona, which of course is influenza. However, the real question is, will the globalists and their government lackeys ever allow it to do so. Seems unlikely.
They don’t even know how it transmits fully, in terms of what proportion is person to person and how much is indoor airborne.
Or even how much of it can be transmitted outdoors. After all, logically, given that viruses make their way around the world on the winds.
For example Dutch Elm Disease wasn’t spread by those pesky Dutch Elms coming over here and breathing all over our ancient elms.
I take that back. Dutch Elm Disease is a fungus spread by beetles and those pesky beetles have even made it to New Zealand.
Nothing to see here. Moving swiftly on…
Covids are beetles aren’t they?
No -crows.
If our local would-be surfing bellyfloppers are any guide, learning to surf is very difficult.
H1N1 swine flu is still around, it is a subtype of influenza A, for which people can be vaccinated. Because I had this flu in 2009, from the start of this nonsense I drew parallels. Now there is an article saying it killed 15 times more people than originally estimated and urging people, because it is “highly contagious” (I don’t think so, despite living in a “hotspot” I, and my grandmother who died, are the only people I know who had it) to MAKE SURE THEY GET THE FLU VACCINE.
I had an H1N1 flu in 1987. (after getting a flu shot for whatever was expected to circulate, which of course wasn’t the one I got). 2007 I got another strain that wasn’t in that year’s shot either.Never got the swine flu. Haven’t bothered with a shot the last few years. My husband never gets a shot and never got either flu. He never gets sick at all despite high blood pressure and being overweight and hating green leafy vegetables.
viruses have a right to live too i say.humans are way too self centered. i always think nature know s best
I don’t think viruses are a life form, although bacteria (far larger) are.
Is there anyone else on here who couldn’t care less what Messrs. Young and Snowdon have to say to each other anymore? Bigger fish to fry, and all that.
Agree. Boring willy-waving.
No it is a ‘serious debate’ between ‘serious people’. /sarc
The onus should on the lockdowners and maskers to justify their killing of the elderly after kicking them out of hospital, their mass child abuse by denying (poorer) kids their socialisation and education, and explain exactly how destroying the economy will save or protect the NHS. ETc. ‘Debating’ with them on their terms is an admission of defeat.
It shows the importance of polite debate, of which most CCP shutdown zealots are incapable.
Starting to remind me of the two academics in The Mary Whitehouse experience. But Toby can do as he pleases as long as he keeps this forum going.
yes – I don’t dispute their right to it: I just couldn’t care less. not interested.
Arguing with LD fascists is a waste of time. Their stated goal is the eradication of all opposition.
quite – this is neither a gentlemanly debate, nor a playground spat. it is fucking World War III, FFS. we are being genocided.
What annoys me is Hitchens could have had a serious role in leading marches and such things against this.
Instead he decided to sit in his house in Oxford talking about how much courage he had in being a sceptic.
His chance to actually be courageous in the vein of the ‘dying England’ he goes on about, and he blew it!
LOL! It’s like Hitchens and his trivial debates with some low-level journo I’ve never heard of, interspersed with tweets concerning some misuse of punctuation on a sign and the use of ‘mad’ to describe the government’s policies. These folk are six months out of date. Sure, when I thought this was all a screw-up Young and Hitchens were a breath of fresh air.
Six months later and any conversation about what is going on has to begin with a discussion of Gates and Operation Lockstep, Agenda 21/30 and all the pointers to the serious incoming threat of totalitarianism. I only come here for the comment section.
I do miss the old days, however, when such terminology was either alien or very distantly known to me.
Here’s the paperwork that comes with the Pfizer jab if anyone is interested.
1/4
2/4
3/4
4/4
They have to tell you if you ask, don’t they? Are you allowed to record what they say? E.g. you ask the jabberwocker ‘And are you prepared to accept unlimited personal liability for any harm or damage that comes to me as a result of this vaccination? Yes? Then please sign this affirmation to that effect.’
I don’t think they’d even bother to record what you say. I’m also wondering what would happen if you refused to wear a face nappy whilst getting the vaccine. I certainly wouldn’t want to be photographed wearing a diaper and would worry I’d be snapped without my consent.
This is what happens when you don’t wear a mask despite exemption: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-55937924
I simply can’t find the words to describe the disgust that I feel towards the people that put this poor woman through that ordeal.
My understanding is that all medical staff have been given blanket legal immunity over anything related to covid.
I tried to save those 4 pages to one of my Pinterest pages – so I could go back and read them carefully later. Pages 1 and 2 saved and then pages 3 and 4 wouldnt go through to save and I couldnt even save pages 1 and 2 all over again. Guess their equivalent of f*ctcheckers quickly caught on? At a quick glance – I couldnt see anything on that info. telling those who’d just (been daft enough) to have the vax their immune system would be down for a week or so afterwards and to be VERY careful and that info. seems to be missing from the leaflet.
