15 Million People Vaccinated. Time to Re-open?
Yesterday the Prime Minister formally confirmed that 15 million people had received the first dose of the vaccine.
That’s two days ahead of schedule. So now what? The announcement of a ‘road map’ out of lockdown is expected next Monday, with restrictions set to be eased from March 8th. Hints of what this easing might look like continue to be reported. The Telegraph highlights the prospect that Grandparents will be allowed to hug their grandchildren.
Grandparents would be able to see their grandchildren again from as early as March under plans to ease lockdown being considered by the Government…
“If grandparents had had the vaccine, that would be likely to be okay. Given that people will have immunity, that would be a fair assumption, but nothing has been decided,” said a Government source.
MailOnline suggests high street shops may reopen and some limited self-catering holidays at Easter my be allowed.
It is thought that this could mean the re-opening of High Street shops within weeks as well as the easing of restrictions on outdoor exercise and socialising.
Ministers are also said to be considering plans to allow for families of a single household to travel across the UK for an Easter holiday in self-catered accommodation.
However, there remains a fair degree of official nervousness about the prospect of reopening leading to increased infections, according to MailOnline.
It is thought that due to the vaccine rollout success ministers are currently looking at plans that would allow families that live in the same household to go away for self-catered staycations as soon as the Easter holidays.
This has raised fears that letting people travel long distances to their destinations could lead to “big movements” across the UK – potentially leading to a spike in coronavirus cases once again…
But the Prime Minister said: “Thanks to the efforts of the British people, the lockdown, plus possibly the effect of the vaccine, we’re going to see the rates coming down more sharply.
“They’re falling at the moment, we want to be in a position where we can begin to open up.”
In the interview with US television network CBS, Mr Johnson continued: “What people want to see is clarity about the way forward, and taking steps to unlock, which you don’t then have to reverse.”
Readers will well remember his cautiousness in his announcement of Lockdown 3.0 on January 4th.
If we succeed in vaccinating all those groups, we will have removed huge numbers of people from the path of the virus.
And of course, that will eventually enable us to lift many of the restrictions we have endured for so long.
I must stress that even if we achieve this goal, there remains a time lag of two to three weeks from getting a jab to receiving immunity.
And there will be a further time lag before the pressure on the NHS is lifted.
Come on Boris. Screw your courage to the sticking place!
Stop Press: St Austell Brewery and other industry leaders have written a strong letter to the Prime Minister urging him to allow pubs to reopen.
We must be allowed to reopen in an economically viable manner – not with ill conceived, unworkable restrictions that confuse the public, limit our financial viability and are questionable in terms of mitigating public health risk.
Stop Press 2: The Telegraph points out that the vaccine data is not quite so clear cut. Fifteen million doses have been administered, but out-of-date figures and blind spots in the publicly available statistics make it difficult to assess who has had the jab with complete certainty.
Hotel Quarantine Opens for Business
Today is the day the new rules for entry in the United Kingdom come into force. Unsurprisingly, chaos is expected at ports of entry. The Telegraph has more.
Heathrow has warned of quarantine chaos that could lead to passengers queueing for up to five hours and flights being suspended as the Government’s new border controls come into force on Monday.
The airport warned ministers the extra checks needed on arrivals and shortages of Border Force staff could “compromise” the safety of up to 8,000 passengers a day flying into Heathrow to quarantine either in Government-approved hotels or at home.
Border Force officials estimate the checks on whether passengers have come from one of the 33 red list countries and paid for their quarantine hotels and Covid tests could double the time taken to 15 minutes per arrival. E-gates have been shut because of the need for face-to-face checks….
A Heathrow spokesperson said: “Our key concern remains the ability of Border Force to cope. Queues at the border in recent days of almost five hours are totally unacceptable.”
From today, anyone heading for England must now undergo at least three tests. The first in the three days prior to travel, and the second and third during their 10-day quarantine. These latter two tests must be purchased at a cost of £210 as a “Covid Testing Package”.
That’s just for those arriving from a country that isn’t one of the 33 that have been red-listed. Anyone arriving in England from one of those must book a 10 day (11 night) “Managed Quarantine Package” which includes hotel stay, food and beverages, transfers, security and two COVID-19 tests at a total cost of £1,750. Failure to do so may mean a fine of £10,000 or 10 years in jail – or possibly both. Heathrow, according to the Telegraph report, is pleading for some leniency.
Heathrow is also urging the Government not to issue £4,000 fines to red list passengers who have failed to book their hotels in recognition of the technical problems that crashed the official booking website for 24 hours last week. The airport has offered facilities for them to make the bookings.
The booking portal is here should any overseas readers really want to come to England at the moment. CityAM reports that contracts have been secured with 16 hotels close to airports and sea ports, a total of 4,600 rooms. Grant Shapps estimates that the number coming in from the relevant countries “probably comes to less than 1,000 a day”. Better hope so, or he will be needing more rooms. Some fear that these hotels might turn into infection hotspots, according to the Mail on Sunday.
Ahead of the new rules being introduced at midnight, Meher Nawab, chief executive of the London Hotel Group, warned that many airport hotels rely on central air flow systems.
Pointing to Australia’s system – which is currently under review amid an outbreak linked to quarantine hotels – he warned such systems could increase the risk of the virus spreading between guests and hotel staff.
Mr Nawab also warned that airport hotels often use central air conditioning systems – rather than individual units – and sometimes have windows that cannot be opened.
The warning comes as passengers were seen making a desperate dash to return to the UK before the rules come into force.
Union chiefs meanwhile warned that the quarantine measures were not enough to prevent Covid variants spreading in the UK.
The GMB union also raised concerns about its members interacting with arrivals from ‘red listed’ countries which are included in the quarantine hotel scheme.
Who Decided Which Countries Should be on the ‘Red List’ and Why?
How do they choose which country’s visitors should go into quarantine? Lockdown Sceptics contributor Jonny Peppiatt has taken a close look at the ‘red list’ and can’t see the logic.
With hotel quarantine coming into effect on Monday, I think it’s time we did some armchair sleuthing into the countries on our red list, because when I saw the list it struck me, on first impression, as a broadly random selection of countries that, if anything, seemed more anti-African and anti-South American than anything else.
Of course, South Africa and Brazil feature in there because of the two now world-renowned “Variants of Concern” (VOC) named after those countries – 501Y.V2 (of which, the UK has more cases than all other countries combined bar South Africa) and P.1, respectively. Other than these two “VOCs”, it is difficult to see what explanation could be offered for adding other countries to the red list (seeing as there are no other major nationally branded “VOCs”), other than their case rates rising rapidly, or staying at a very high level.