Agree that it’s absolutely wrong people only get that (partial) info. when they are already there – done. People need time to read/think/discuss with others.
I haven’t checked the leaflet screenshot contents against this stuff from the Government website, but, at first glance, the latter seems to be a text rendering of the information in the former.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/regulatory-approval-of-pfizer-biontech-vaccine-for-covid-19/information-for-uk-recipients-on-pfizerbiontech-covid-19-vaccine
I was given a printed sheet to read before my jab and a few pages that outlined the potential after-effects and their treatment, together with a copy of the manufacturer’s leaflet that is packed with the dose that I got afterwards.
Thank you.
Here’s a couple more documents on the Pfizer jab you may enjoy reading:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Agv7JEO8MngCiml83hDoZ27A3X9-?e=KbRnPx
And you can have a look at the info for health professional too – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/regulatory-approval-of-pfizer-biontech-vaccine-for-covid-19/information-for-healthcare-professionals-on-pfizerbiontech-covid-19-vaccine
This is the second version dated 24 December, which states that the two doses should be given ‘at least 21 days apart’ (ie 4 years is fine). The first version, dated 8 December, and the one accepted under emergency authorisation, stated ’21 days apart’. Neither says whether that is working days or week days so the ’21 days’ could reasonably be interpretatted as ‘about’ or ‘around’ but certainly not ‘at least’. Just more manipulation for political reasons.
I read in the Telegraph yesterday that they want to vaccinate under 50s at work. I wrote this little limerick in honour of the stupidity of the suggestion. Any other limerick ideas from anyone?
There once was a miracle cure,
Its ethics weren’t always quite pure,
When you return to your job,
After life as a slob,
They will jab you, of that we are sure.
Great
And if you are still working from home…?
The peer pressure should at least be less. I suspect individual companies may require it to work for them, possible even if you work from home. I think/hope that work from home people will be the lucky ones.
I have WFH for the last decade but do (pre-Covid) visit offices and work on client sites. I can see my firm and/or the clients wanting proof of vaccination in future before letting me on these sites. I would refuse but that would reduce my usefulness to the firm (in their eyes at least) so they could show me the door. Even if the firm has a more enlightened policy they are to large extent hostages to their clients’ policies. Unions and strikes could come back into vogue.
So they would be assuming the vaccine provides immunity, whilst in reality it just provieds reduction of some symptoms in slight cases of the disease?
It won’t stop the vaccinated person catching the disease or passing the virus on to others. You may also have a valid medical reason not to be vaccinated. I would hope they also have done a proper risk assessment. They could be opening themselves up to discrimination / disability / infringement of human rights lawsuits.
LOL I think you people just don’t understand what is around the corner. In Hard Fascism there won’t be those kind of ‘discrimination/ disability/ infringement of human rights’ stuff. Only for corporations and those who have a stake in the game will have such ‘rights’.
I saw those Brit police rush out on youtube to beat the fuck out of those social distancing protestors at Trafalgar Square. They were salivating for a good fucking up.
In the future they will have their chance.
Not up to yours but I am pre-coffee!
There was a queue today at the store.
I’ve never noticed that before.
So I asked “What’s the delay?
Is there a problem with our pay?”
“No mate, vaccination or get shown the door.”
Very good. A horrifying thought, but quite possibly true. Self sufficiency grows ever more appealing.
Toby, you cannot persuade a cultist/abuser. They believe and that’s it. They will go to their graves believing
It is not for us to produce evidence as to why we should not be imprisoned. It is not for us to make the case for not being imprisoned We are the victims of crimes against humanity and that is the ended of the matter
Do we ask the victims of domestic abuse to sit in a room with their tormentor and demand the victim produce evidence as to why they should not be abused? (With the added insult of the perpetrator being the arbiter)
There should be only one message sent to Snowdon. You are an abuser and you must stop, and if you don’t stop we will stop you
I found this image a learning and eye opening. As you say, we are in an abusive relationship with our government.
Wow that is so right!
You probably won’t be able to persuade a cultist but in the process of trying you will hone your arguments and may persuade waverers who are following the debate
I had to do these awful sessions with my abusive mum, whom I also loved very much. Just as damaging as the abuse I suffered at her hands, was the battle within, between anger and guilt for a very long time.
The acid test for the vaccine surely arrives once the Aussies have all been jabbed and open up again (heading into winter)
They lie about everything and they’re lying about how many people are gonna take the shite they want to pump in to you. Fuck your vaccination. I don”t trust the woke, lying faggots who insist they are doing all this to help us, save us, prevent death. They’re just good old fashioned tyrants and this so called deadly virus is the covering fire for the one planet one crew nightmare these cunts think we should all live under. They are NEVER gonna let this go. The ONLY way out is a civil war. War is coming. It will start in America where at least one hundred million people think the election was a fraud. It will spread and we’ll be at war. They’ll shut down the machine and stop food to quell this but it won’t work because liberty is the corner stone for everything. There are gonna be dark times ahead and i reckon between the vaccine and the coming war we’ll see deaths that make the 2nd world war look like a friday night punch up.
Trump won with a landslide. History is being rewritten. Time to take to the hills.
course he did. Who would vote for that Biden? Trump had tens of thousands of people cheering him wherever he went. People hid from Biden in case he tried to sniff their children. Now he sits there surround with 25 000 troops to protect him because he knows they stole the election. This is how elections will go in the west from now on. It won’t matter if Farage say gets 30 000 000 votes in the election they’ll fake it and we’ll get some old pervert from the tories or Labour instead, where they’ll just turn us green and destroy us, our history and our future. There are very grim times ahead for the people of this earth. I can’t see how we get these demons off our backs.
Yes the coming green tyranny will add to the destruction of this shit show…..funnily enough both labour and tories are fully signed up to this too. Anyone priced up a ground heat pump to replace their gas boiler?
Boris . it is always worth looking at Paul Homewood’s site (Nota lotofpeoleknowthat) for news and comments on climate and energy topics – from a viewpoint generally sceptical of the nonsense and sheer lies fron Govt and the BBC.
Someone recently did a calculation on the cost of heat pumps for a conventional house . Lots of problems , not least that of having additional gas or elctricity heaters to ensure that hot water is hot enoughto kill the Legionaire’s disease pathogens.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2021/02/03/why-heat-pumps-will-raise-your-energy-bills/
And Paul is a retired accountant so you can be pretty sure his numbers add up.
Vague idea I’d be thinking along the lines of around £20k for my very ordinary size house? I was wondering about heat pump etc when I bought my renovator house a few years back – but had to forget about it (as the new gas boiler I bought instead was around £2k and I had to also bear in mind other money I needed to renovate the house already fell short of what was needed). So – yep – more likely I’d be forced into using electric fires all round if it came to it – and complaining about how much of MY money the Government was costing me to run them.
I looked into it 10 years ago too, when I had an extension built to our 400 year old house. Our architect was super enthusiastic.
But given we could not increase radiator size (house too small), or install underfloor heating (ceilings too low), it made absolutely no sense whatsoever and I could foresee us forever being at the mercy of electricity prices. Plus whenever there is a power cut, you are screwed.
So we got a new oil fired boiler, a log burner, and a back up generator instead.
You also need to factor in that heat pump systems are not compatible with pumped hot water CH so all the rads will need to be thrown away.
A wealthy friend, whose roof is already covered in solar panels, had a ground source heat pump installed for £35k. When I expressed surprise at the amount, he said ‘oh it was not that bad, we got a £9k subsidy’ as though it was money growing on trees. When I mentioned that this was effectively a transfer of wealth away from the poorest in society he shut up.
much as I share your sentiments – how can we have a civil war with no tanks, guns or weapons? the other side control all the instruments of war, so it seems to me a non-starter. tbh, I am in complete despair
Satyagraha
We can but hope that the typical soldier is of similar mind to us and would not cross the line to fire on their own fellow citizens.
The pigs certainly would with glee
The ‘typical soldier’ will shoot a child in the head if he is told to do so. Period.
That’s why they’re trying so hard to get rid of our second amendment 🤔
We HAVE a ground heat pump. Cost us nearly 60 grand but there was a 30 % tax credit. You need Land for that, at least enough for a loop to be put in the ground. Ours got drilled down (300 feet, I think?). We still have a gas backup which runs typically at temperatures below 0F when the heat pump can’t keep up. You don’t have that issue in the UK but we’re in Wisconsin and January and February can get well below that. The heat pump cuts our bills by about half while keeping the house very comfortable.
How long before you recoup the sixty grand, less 30%?
15-20 years if the utility cost stays the same. Which of course it won’t
Because they take orders from the trilateral commission and the NWO, what Catherine Austin Fitts calls The Syndicate. Thinking about separate parties and countries in this day and age is a nonsense: it is global bodies kept buoyant by international finance who call the shots.
Farage? Who bangs pans outside his house? He isn’t against the NWO.