The explanation often cited is that we are defending our borders against unknown variants. But if that is the case, why highlight individual countries and not just shut our borders to everyone? Are some countries more likely to create “VOCs” than others? If so, why? I’m not sure that’s a line of questioning anyone on SAGE would be happy to be taken down…
Perhaps it’s a case of restricting travel from countries around SA and Brazil. There’s an argument to be made here, with every country on mainland South America on the red list, along with Panama. But if Panama is on the list, why not Trinidad and Tobago, or Curacao, or Aruba, or Grenada, and so on and so on.
Of course, you also have all countries south of the Democratic Republic of Congo on the list. But why would you add Mauritius but not Madagascar? Or the Seychelles, or Cape Verde? These seem more like holiday destinations the Government is seeking to dissuade travel to than genuine threats.
So, other than broadly being countries near SA or Brazil, the infection rate must be a factor. So, let’s take a look at that. But, before we do, maybe it would be helpful to have the list of 33 countries to hand:
Angola, Argentina, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Burundi, Cape Verde, Chile, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Eswatini, French Guiana, Guyana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal (including Madeira and the Azores), Rwanda, Seychelles, South Africa, Suriname, Tanzania, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Uruguay, Venezuela, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Let’s start with the ludicrous: four of these countries (French Guiana, Mauritius, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe) recorded no cases on February 11th. None. It’s worth worth noting that Tanzania hasn’t recorded a single case since May 8th when their Matt Hancock was sacked after a positive test being obtained from a papaya.
Another 14 countries have case rates per million in double figures. These are Angola, Burundi, DR of Congo, Lesotho, Rwanda, Malawi, Venezuela, Mozambique, Namibia, Suriname, Eswatini, Guyana, Zambia and South Africa – yes, South Africa, that terrifying country that is rife with mutant variants. The highest of these is 56 cases per million.
For reference, the UK, despite having fallen by 80% since the peak of daily reported cases on the 8th January, has 199 cases per million.
And sure enough, another nine of our 33 red listed countries, while having triple-figure case rates, still have lower case rates than us. These nine are Cape Verde, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Panama, and Chile. Have we missed any South American or southern African countries?
Oh yes, of course, Brazil, home to VOC P.1, Peru, Botswana and the Seychelles.
Let’s look at these in more detail.
Peru
- Cases reported: 11th February: 6,724
- Case rate per million: 204
- Trend: Seems to be reaching a peak, but the cases curve looks different to any other I’ve seen.
- Variants of concern: Indeterminable from my armchair.
- Conclusion: If you’re applying the precautionary principle, including Peru on the red list seems fairly reasonable, I suppose.
Botswana
- Cases reported: 11th February: 491
- Case rate per million: 209
- Trend: Nothing has really changed since the middle of October.
- Conclusion: What on earth is happening in Botswana? Why has nothing changed for four months? That seems very weird. Yes, let’s keep them out. Thanks.
Brazil
- Cases reported: 11th February: 54,742
- Cases per million: 258
- Trend: Broadly unchanged since early January.
- Trend of neighbouring countries: Argentina has fallen 47% since peak on 12th January; Panama has fallen 84% since peak on 6th January; Colombia has fallen 63% since peak on 14th January; Bolivia has fallen 53% since peak on 27th January; Suriname has fallen 77% since peak on 12th January; Uruguay down 63% since peak 14th January; Venezuela has been low since mid-October; Paraguay has been broadly unchanged since September; Guyana low since August; Ecuador hasn’t really changed since April.
- Conclusion: There just doesn’t appear to be a hugely concerning variant of concern ripping through South America right now…
The Seychelles
- Cases reported: 11th February: 73
- Cases per million: 745
- Trend: Cases appear to be growing.
- Conclusion: Surely, having a sample size of less than 100,000 (i.e. their entire population) means that cases per million will just be distorted. I’m not sure a comparison here is worthwhile at all.
We have two countries left on our list: Portugal and UAE – the only two countries on the list not in Africa or South America. With cases per million of 341 and 356 respectively, you could almost accept these two being on the red list, but Portugal has seen a decline of 79% daily cases reported since its peak on January 28th, and UAE appears to have peaked on January 29th, although it isn’t coming down as quickly as some other countries on this list.
If I were to speculate as to how the Government had come up with this list, I would say that Grant Shapps has drawn a big circle around Brazil and South Africa on a big map, and thrown any countries that appear in those circles on to the list without bothering to look at individual case rates in any of these countries.
However, they forgot to include all the little countries around the north coast of Venezuela. They also forgot Madagascar.
Then, they did a quick google search for high cases per million which spat out Seychelles, Portugal, and UAE, so they added them to the list without even bothering to look at the fact that Portugal’s cases are plummeting at the same rate as ours, UAE’s cases are coming down fairly quickly, and Seychelles’ cases per million are simply an artefact of having such a small population.
All in all, I would struggle to conclude that this red list has been carefully thought out, carefully planned, or carefully investigated. But then, I’m just an armchair epidemiologist, aren’t I?
Stop Press: New Scientist is similarly unimpressed by the new quarantine rules.
“In the case of Australia, the goal is to eliminate the risk of international travellers bringing COVID-19 into an environment where we have no community spread,” says Nancy Baxter at the University of Melbourne. “But when your country has one of the world’s biggest outbreaks, I’m not really sure what you’re gaining by having hotel quarantine – other than being ready for when you do get your numbers to the point where international travellers pose a greater risk to your community than just going to the grocery store,” she says.
“I think it might very well be too late,” says Beverley Paterson at the University of Newcastle in Australia.
Hancock has said that the border rules are needed to “secure the nation against new variants of coronavirus”.
However, given that the new quarantine rules will be enforced only for passengers returning from red-listed countries, many researchers think they are unlikely to be effective. “Clearly there are political reasons that countries are or aren’t on that list. It’s not a risk-based plan,” says Baxter.
For instance, the US isn’t on the red list, despite the rapid spread of a new virus variant in California. “The likelihood of something being introduced from America is just enormous,” says Paterson. There is a huge number of cases in the US, and it is probable that many more new variants will arise there, she adds.
Stop Press 2: Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer wants all international travellers to be herded into quarantine hotels, while the Scottish Government has put that rule in place. This has given rise to the prospect of checks on the Scottish-English border.
Stop Press 3: In case anybody believes rigid border controls are a guarantee of Zero Covid, there’s been an outbreak of three local cases in Auckland, New Zealand, plunging the city into a ‘level 3’ lockdown for three days. The Guardian has more.
People should work from home where possible, and schools will be open only to the children of essential workers. Public venues such as libraries, museums, cinemas, food courts, gyms, pools, playgrounds and markets will close, as will businesses that cannot ensure physical distancing.
The rest of the country is in ‘level 2’. Travellers to New Zealand from any country must complete a 14-day stay in managed isolation or quarantine.