There is a thing going round the Net showing several photos of Airforce 1 – ie the USA Presidents plane. One photo shows Trump getting on the plane. Another photo shows Biden getting on the plane – but it’s a different plane (ie looks like another one has had the appropriate lettering painted on it – different place and different place for doors). Wonder if this is so?
AF1 is the call sign, not the aircraft. The President could be in a hang glider and it would be called AF1. Having said that, there is some really weird stuff going on in the States and worth keeping a close eye on in the next few weeks.
I’m not at all sure what’s going on there at the moment – but just know I’ve rather been expecting some sort of civil war there for months now and that, very probably, followed by the States splitting into two (or maybe even more). I’m still wondering if that’s what is going to happen…
“The fruits of abortion are nuclear war” – Mother Teresa. And she may yet be right.
Some of us have said for years that the world is going to hell in a handcart. At the moment, it looks like we were right, doesn’t it….
There are no geopolitical lines along which it will split. This is a fantasy. Trump’s defeated supporters who rioted in the Capitol Building are just a policing matter.
Wasn’t Trump supporters doing the rioting. Antifa (paid by the globalist filth) was doing the rioting decked out to look like Trump supporters. And we knew they were going to do that too. And Trump knew it. That’s why he changed the venue at the last minute. The complicit guards opened the gates for them and let them in. All kinds of folks filmed it.
It’s all myths: flags with golden fringes, officers not saluting, soldiers turning their back, bla bla bla
There are 2 identical modified 747-200
A lot of speculation going on. I don’t think anyone really knows.
The Cotswolds?
Lies
They lied about the curve to flatten
That wasn’t why the lockdown happened.
They lied about the beach transmission
Stealing joy became their mission.
They lied about the PCR test
As increased cases was their quest.
They lied to fan the pandemic creature
Deaths were not a needed feature.
So long as Covid proved to spread
The fear was ramped up in our heads
As out of context data spewed,
On a nightly basis on the news.
They lied, or told us half a tale,
Fear brought in the media sales,
The lack of balance from our stations
Grew compliance from our nations.
They didn’t share the suicides
Their silence spoke as if they’d lied.
The child abuse and family breakdowns
Were all ignored as we called for lockdowns.
The lies were twisted, can’t be unwound
The ties of lockdowns have us bound.
But freedom’s hidden in our hearts
When we see the lies our freedom starts.
I quite like that Tracey Ullman record btw. What happened to Kirsty MacCall was awful.
And people keep putting forward criteria for this shitshow being over (e.g. Hancock in trial). For me it isn’t over till they bring back the proper Special Brew. Still got my Special Brew hour-glass-shaped glass, with its Churchill anecdote on the side. Will stay empty till the happy day of liberation.
I’m not quite sure what geopolitical camps are supposed to emerge here.
Trump supporters are a dying breed and have no power other than in the ballot box, and that has gone now.
The English are going to fight a civil war? Really? I doubt that very much.
The only war that I fear may occur is that between, say, the United States and China, and that would be devastating.
I’m afraid it’s better just to accept the inevitable. The people seem to very much like their coming servitude. So, just prepare for the ride.
Use words like ‘woke’ and your argument is lost out of the window.
The level of vaccines compared across various countries is a (possibly) interesting expose of how the developed countries are defending themselves from a virus with limited fatality rates, especially for the young. Even for the over 90s, the chance of dying from COVID last year was 1 in 46, compared to around 1 in 4.6 of dying of any cause in a regular year. Meanwhile, it is estimated that hundreds of millions of people will be thrown into starvation and death in the LEDCs as a direct result of the Western response to this virus. Despite the headline figures in the US for COVID deaths being over 450,000, excess deaths in the US last year (on an age adjusted mortality basis) were just 362,000, and since the number of COVID deaths in the age categories 75-85 and 85+ exceeded the total excess deaths by 72,221 (240705 compared to 168484) the maximum deaths due to COVID were around 290,000. In fact, if you look at the age distribution, around 40% of the excess deaths are over 75 (as opposed to around 75% for COVID deaths anywhere in the world), so the likely number of COVID deaths for 2020 in the US… Read more »
Sorry if I’m being stupid, but I can’t quite get my head around your second paragraph. It looks most interesting so I’d like to be able to follow it.
There were 362,000 excess deaths in the US last year, of which 168,484 occurred in the 75-84 and 85+ age groups. The headline COVID death figures for these age groups totalled 240,705 which is 72,221 more than the excess deaths in these age groups of 168,484, so the maximum number of COVID deaths for the year should be reduced by 72,221 to around 290,000. But since 75% of COVID deaths anywhere are amongst the over 75s, I estimate the total number of deaths from COVID as 168,484 divided by 0.75 which works out as around 225,000.