The Shocking Backlog of Cancer Patients
An increase in deaths from cancer is a well known side-effect of the lockdowns, with screening programmes and treatments being delayed by hospitals and people being reluctant to turn up for appointments for fear of catching the virus. Turns out, 2020 was the worst year on record when it comes to the number of people being diagnosed with cancer, i.e. fewer were diagnosed than at any time since records began. Euronews has the details.
In December 2020, there were 200,940 urgent cancer referrals made by doctors in England, compared with 187,811 the year prior – something believed to be caused in part by
lockdowncoronavirus.“We had the initial first wave of the pandemic and at that point a lot of the routine work was actually paused while we tried to cope with the first wave of COVID-19,” said Dr Julian Elford, a clinical radiologist.
“We can’t get patients through the pathway as quickly as we’d like. There are lots of different reasons for that, but it is frustrating and that is leading to some delays in diagnosis and treatment.”
According to Elford, that backlog is also due to patients’ fears of catching COVID-19 in the hospital setting. Plus, fewer clinicians are able to refer patients as they are helping to fight COVID-19 themselves.
Meanwhile, England’s National Health Service has said 350,000 patients in England had been waiting for more than six weeks for a key diagnostic test in December 2020.
They added a total of 345,664 patients were waiting for one of 15 standard tests, including an MRI scan, non-obstetric ultrasound or gastroscopy.
In December 2019, the equivalent figure was 41,906.
“There’s a long backlog, a large backlog of cases waiting for CT and MRI scans as the first part of their diagnostic pathway, at the moment there are more than 72,000 patients waiting longer than six weeks for a CT or MRI scan,” Elford said.
The Telegraph says that the backlog of cancer patients waiting more than 100 days has doubled since last year.
NHS England data show the staggering challenge hospitals have to save the lives of cancer patients.
At the start of February, the backlog of cases already at more than 15 weeks had hit 6,109, compared to 3,000 at the same point in 2020. National targets state cancer patients should be treated within 62 days of being referred…
In the North West, the backlog has nearly tripled over the same time period, from 289 to 831.
It adds:
In a statement, NHS England said Covid has put the services under huge pressure, but the vast majority of cancer care is continuing and more people were treated and referred in Dec 2020 compared to the same month in 2019.
It added: “The NHS message is clear, people should continue to come forward for routine screening or get checked if they have a worrying symptom.”
Professor Neil Mortensen, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, said the growing backlogs were “very worrying”, adding: “Life-saving, emergency surgery has continued through the pandemic, however, as hospital beds have filled up with COVID-19 patients, many thousands of patients have been forced to wait for cancer and other types of NHS treatment
Not every case of cancer is fatal, of course, but prompt diagnosis improves the chances of survival. According to Cancer Research, there are more than 166,000 cancer deaths every year.
Stop Press: A Lockdown Sceptics reader has flagged up a paper published by the Nuffield Department of Health which investigated the impact on colorectal cancer specifically.
As compared to the monthly average in 2019, in April, 2020, there was a 63% reduction (from 36,274 to 13,440) in the monthly number of two-week referrals for suspected cancer and a 92% reduction in the number of colonoscopies (from 46,441 to 3,484)…
By October, 2020, the monthly rate had returned to 2019 levels but did not exceed it, suggesting that, from April to October, 2020, over 3,500 fewer people had been diagnosed and treated for colorectal cancer in England than would have been expected.
Imperial’s Prediction of a June-July Spike is Implausible, says Prof
There follows a guest post from David Livermore, Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of East Anglia, responding to Glen Bishop’s article on February 12th and the contributions of others since.
I read with great interest and some astonishment Glen Bishop’s article and subsequent correspondence on Lockdown Sceptics, indicating that the Imperial group has omitted seasonality effects in its modelling of COVID-19 trajectories.
Seasonality is a feature of respiratory viruses in general, at least in the northern and southern temperate zones, including Europe. This is well illustrated in the review and meta analysis by Li and colleagues of Edinburgh University, published last July in Journal of Infectious Diseases
This has easily-understood heat maps illustrating how seasonal (i.e. non-Covid) coronaviruses, respiratory syncytial virus and influenza virus all peak in December to February in the Northern hemisphere and in July to August in New Zealand. Their patterns are erratic in the tropics. The only exception is China, where ‘seasonal’ coronaviruses seemed to be less seasonal. Maybe that, and patterns of arising cross-immunity, contribute to the different trajectories of SARS-CoV-2 in China and elsewhere?
That, though, is a topic for another day.
What matters now is the recent (January) modelling by Imperial (which is likely influencing Government policy). This seeks to predict COVID-19’s trajectory as vaccine is deployed and non-pharmaceutical interventions are eased up to July. All its models show a spike in hospitalisations in June and July (see its figure 5). The height of this varies according to the speed of vaccine roll out and the R number, but it is widely projected to exceed hospital capacity.
Imperial writes:
Our results highlight the importance of speeding-up vaccine roll-out, and suggest that a more cautious approach to gradually lifting NPIs may need to be considered than the ones modelled in this report.
Yet if we accept the obvious seasonality of coronaviruses, a June-July spike is simply implausible. We know this not only from Li et al.’s review of other respiratory viruses but also from experience with SARS-CoV-2 itself. COVID-19 became infrequent in summer 2020 in unrestricted Sweden. It did not rise swiftly in the UK summer despite mass summer protests and ‘Eat out to Help Out’. In the Czech Republic, which largely evaded the spring pandemic and then relaxed completely, even a Covid-naïve population was not seriously hit until the Autumn.
In short, Imperial’s January modelling is deeply flawed by ignoring seasonality and should not be used as an excuse to delay releasing lockdown. The test of vaccines will, in reality, come next winter, not in the summer.
Have the Young Really Suffered More than the Old?
Today we are publishing a new piece by Lockdown Sceptics regular, Guy de la Bédoyère. Written in response to Dr Alberto Giublini’s article, which we published on Saturday, Guy argues that everyone in lockdown is in this together. Everyone has been damaged somehow, and we must now act together in our collective interest of coming to terms with the disease and return to a manageable normality. Here are the opening paragraphs:
I wonder how helpful at this stage Dr Alberto Giubilini’s article really is. It belongs to a range of claims that one group or another has suffered more or less than others either from lockdowns or other Covid-suppression measures. In this case, he argues that the young have been hit more than anyone else in the Government’s quest to make us all pay the price for Covid in the interests of ideological moralism.
Some of what he says is true. I certainly agree with him that the media’s obsession with trying to find unrepresentative stories about younger people dying from Covid in an attempt to make a false extrapolation that “we’re all in it together” is grossly misleading. The data, as he says, speaks for itself and only in this last week we have learned the sad fact that 60% of Covid-related deaths in the last year in the UK have occurred to the disabled, confirmed by the ONS. And it is absolutely correct that young people’s lives and prospects are being devastated for the sake of something that barely affects them. With four adult children of my own, all in their thirties, I am painfully aware of the impact of lockdowns and other restrictions on their lives and those of their own children.
But it is not that simple.
In the most recent edition of New Statesman, the resident medic Dr. Phil Whitaker, paints in his weekly column a sentimental and self-regarding picture of elderly ‘survivors’ coming for their vaccines and drowning him and his colleagues in effusive thanks. Reinforcing the notion that there is an unfair conflict of interest at play, he says of his elderly patients who have arrived to be vaccinated:
They must be all too aware of the strand of opinion that bemoans what society has borne in order to protect them. The vaccine offers the chance to leave such commentary behind. They have survived a year of Covid – unlike the 110,000 who have, to date, succumbed.
The disparaging tone in the reference to “the strand of opinion” is all too obvious. We should all have willingly sacrificed everything.
What both Whitaker and Giubilini overlook is that it will be a long time, especially with the young, before we can really assess the relative impact of all the measures. It would be more constructive at this point, especially with our concerns about the impact of Government measures, to consider how lockdowns have affected everyone but in very different ways, including – crucially – the elderly.
Worth reading in full.
Round-up
- “Coronavirus may not have emerged In China, WHO scientists says” – The Huffington Post reports on the recent comments of Professor John Watson that SARS-CoV-2 may not have originated in China. Just how keen is the WHO to exonerate China of any blame for the pandemic?
- “Economic burden of COVID-19, China, January-March, 2020” – The Bulletin of the World Health Organisation reports on the economic cost of the virus to China
- “How ‘killer’ T cells could boost COVID immunity in face of new variants” – Concerns that variants may be partially resistant to antibodies has sparked new interest in other immune responses, especially T Cells, reports Nature
- “Tory newlyweds Esther McVey and Philip Davies urge Boris to back Covid-secure weddings from March 8th” – The Mail On Sunday reports further backbench pressure on the Government
- “Andrew Lloyd Webber Says Lockdowns Push London Theatre to Abyss“– The famous composer is worried about London’s theatreland, Bloomberg reports
- “All the coronavirus in the world could fit inside a Coke can, with plenty of room to spare” – A tremendous piece of mathematical reasoning by Christian Yates in the Conversation. It helps to explain why mask wearing is ineffective
- “Vaccine passports for internal use are ‘under consideration,’ says Raab” – The Spectator‘s Steerpike comments on Blair’s input into the vaccine passport discussions
- “Do not rollout COVID-19 vaccine passports” – A petition worth signing on parliament.uk
- “Christians unite against this lockdown madness” – A rallying call to Christians from Ben Mildred in the Conservative Woman. Christians have no business supporting lockdowns, he says, because prioritise the rich over the poor, and destroy church and family life
- “Retirement home removed door handles to residents’ rooms during Covid outbreak” – The Toronto Sun reports on the inhumane treatment of care home residents
- “Balkans turn to Russia and China for Covid vaccines” – The Times reports on vaccine diplomacy in the East
- “‘It’s as if there’s no Covid’: Nepal defies pandemic amid a broken economy” – The Guardian reports on the strange situation in Nepal. “It’s as if nothing has happened… It doesn’t seem like there is any Covid,” says Sameer Mani Dixit, a public health specialist. “It defies logic”
- “COVID-19: Behind the PCR Curtain” – Dr Sam Bailey from New Zealand digs deep into PCR testing
- “South Africa Covid cases plummeting with very few lockdown restrictions. What is happening here?” – Professor Wasim Hanif looks at the graphs and asks an excellent question on Twitter
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Twenty-one today: “Something Better Change” by The Stranglers, “Trapped in a Box” by No Doubt, “Somebody to Love” by Dicepeople, “We’ve Heard It All Before” by Freak Kitchen, “I Can’t Get Next To You” by the Temptations, “We Live as We Dream, Alone” by Gang of Four, “Rules And Regulations” by Public Image Limited, “Breaking the Rules” by the Fall, “Shake The Disease” by Depeche Mode, “Day In Day Out” by XTC, “Change The World” by Eric Clapton, “Mad World” by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules, “Do They Owe us a Living” by Crass, “Police On My Back” by the Clash, “It’s In Our Hands” by Björk, “Road to Nowhere” by Talking Heads, “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” by The Smiths, “This Mess We’re In” by P. J. Harvey, “We’re In This Together” by Nine Inch Nails, “Nappy Love” by the Goodies and “Rock the Boat” by Hues Corporation.
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.
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Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, it is the Labour party, from whom two stories of wokery have emerged over the weekend. First, from the Mail On Sunday, the shadow minister who wants to see ‘Mx’ being used more widely.
‘Mx’ should be used as a gender-neutral alternative to titles such as Mr and Mrs on forms, a member of Keir Starmer’s team has suggested.
Alex Sobel, a shadow Culture, Media and Sport Minister, wants the Government to tell public bodies and private companies to start using ‘Mx’ on forms and documents.
Mr Sobel has also supported contentious trans-rights reforms including the abolition of single-sex changing rooms, toilets and prisons.
Women who object are bigots who should not vote Labour, the MP declared.
But some Labour MPs worry that issues such as this show that Sir Keir, a former human rights lawyer, is unable to connect with the many working-class voters the party lost in the last Election.
Labour HQ has already embraced ‘Mx’. A form used for job applicants since last year offers titles including ‘Mx’, ‘Ind’ and ‘Misc’.
However, Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch indicated that the Government had no plans to push for the compulsory use of ‘Mx’.
Second, according to the Express, the party has released a report calling on Britain to make financial reparations to countries pillaged by the British Empire.
The 234-page document, titled ‘Remaking Of The British State: For The Many, Not The Few’, lays out a programme for Government should Labour win a general election…
The report stated: “In recognition of the past wrongdoings of the British state, the new constitution should make an unreserved apology to all of the countries of the world that the Empire invaded and negatively impacted.
“In addition, the British state should set up a reparations fund as part of the constitution, which offers financial assistance to communities across the world that can show loss and detriment as a result of the actions of the British state.”
Financial payments should be made from taxpayers’ money if “the British state owed the claimants in question a duty of care” according to the document.
Stop Press: Rod Liddle says taking the knee is a divisive, pantomime act that has run its course.
Stop Press 2: Satirical news site the Babylon Bee reports that Gina Carano, recently fired from The Mandalorian for being a Trump supporter, has been rehired by Disney after she identified as an abusive male director.
“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: The Winsford and Middlewich Guardian has a story about a man being banned from his local branch of Asda for a year for refusing to wear a mask in spite of being exempt.
Mr Martin said he entered the store at around 12.30 and after being asked by a member of staff at the entrance if he had a mask, replied that he was exempt from having to wear one…
“At approximately 12.45 I vacated the store and upon exiting was approached by the security guards who pulled me up in front of other customers to ask what my issue was.”