Thanks that’s a lot clearer. Ascertaining the true covid death rate will be one of the most important pieces of post analysis. And it will have to be inferred and reverse engineered from the various data.
My own hunch is 15-40% of the quoted figures, and probably towards the centre of this range. But I’ll stand to be corrected.
There should be a large scale project in each country to go over all deaths from say January 2020, and reassess cause of death, based on long-standing conventional practices where ‘old age’ was a conceivable cause. The absurd ‘within 28 days of a positive test result’ needs to be binned.
Yes, officially or unofficially this needs to be done, and I am confident will be done, and the truth outed. As I say, my hunch is 15-40%, centred on 25%, for the UK, which would imply c. 30k deaths – over two seasons. In which case, the flu it is.
So, if we want our freedom back, do not vote for any of the main parties, or the SNP….ever again………
I think thats a given…..I am finished for ever with all of them. If they can support this what on earth else can they support. Problem is last Dec I was faced with a three headed monster each with zero appeal. Will I get a better choice in May?
You can spoil the ballot. There has to be a minimum number of votes otherwise it’s a re-election. I suspect alternative parties are aware of this and will be doing something about it.
God let’s hope so
Yep. Monster Raving Loonies all the way. Time for some sanity in parliament.
We currently have raving monstrous loonies in charge.
If you look at the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey: characteristics of people testing positive for COVID-19 in England, 27 January 2021
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19infectionsinthecommunityinengland/characteristicsofpeopletestingpositiveforcovid19inengland27january2021
Then the percentage experiencing different symptoms with the new variant is very similar to that without the S gene mutation.
So it’s highly likely there is no real difference between the Kent strain and any other strain in terms of mortality also.
I suspect if you adjust for other confounding factors (e.g. age vs which strain is most prevalent in that age) any weak associations go away
If you did a proper analysis of the very weak association between strain and mortality rate such as using the Bradford Hill criteria then you wouldn’t reach the conclusion that the Kent strain is more deadly.
For a start the association between strain and mortality rate seems to be very weak (if any at all when you consider the difficulties in comparing directly) and it is implausible that a strain that supposedly spreads more quickly will be more deadly.
Any proper scientists left (i.e. those who still apply the scientific method, rather than practicing medieval quackery and worship at their corporate and government funders’ shrines) need to call out this nonsense.
FreeCumbria, are the ONS still surveying as they did back in October? If not, could you explain the difference?
I haven’t followed their methological changes in detail. And I’m not sure detailed information is available. There are lengthy methodology ONS documents for sure but the ones I’ve seen are waffle rather than useful practical information on what they are doing. In terms of the main ONS infection survey, the ONS were following through a cross-section of the population over time and testing those same people weekly which is a good way to do it. But they gradually stopped doing this as they recruited new people into the study. As a result the useful follow through data disappeared, and we lost the important new ‘infection’ measure and they moved over to presenting modelling results rather than raw data. They mention the change in the 11th December bulletin. We calculate incidence (the number of new infections in a set period of time) by directly measuring when a participant in the study who has previously tested negative subsequently tests positive, and comparing this with the number of participants who remain negative. When enrolled on the survey, participants are swabbed weekly for five weeks and then move to monthly swabbing. Until recently, the majority of participants have been swabbed weekly providing us with… Read more »
Aha, but that magic word ‘deadly’ us guaranteed to send the zombies scuttling back under the bed.
And have a look at section 6 in the main infection survey. Does the new variant really appear to be more transmissible from the information there? My reading is it’s a clear no.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/5february2021
So at the moment (we have to keep an open mind) the evidence strongly suggests the new variant is not more transmissible, and not more deadly.
I doubt the general population know that though.
We don’t need an open mind.The variants are made up to continue the fear.I watched an American news show and they were using the British strain to scare.I can’t remember the last time any government minister or sage cretin used the Kent variety.its all about the South African strain.
In there own words,could,might maybe all bullshit to ensure vaccine uptake and probably another one next year.
They have used the 1984 Health Act for a good reason (as far as they are concerned). All they need do to keep lockdown going is, every 3 to 4 weeks, to come up with a superficially scary interepation of data to maintain the ‘serious and imminent threat’ BS. By the time outsiders have looked at the data and shown it to be a scam, the next ‘deadly’ one has already been issued.
Talk Radio becoming a shadow of itself. Three cheers for Andrew Neil.
” I’m proud to be Chairman of GB News and, as you may have read, I have left the BBC after 25 years to host a nightly programme on the channel.
I’m doing it because I believe the direction of news debate in Britain is increasingly woke and out of touch with the majority of its people.”
https://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/1394315/Andrew-Neil-GB-News-latest-comment
If you think Mike Graham is bad try Ian Collins!