Upon returning home, Mr Martin went on to explain how he made a call to Customer Services to make a complaint about his ordeal, but said how he was kept on hold for around 20 minutes before the call was ended.
“I phoned again and upon speaking to the next contact was told that I had now been banned from the store for a year for apparently abusing workers, yet this event never happened,” he said
Stop Press 2: Business Today reports that scientist are working on a new kind of face mask with an antiviral coating that will kill coronavirus in just one hour.
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. In February, Facebook deleted the GBD’s page because it “goes against our community standards”. 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.
Stop Press: France24 has a video report from the German City of Tübingen which has implemented something approaching Focussed Protection to avoid another lockdown and it appears to be working.
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, although that case, too, has been refused permission to proceed. There’s still one more thing that can be tried. 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.
And last but not least there was the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. A High Court judge refused permission for the FSU’s judicial review on December 9th and the FSU has decided not to appeal the decision because Ofcom has conceded most of the points it was making. Check here for details.
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. Samaritans is available round the clock, every single day of the year, providing a safe place for anyone struggling to cope, whoever they are, however they feel, whatever life has done to them.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. Doing these daily updates is hard work (although we have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending us stories and links). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here. (Don’t assume we’ll pick them up in the comments.)
And Finally…
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Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Happy Monday
2nd.
No: sorry but it’s the fifteenth!
Every day seems the same when you are under house arrest.
aka in solitary confinement
“Covid-19 Vaccine” Adverse Reactions; Part Two: AstraZeneca Is Not A Safe Option
Special Saturday Broadcast: Governments Admit COVID-19 a Cover for Depopulation Program
https://www.infowars.com/posts/breaking-uk-govt-admits-covid-19-a-cover-for-depopulation-program/
Why the downticks? This is a free speech site.
While statistics show the astra vaccine has more reactions at the moment, the mRNA vaccine acts as a primer, the animals who died in previous mRNA vaccine trials (as opposed to the present human trials) died later on exposure to a new round of infection. Extrapolating from that we can expect many more deaths in the future from previously vaccinated mRNA vaccine subjects.
Happy Mondays surely?
A Member of the Welsh parliament, Neil McEvoy MS, had the police call around at his home in order to caution him for the offence of delivering election leaflets. McEvoy is up against Mark Drakeford in Cardiff West. If McEvoy had has a professional company deliver leaflets he would not have fallen foul of the alleged law/regulation which favours candidates and parties with large bank balances. Fortunately, McEvoy had the presence of mind to not accept the caution. If South Wales Police want to take this further then they will have to put the matter before a court. This needs covering in Lockdown Sceptics – delivering election leaflets is illegal in Wales just a few months before an election. https://www.facebook.com/neiljmcevoy/posts/264938005003246
Everything worth doing is illegal in Wales.
Sadly, this includes shooting Dungford. Soon it will pobably include voting against Dungford.
I remember a story from In the last, ramshackle days of Soviet Russia, which Stalinist Wales increasingly resembles, an election was held in which there was, as usual, only one candidate. He still lost.
Back in the 1980s rugby mad Wales was always extolling the virtues of Romania which had a rugby team. We can only hope for a Caucescu-balcony moment. The oint about the above post is that it is Drakeford’s opinion that voluntarily delivering leaflets is illegal and South Wales police have acted as Drakeford’s personal bodyguards. thank goodness McEvoy is not the type to be intimidated. His new party is an anti-lockdown party and I hope the Plod push this to a court case. i doubt the CPS will oblige, however.
If I was in McEvoy’s constituency, ward, whatever, needless to say I’d vote for him.
So many things that are only guidelines in England are laws in Wales that it’s hard to know where Plod really does get off. And Plod knows that. All human beings are de facto criminals in Gulag Zombie. I hope and believe that McEvoy knows exactly. what the law is in this case.
Democracy is illegal. Freedom is illegal. Human rights are illegal.
Dungford grows more like Ceausescu every day.
Will the Welsh be fighting to get back into England at this rate?
Leaflets spread the virus?
of course, don’t you know? coronabollox, the gift that keeps on giving, for totalitarians everywhere
Yes, if decency, freedom, democracy and human rights can be described as viruses.
Every BLOODY thing, even being alive spreads the virus.
MASS WORLDWIDE SUICIDE, That’s the answer, now where’s Jim Jones when you need him?
In Cardiff. Changed name to Dungford.
That’s what I keep wondering. If these clowns were honest they would say that simply being alive is hazardous to human health and advocate mass seppuku to stop the spread of the virus.
Then Sage should start the ball rolling to set an example.
A man before his time, old Jim.
https://images.app.goo.gl/1jqjr5fyXbpeFk196
Kevorkian would approve of the mRNA virus. “Dying is not a crime” – when you have total legal immunity.
Not if they are promoting Pizza outlets.
Oh sweet summer child there will be no more elections in Whales
Or in Dolphins?
Yes and Brian Rose who is campaigning again that anti British weasel Sadiq Kant was stopped by the met from campaigning in London for the London Mayor election.
Is Sadiq Khan legally the London Mayor? It seems to me that London currently has no Mayor. It’s a fixed term and the term has been completed. I would be interested to know what a constitutional lawyer would say about this.
Mr McEvoy should personally deliver a leaflet up Drakeford’s arse – with gloves on of course….
The leaflet should be pinned to a marrow.
Lol!
I’d pay good money to see that
So would I !
Mr McEvoy should change his name by deed poll to “Mr Mark Drakeford is a fascist bastard” and have his day in court.
McEvoy will trounce him
It is a bit early to be delivering election leaflets, though? He may run into another type of trouble if it is decided that the leaflets he delivers in February are part of his election expenses. Parties and local councillors do issue leaflets between elections but have to be careful not to described them as election leaflets.
Grandparents bloody well haven’t been accused of ‘killing granny’.
No, I blame that on Captain Tom.
If this site and everyone on it is against lockdown, logic points to root and branch reform of the NHS. Lockdown has been about nothing more than protecting the NHS. And, in its current structure, the NHS needs protection: the worst healthcare outcomes in Europe during this total weird out, e.g. 15-44 age group Euromomo z scores Apr/May 2020, Dec 20/Jan 21; NHS England the only country out of 27 in Europe with overall all cause mortality above ‘substantial increase’ for those periods. https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#z-scores-by-country So…how to reform? Because this site must be practical, useful, constructive: Why not look at the most successful healthcare systems in Europe and pick the best features of each? Sounds sensible? But a lot of work…… No problem. It’s already been done for you: ‘In a ‘blind test’, in which we look at health outcome data, and guess which data point represents which country, the UK could easily be mistaken for an Eastern European country.’ ‘…if the UK’s breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer and bowel cancer patients were treated in the Netherlands rather than on the NHS, more than 9,000 lives would be saved every year. If they were treated in Germany, more than 12,000… Read more »
Except Tim…
Other countries are going down the same path who have much better health care systems than ours.
The British treat the NHS as a religion so it was the easiest point of propaganda for the regime to exploit.
No country has a “much better” health care system the UKs.
Some may do better in some ways but overall the NHS is as good as it gets.
The problem are the unrealistic expectations that people have placed on healthcare.
Too many people think they are entitled to world class medical attention just because they’ve paid their taxes. Worse still they think world class medical attention can be arranged through a giant system like the NHS run by bureaucrats.
If we want great medical attention for everyone then they probably everyone needs to start thinking about shifting spending priorities.
The NHS is as good as it gets – I beg to differ. Having multiple private health clinics/hospital in addition to a state run health service, and I do mean multiple, in that there is one or more in each town. If you are willing to pay £50 for a check up for your cat, I am sure most people would be happy to pay the same for themselves. Long term treatment supported by state care if there isn’t insurance cover, and less NI contributions for those with health insurance, plus employers take part in providing health insurance. My experience of this type of system has allowed access to doctor appointments on the same day and equally dental appointments in high standard dental clinics within 48 hours. The UK, mainly the government, in their arrogance, unfortunately still assume it is a leader in things, with its head buried in the sand whilst many previous developing countries have made up ground and left them standing.
The private sector poaches the best qualified NHS staff and only treats profitable illnesses. When they have to operate on a ‘level playing field’ (ie train their own, treat all conditins, etc) then it may work out. However, given the US experience, empire building by management will win out.
The best trained staff choose to leave the NHS of their own volition as they are not slaves.
Funny enough the private sector manage to train staff in every European country, Japan, Singapore Australlia etc.etc.
I regret to say that, having been cleared to travel on business by my local practice in England, I travelled to Eastern Europe, contracted pneumonia and, within 30 minutes of attending hospital in Sofia, Bulgaria, had been x-rayed, diagnosed, prescribed and supplied with the necessary antibiotics. The female doctor who looked after me was excellent.
I have an outstanding local NHS hospital but even they could not have provided that level of healthcare that quickly.
Indeed, but their outcomes in terms of overall all cause mortality are a great deal better, highlighting, in stark, inescapable, clarity, the need for root and branch reform of the NHS in this country.
The German system never went Covid only.
Dentists were closed for 2 weeks only.
“Lockdown has been about nothing more than protecting the NHS.” I think it has been more about protecting political, scientific and academic reputations, and the love of easy power
Yes, saving face and grabbing power. Which is why the only way for this to end definitively is in the humiliation and impotence of the perpetrators. Anything less and they will do it again.
The ultimate driver has been Big Pharma looking for a way to maintain their obscene profits. What better than gutting testing requirements, mandatory government purchase of drugs, and total legal immunity?
The NHS was merely the excuse. Great for a punchy slogan.
Mockdown has been about social and financial control.
As I’ve linked before. This book offers an excellent comparison of welfare states in developed countries across the world. None are perfect but so many more have far better outcomes than the NHS.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25257931-the-welfare-of-nations
Please stop plugging insurance because the evidence doesn’t seem to support it and subsidised/regulated insurance has extra admin costs not incurred by public systems.
All other developed countries apart from the USA (chaotic, insurance) seem ahead of the UK on outcomes, especially on lifespan. Half, incl Canada, Spain, Sweden Iceland etc have govt-run systems although they’re devolved more than our monolith (except it seems for South Korea which is a bit like ours).
But most health systems have now been captured by the ‘medical-industrial complex’ … look it up, the term was invented 50 yrs ago. That will probably have a malign effect whether one is in Denmark (govt-run) or Switzerland (govt-regulated insurance). Costs will go up as outcomes improve less slowly.
The feminist in the room is the ever expanding population
Everyone knows this but is afraid to say it
Don’t know why you used the word “feminist” instead of “elephant”??!! But our increasing overpopulation is indeed the elephant in the room and I say the unsayable personally – which is why on earth have people still been paid child tax allowances/etc since the Pill and legal abortion came along in the 1970s?? I can understand for the generation of children I was born into (ie the 1950s) as that was before these things came along. But why in recent years??
It’s the only mechanism by which parents who stay at home with children are able to maintain National Insurance contributions during those years of not having a salaried position.
Population has been steadily declining – in some regions such as Asia, plummeting for well over a decade, now.
Statistics upon request.
‘extra admin costs not incurred by public systems’
Loving the humour.
The paper suggests a ‘Social Health Insurance’ system
‘SHI systems also achieve universal access to healthcare, albeit in a different way, namely through a combination of means-tested insurance premium subsidies, community rating and risk structure compensation.’
‘When it comes to providing high-quality healthcare to the poor, these systems are second to none’
Reference above
Indeed, there is a reason virtually all 1st world countries operate some variation of a Social or Bismarkian Insurance model.
Other than the 2 outliers of the UK & USA of course.
You’d be lynched in most of those countries if you tried to downgrade their healthcare to an NHS.
Primary approach – remove the over-paid non-jobs. It is not the NHS’s responsibility to police the country. It should be to treat ill people as effectively as possible.
Diversity manager £56,000 Doctor £41,0000
Use purchasing power to bring Big Pharma extortion prices down to realistic level.
How many millions of pounds of tax payers money are being spent on NHS adverts? From memory, a Nightingale Hospital costs about 30 million.
Whoever is responsible for those NHS adverts and the agency that created them should be charged with perpetuating large scale Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy on the British people and jailed for the rest of their lives
The damage wrought by these adverts will linger on long after this is over.
I totally agree. I have posted about them on here before.
The type and frequency of broadcast of them was the main reason TalkRadio lost me as a listener.
I agree they (the advertisements) are a PITA, but if not TalkRadio, who is there left to listen to?
Bit cross with JHB giving serious airtime to Marianna Spring today.
The recent one with those “Celebs” is manipulative and repetitive as well and should be struck down by the ASA.
There should be award lists such as the Lord Haw Haw award, the Dr Mengele award, the Himmler award, the Goebbels award etc.
I’d love to win a Mengy.
As others have noted, the enormous volume of Government/PHE/NHS advertising is doing two things. Firstly, it is filling the coffers of all media, print and broadcast, and in many cases keeping branches of the “dead tree press” alive. Secondly, it is a comprehensive bribe to, and leverage over the media to trumpet the Government propaganda. No medium seems to be impervious to this, as witness the new woke Sunday Times and its fawning piece on o’Brien MP yesterday. I doubt that any of the airtime or advertising space is being given gratis, as a “pro bono” gesture on the part of the media. No part of the media is untainted. In Norfolk, the Eastern Daily Press is stuffed with full and half page ads every day, as are other papers in the Archant group. Oddly, one of the current links on their web version promises an article “More than 800 patients likely to have caught Covid in Norfolk hospitals”. This, on click, has no article behind it-“Sorry, page is gone”. Also, the County Council is placing the usual “keep safe” full page patronising ads, which presumably are funded by the council and I hope reimbursed by Government, at a time… Read more »
Agree, as in my reply to Bart above re TalkRadio on Gov./NHS adverts.