Yes. His oft used phrase of “Now here’s the thing” is pretty tiresome. We all know what ‘the thing’ is.
Douglas Murray uses that as a conversational tic as well- irritating.
Mike Graham was fawning over Dr Laurence Buckman last week when we knew from immediate family and friends much of it was untrue. No challenge.
We will be robust in holding all politicians to account – no one can doubt my credentials in that regard – but we won’t operate on the basis that they’re all lying and incompetent. GB News will be passionate, but it will not be shouty, angry television that denies people the space to have their say.
Above all we will conform to all the Ofcom rules designed to ensure impartiality and the absence of bias in news broadcasting.
Facts must be well-sourced and accurate. Conspiracy and disinformation will not be tolerated. Mistakes will be quickly acknowledged and rectified.
We shall see!
Vaccine suspicions.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-55962427
Ten people dead after Covid outbreak at Fife care home
‘In a statement it said: “NHS Fife is aware of a recent cluster of confirmed Covid-19 cases associated with Mossview Care Home in Lochgelly. “Sadly, ten people died after contracting Covid-19 and our thoughts are with their loved ones at this difficult time.”‘
Towards the end of the article we read:
‘The vaccine rollout to care homes began in Scotland on 14 December.
On 13 January NHS Fife confirmed the first round of vaccinations had been carried out in all of the region’s 76 care homes.’
No connection with the deaths I don’t suppose?
I had a bad night after my AZ shot. I am pretty robust but I can imagine it knocking the stuffing out of a frail person.
A work colleague also had the AZ vaccine and had two days of severe muscular pain and could barely lift her arm.
Times
Online giants face tax raid on booming profits
The article blames online companies for the decline of the high Street. There is no mention that the Dictatorship closed all the High Street shops and that may have had an effect
This will go down well with the plebs who think taxing those rich bastards is the way to go.
The plebs are to dim to understand that these taxes will be passed on to them. The profit margin will be maintained
This is a super stealth tax on the poor
The tax takes no account of the income of the end user so the poorest will be the hardest hit
This a tax on food, a tax on clothes, and everything that people buy
Brilliant by the Chancellor. Hit the poorest hardest whilst convincing them that the extra taxes are being paid by the rich
Actually the pandemic tax is a good idea for once. If this is put forward, any companies or individuals complaining about it, are going to look bad.
If the online tax applied to retailers over a certain size, say 500 employees or a certain turnover threshold, then fine. If it’s across the board, then this will hit the poorest the hardest.
Just read Peter Hitchen’s column…for the first time since last March he does not mention the lockdown tyranny. Is he no longer allowed to talk about it or has he become bored with it?
I would think neither. Maybe he felt he had nothing new to say on it this week. He still tweets a lot about C19 and he wrote a blog piece earlier in the week about C19 deaths (The Mail hosts his blog).
His columns are good and probably do help in getting the sceptic message out but where he would be most useful is debating on something like Question Time or interviewing people but they’d not let him near that
He hasn’t been invited on Question Time for several years having been a regular. Clear evidence of BBC censorship. Only views within a narrow range are now acceptable for public airing. When did you last hear a Conservative MP on QT argue for lower state spending?
Yes he is a genuine journalist…..a very rare species these days it seems….a bit like genuine politicians.
He is clearly a man of integrity and courage.
Yes, and he’s also intelligent and, on his travels, has seen a lot and absorbed the lessons.
Not many of today’s ‘journalists’ can say claim the same qualities.
indeed. most of them are self-serving narcissists with no interest in or knowledge about anything beyond their own bank accounts. sadly, all professions seem to be riddled with these kinds of mediocrities nowadays.
Yes, and all institutions – which goes a long way to explaining why we are in this mess.
Mrs TJN gave me his Unconventional Wisdom for Xmas.
The link to the SM article (How did Britain end up with the worst rate etc.) in the round up section doesn’t work. Here is the correct link https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9231575/How-did-Britain-end-worst-Covid-19-death-rate-world.html
Thanks, I tried but failed to add a comment! but anyway a lot of comments and they are hardly good news to the Government’s ears. If the Government is going to do as well as it hopes in the May elections I think they need to start moving quickly on a road to freedom.
The British people will vote these despots back in. The majority are too dumb to realise they are being royally shafted.
Unfortunately you are probably right unless we have a viable third party option and I don’t mean the LibDems!
democracy is a sham. power does not reside with the people, and never did. it failed to prevent us getting here, and it will not get us out
It was rigged that’s why.