The only radio I have on now at home and in the car, is a regional music station (which I can easily mute in the car in a second), this now has Hampshire County Council “advice” adverts too!
We are being tortured.
radio caroline does not seem to have any cv ads
I didn’t know it was back!
Sit down. Stand up. Look at those baggy knees!
Those were the days!
Is it still around? What wavelength is it on?
Several options apparently:
https://www.radiocaroline.co.uk#schedule.html
Cheers I’ll give them a go!
The BBC has 2 embeds in the EDP…. wish we had the names.
Money is no object anymore.
The world has gone full MMT.
As someone in the US just remarked: What do they need my tax$ for, if they can print 4trillions in a few months?!
Economy on its knees, NHS almost worthless, lockdowns forver, vaxx passports to enter pubs and shops – welcome to Gulag Britain!
Why are countries on a red list and not a black list?
Need you ask?
Lockdown’s put me in a red mood.
Look out cor dangerous red ice if the weather turns cold again.
When seagulls follow the trawler …
Could be a good number in Africa and need to be PC.
Posted this late yesterday.
I am sure that many posters here have viewed Michael O’Bernicia’s Magna Carta 2020, but some may not understand how we were shafted when joining the EU, which is illustrated in the second of these links. More recently, we have been shafted again, with Brexit, when parliament claimed sovereignty, thus breaking our Common Law heritage through the Queen. We must consolidate our Common Law rights and demand that Magna Carta is supreme.
Antidote To COVID-1984 is Magna Carta 2020 (lbry.tv)
THE CORPUS JURIS and the Magna Carta (lbry.tv)
Common Law rights are inalienable.
The latest from The Bernician is here:
https://thebernician.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d15706cafc460fd76074a0069&id=5e0e97d630&e=f858d86c41
Interesting?
It is all very interesting but there never seems to be an real progress on his case. I’m not clear from what I’ve read what he is actually prosecuting Wankcock, Witless et al for, and he keeps talking about serving papers but then nothing happens.
Misconceived and going nowhere .
If any sort of case is issued and served I have no doubt it will be struck out sooner or later.
I linked to this article two days ago but omitted to mention another key paragraph:
‘The research team, which is co-lead by University of Oxford Clinical Research Fellow and Edith Cowan University PhD candidate Sanjay Ramakrishnan, is preparing to look for more uses for the treatment which they believe has application for a range of diseases including many strains of the flu and even the common cold.
“We’ve never had a good treatment for the common cold, it does make people sick, especially older people, and perhaps this could be it,” Professor Nicolau said.’
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/over-the-counter-inhalers-suppress-severe-covid-symptoms-trial-finds-20210210-p5716m.html
So a cure for severe symptoms of covid 19 might also treat severe symptoms of the common cold and influenza….because those symptoms are the same…….particularly dangerous to the aged and infirm……..
But covid 19 is so much worse……
Or not really?
I understand that HCQ treatments work prophylactically with flu, so let’s not have any more totally unnecessary jabs.
Zinc, Vitamins B, C, D, Quercetin
Nebulized hydrogen peroxide
HCQ/Ivermectin
A new Thyme oil/oregano mix (Maduro Venezuela).
Plenty of prophylactic and early treatment options, the latter even for late treatment.
Dr. Mercola is a good resource for all of them.
I have never heard of him before Covid, but I now consider him and all others critical of experimental gene therapies and proposing alternatives to be far more intelligent, honest and credible than all public health officials and pharma sponsored doctors worldwide combined.
Is it too controversial for Lockdown Sceptics to mention that Raab has stated that vaccine passports might be needed to enter supermarkets? Maybe it will be in tomorrow. I for one find the consideration of this horrifying. Would they really deny us access to food if we refuse the vaccine? Is this a campaign to starve us into submission?
The vaccine take-up is below expectation so Big Pharma have nudged Raab to up the ante.
Private jets don’t come cheap so think of Big Pharma execs and jab up. It is your duty.
Not all food comes from supermarkets.
I agree, there are many other ways to get food; but if the vaccine intake is not high enough there will be a lot of people trying to get hold of the food which isn’t on supermarket shelves.
One of the things keeping me sane is a visit to the local market every week. There are a lot of people with masks but equally a lot who don’t have them. Good food and human interactions with the people who grow/make it. Far superior to the supermarket experience.
An open air market? Where I be the open air market was shut down with the lockdown, so there’s no cheery banter with Broghan from Noo-cas’le on Saturdays anymore.
It surprises me, if supermarkets are such dangerous spots to venture in to, how little provision is made to avoid them.
I was told I could order on line and pick up at the door. Try ordering a loaf of bread on the website in question – https://orders.booths.co.uk – see how you get on.
i stopped going to mine last summer because of the gestapo like guard who didnt approve of my scarf and the idea of waiting in line 6 feet apart
w as just too much besides the ridculous mask s order.
can still go to one wonderful sane farmer place where am almost the only one no mask [besides the farmer] but no fruits and vegetables there .
i miss the farrmers market but am not returning until is normal like before no mas k no 6 ft apart..an d no way im getting a vaccine of course
Hi Sam,
I agree. There is a second market near where I am which I took one look at and fled. One way system, marshall on the entrance making sure that everyone was masked and sanitised.
TBH – a decent market is a luxury. One which is affordable and not too full of the whimsical (carved wooden ducks in boots) or extravagant is probably hard to find.
I’m predicting that tough times are coming and too that end I’m growing tomato plants, along with other veg to sell on the gate with an honesty box. Obviously, if things get too tough the honesty box will be the first off down the road but think barter system.
Bartering with courgettes in September may be a bit of a struggle…
By ‘tough times’ do you mean food shortages/ low income or restrictions for the unvaccinated?
Because I think they may even say you cannot go in your own garden. Plus, they will blame us for both the lockdowns and killing people so I hope you don’t have neighbours.
To be honest, I think this is going to end with quite a few people just killing themselves eventually. Unless this tyranny ends.
Who wants to live in a totalitarian world?
Perhaps not just killing themselves.
hello puddleglum what a nice name, glad felt same way as me
and me too in december when was caught by very gestapo like food store manager who saw my too thin scarf[ plus had slipped down]
had decided i hate going there too even just once a month, i know ill build a greenhouse and grow my own food except that i kill everything ! and am very lazy
Indeed it doesn’t: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56032185 another unintended consequence of LD that authorities will find it hard to do something about even after this ends.
Yes, but that’s not really the point.