ATL
“Last week the Financial Times carried an article about the huge but surprisingly mild epidemic of Covid that India is suffering.”
Surely …
India, 30 degrees further South. More sunshine, more vitamin D, stronger immune system, milder Covid infections. QED.
No lockdown, herd immunity.
As Nick Hudson from PANDA said, we have done this all wrong. Focused protection for the elderly and vulnerable and a Covid Party for the rest of us. We would have been through this by now – immunity plus the ability to cope with any mutations.
This virus should have started and ended with the powers of the immune system. All other interventions have been bollocks.
Absolutely! Greatest scam EVER pulled!
that’s what would have been done if this had ever really been about a virus, but it never was
When it all started I remember a news report about young people in Bangladesh having “Covid parties” and the MSM being outraged. Turns out they were probably right. I recall going to measles and chicken pox parties as a kid.
They also don’t ramp up PCR cycles
And HCQ is freely available.
Less obesity, younger population, doubtless more pragmatic testing PCR cycle thresholds, better leadership, more common sense, lower standard of living/more resilient population used to taking personal responsibility for their own wellbeing……
Plus they probably have better immune systems due to the number and variety of viruses they live with. Can’t imagine the folk of the Colcatta slums washing their shopping.
-as Mrs. M is still doing, including the bloody magazines. Me for Calcutta.
Plus more dangerous illnesses being in circulation that put Covid into perspective. This may be a general “Third World” thing.
And we are not allowed to travel abroad to get our much needed sunshine in the winter and have to take vitamin di substitute instead.
More chirping from British tennis star Andy Murray https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/55947626 “Andy Murray angry at missing Australian Open & questions LTA protocols” He tested positive and was unable to travel to Australia in time to get into the quaratine hotels they had arranged for the players. At the time he didn’t say much, now he is blaming slack observance of mask rules and overcrowding at the LTA’s Roehampton training facility, which he has been using. Too many people there who should not have been there. Since it’s not open to the public but only to elite players, he’s basically saying that only Very Important people like him shoud have been allowed to use it. Of course getting his own court built in the grounds of his enormous house in Surrey couldn’t possibly have been an option, as he doesn’t have tens of millions of pounds in the bank, and neither would staying away from the place at busy times. No, him catching the virus was definitely NOT his fault, or inevitable – others are to blame. Bear in mind the people he is moaning about are his fellow professionals and their coaches who are all considerably poorer than he is. Dan Evans,… Read more »
Let them eat cake
It’s so obvious that elite sport is being allowed for bread and circuses purposes. I refuse to watch it now.
me too – i tried to watch the rugby yesterday but was too depressing atmosphere with empty stadium – but was just as well as england lost anyway!
Andy Murray can go stuff himself – he’s an arrogant, self important/entitled tosser who is now past his best and will never win another grand slam.
He wants to build a tennis centre in a Scottish beauty spot.
As a sportsperson I really loved Andy Murray. Politically though, he is a complete idiot. Another, woke progressive easily led by propaganda. I am not surprised he has fallen for the COVI bollocks.
Novak is standing up to it though and all he gets is tremendous abuse. Yet he is World No 1.
Djokovic has been criticised heavily for organising a (completely legal) tournament last summer and trying to get better conditions for the players in Australia – but actually although he comes across as a bit full of himself he is actually doing his job and standing up for colleagues less fortunate than he is – he can afford not to work again, many others cannot
Djokovic has gone up in my estimation after holding that tournament. Never understood the criticism considering these are all highly fit and healthy young men and women FFS.
Yes I agree. Disappointed in Dan Evans – I thought he was less arrogant than that.
Agreed. Went right off him after he took the bloody knee.
And was he too tight go and get your own test done? You don’t say if you were ill, so could it be you had a false reading? Were you wearing a mask? Well why did that not work. God I fucking hate AM. Spoiled little mummy’s boy.
Jesus wept. As much as I think Andy Murray is an OK guy, he does come across as petulant and immature half the time. A far cry from the gracious & polite Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.
He should get over himself and as I’ve queried here before, why is he not using his stature to question how lockdown and restrictions have been having a negative impact on this country’s physical health & mental well being? Instead we get this tantrum.
As for Dan Evans who he?
Oh, really? Like being forced to carry certification of having receiving an experimental drug in order to do things “such as going to restaurants, bars or the cinema”? Are you “nervous” about that?
Someone please wake me up from this nightmare!
Personally – I’d sooner scream my head off about not being allowed into my restaurants/bars/cinemas than take the Vax to graciously be allowed to do what I have every right to do. But, me being me, I’d be looking for other people to join me on a picket line outside the places discriminating against us.
If a pub won’t serve me I’ll go to a different pub. I only tend to drink in free houses anyway and I will be amazed if any of them turn away punters after the last year they have had.
Do you think there will be many free pubs left after this.Greene king and Wetherspoons are looking to buy up distressed pubs.The government can control big corporates easier hence the destruction of the small and medium businesses.
Sorry JP you are wrong about Spoons (and they don’t buy beer just about go out of date)
And it’s not GK -it’ an ex GK boss.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/19/most-non-food-pubs-england-still-awaiting-1000-covid-grants see final para re Spoons
“Wetherspoon has not stated that it intends to buy up “smaller pubs” as the headline of the earlier version said. This was an error based on reported plans by the Redcat Pub Company. Neither did Wetherspoon’s recent statement to investors say it planned to buy pubs in general as the article said. Rather the company announced that it is, “considering the acquisition of a number of properties in central London, the freehold reversions of pubs of which it is currently the tenant, and properties adjacent to successful pubs”. We apologise to J D Wetherspoon for these errors.”
I think you might be surprised at the number of smaller free houses who survive this. People are going to be desperate to enjoy their freedom, especially the 20 million of us who are lockdown sceptics.
It depends on the location of each of us. In my own location – I’m worried that one of the theatres here/which doubles as a cinema might turn out to be the Awkward Brigade and there is a large social venue that stages national tours (in normal times) and those are the two I have my eye on wondering if they’ve personally got a Death Wish (ie to cut their own throats by losing business courtesy of not letting us in coupled by boycotting by any Covidians that have a conscience – not sure how many Covidians would/wouldnt have a conscience and not wish to see us treated that way??).
There are going to be millions of people who won’t be able to take a vaccine and, given the mood music about autumn boosters, I can’t see them ever getting around to jabbing the under 30s. Are they going to bar people from service if they haven’t been offered a jab? The lawyers would be rubbing their hands at the prospect.
Me too
except that you’ll be being arrested for being out of your house at all….see you later in the gulag
Then we must be prepared to stand our ground and be arrested.
That much I could do – as I no longer need a job (being retired) and at no risk of losing my home (it’s my own). I certainly take the view that it literally doesn’t matter if I get a criminal record now at my time of life – as I can easily state that I’m definitely not a criminal (whatever the Government might say) because I wouldn’t have spent over 60 years with a record as “clean as a whistle” otherwise.
That much I can be sure won’t happen to me – ie gulag or equivalent of. As long as I had at least a few hours warning – then I could make sure I was “free as a bird” before they had the chance (ie safely in Heaven). But I obviously hope they won’t push things that far…
There will be non-Vaxxer alternatives arising in the shadows. Speakeasies, small restaurants, arthouse cinemas. The market always provides. Ideally we need our own island that could be the opposite of Zero Covid: Max Covid.
Substitute ‘nervous’ with ‘violent’?
I currently have an International Yellow card vaccine certificate with yellow fever, hepatitis etc. recorded as needed to visit certain African countries. Those vaccinations are long term but I understand that these dodgy covid vaccines only have a limited time protection period and so will these covid passports be time limited? It sounds like an administrative nightmare which could well end up in a bit of a shambles.
Mind you if they are going to be paper then there may be a ‘Mr Fixit’ somewhere who can sort something out. I understand that if you know who to ask you can already get a fake NHS covid vaccination certificate for £5.
Correct.
The vaccine passport was always the logical end of this.Q codes,track and trace,temperature checks were just conditioning for this eventuality.
First it will be a card,then it will be in your phone,then it will be a chip in your arm.
We have a small window in the spring to stop this.before a critical mass are ‘vaccinated’ and they can roll out the discrimination on the unjabbed.
By the way that ministers statement could have come straight from that Canadian report.
So the get rich quick schemes dreamt up by the pig dictators chums will be paid for by a food tax on the poor
Brilliant!!!!
Shed a tear this morning for poor nine year old Simon and his peers, article in the round up. What damage is being done to our young people!
Surely young people, who won’t be eligible for the vaccine anytime soon, aren’t going to sit around all summer watching the over 50s going abroad on holiday with their vaccine passports?
There will be uproar, and rightly so.
You would think, but given that the government has shown that it doesn’t give a toss about social cohesion or the futures and wellbeing of young people, I wouldn’t be surprised if it indulged its elderly voters in this way just to ensure its chances of re-election come 2024.
oh, I think the young will become ‘eligible’ much sooner than you think. they need to get as many done as possible before the effects begin to become evident.
The youth are the most brainwashed generation in history.
The people who are rebelling are a few ageing baby boomers.
I mean, neither Peter Hitchens nor Jonathan Sumption should be the face of rebellion against The Man.