That caused me a great deal of stress yesterday
The safety studies have not completed. I can see the risk balance tilts towards the vaccine in the elderly but this makes NO SENSE for the under 70s, unless you are extremely vulnerable. NO SENSE AT ALL.
whats even more stupid is that they are proposing a digital way of administering this nonsense. But how many 75+ year olds have a smart phone? All my elderly neighbours and relatives have HAD the vaccine but don’t have smart phones, and in my mother’s case, will never have one. She’s never yet used an ATM so she’s hardly likely to spaff hundreds of pounds on a phone & contract she will never use.
How can you see the risk balance tilts towards the vaccine in the elderly. Research on SARS-Cov-1 stopped because the animals died and, this time, the frail have been falling like flies in care homes. What are you basing your opinion on?
Because the risk of dying with coronavirus (if you catch it) if you are say over 80 is quite high relative to numbers dying from the vaccine. And long term safety (including ADE) is less of a concern as you have less long to live anyway. 70-80 is a bit more of a grey area admittedly. There are plenty in that category who should probably make a cAreful assessment of their individual risk before taking the vaccine, but for many it will probably still make sense. Its like RSV…14000 over 70s in the US die of RSV each year. But barely any younger adults. Who should you target your vaccine at? A number of companies are developing vaccines here but they are looking at focused protection of the elderly as all vaccines have side effects and healthcare systems, when they are being rational, will only pay for vaccines when they are needed. The problem is that governments have developed an irrational fear of coronavirus, and what WE (LS BTL commentators I mean) risk doing is having an irrational fear of the vaccine. I don’t think these vaccines are great: side effects certainly seem high vs most other vaccines. On that… Read more »
Good post – logical arguments and thought processes. But I would add three caveats.
First, it must be remembered that even the medium-term effects of these ‘vaccines’ are as yet essentially unquantifiable, especially in already frail patients.
Second, is it advisable that anyone who has already demonstrably have covid-19 to get vaccinated? I would say not.
Third, all potential recipients of these ‘vaccines’ must have the benefits and risks clearly explained to them, in neutral terms – something along the lines you have explained here. I have no confidence that this is currently being done. Thus the people receiving these ‘vaccines’ are not giving INFORMED consent. The issues associated with that go way, way deep.
Given all this, I don’t think I could recommend that an elderly relative (say 70s and above) should take any of these ‘vaccines’.
However the risk of Covid is quite clear and well quantified in the elderly, whereas the risk from a vaccine is not. Evidence of long term risk from vaccinations will take some time; many of the elderly do not have the time to wait. As in all things in life, there is a balance of risks.
I read an article by the Swedish doctor Sebastian Rushworth a couple of months ago where he attempted to quantify the risks and this changed my mind over having the vaccine. It was clear from his article that the risk of Covid to me in my mid seventies, but healthy and active, was higher than that of the vaccine.
Yes, it’s a difficult balance and choice.
You mention long-term risk, and how many elderly people haven’t got time to wait. But what about medium-term, say out to 3-5 years. Many will have that time, and we just don’t know about even medium-term risks.
It’s a roll of the dice, and thus down to the individual, and informed consent.
That’s true Norman. My only issue is what if we did nothing? Like the vast majority of people do for the flu and cold they get every year. Governments feel they have to be seen to be doing something, hence idiotic lockdowns. The biggest problem is the data is political and not scientific. Can anybody tell me “exactly” how many people have died just because of covid? Not the three other things that were killing them just covid! How many people have had the virus? Exactly? Not the idiotic PCR test actually had symptoms and the virus. Because it makes no sense vaccinating someone who has already had the virus and is immune. That’s because all the vaccine is doing is replicating artificially that immunity.
The whole point of the exercise is to undermine drug testing which is the largest cost for Big Pharma. They develop many drugs that pass Phase I and II but fail at Phase III (large scale testing for side effects). Throw in legal immunity and this is a dollar winner for Big Pharma. They are running out of proiftable drugs (those sold in the west) so why not manufacture reasons for increased drug use in the west – preferably mandatory?
Power grabs by politicos are just secondary.
Will you STOP saying this! Do you NOT read threads?
The government know EXACTLY what they are doing.
They are in hock to the money men.
Gates and his technocrat and banker friends, the trilateral commission.
This is a game-functioned virus released maybe as part of Operation Lockstep. It is a Going Direct reset known at Davos as the Great Reset.
It is justification too for mass experimentation of gene therapy on people including children. Whatever they learn from this experimentation will be marketed later on.
This is democide and genocide combined with the eventual view hooking people up to a social credit cloud via nanotechnologies in the vaccines. Known as Agenda 21/30.
Do you not know how to read past threads and learn something or two.
We really haven’t got much time and you repeating a narrative forgiveable six months ago is frankly disinformation, purposefully or not.
Hahaha. Son, your tin foil hat is slipping over your eyes. At the weekend do you go out with a sandwich board with YOU ARE ALL DOOMED!! written on it. I did read the post thanks and I Don’t need a fucking jacked up wanker like you SHOUTING YOUR BULLSHIT opinions. I have learned enough to know that you are talking constant bollocks about the great reset. My life, get over yourself. Whatever happens anything we do here with have zero impact. We are just keeping each other sane and giving each other an echo chamber. If Bill Gates is doing something, what are you going to do? Tell me what? Absolutely fuck all.
It was clear from his article that the risk of Covid to me in my mid seventies, but healthy and active, was higher than that of the vaccine.
You are taking Dr Rushworth’s opinion as fact, when it is no more than supposition. The risk to a genuinely healthy mid seventies person of dying from Covid is extremely low and little different to that of a younger person. The risks from an experimental and unlicensed vaccine are unquantified and will be with you until you die.
I agree with all your caveats.
Except that in the overweight, multiple mobility elderly population I think the vaccine makes sense on a risk/benefit calculation.
Very few others though.
I don’t think it is irrational not to wish to participate in a drug trial, which basically this is – Pfizer third phase not due until 2023. With no studies on long term effects yet alone the interactions with other drugs, I will certainly not be taking it, but for others it is their choice. Frankly, even if it was trialled properly, as with the flu vaccine, I would still prefer to rely on my robust immune system.
I can’t agree with you your opening sentence and the rest of your post says why. For me, those opting for any of these unlicensed vaccines are reacting to the endless propaganda and their actions are from rational. The other likely explanation is that they are nothing more than paid trolls from 77th Brigade or some or some other similar outfit of professional liars.
I think a personal risk assessment of whether to take the vaccine for an older person (or a younger one for that matter) should go something like this: what are my chance of catching COVID? Probably slim, if you believe that it’s probably run its course If I catch it, what are my chances of dying from it? Probably miniscule unless you are really old and / or have health issues. Even then, you’re probably not long for this world anyway If I did die, how many years of life would it cost me? Not many if I’m old. Young folk almost certainly won’t die of it so the question is moot there What are the potential risks of the vaccine? Depends what you believe but do your research. Quite possibly death, risk of death if you later catch COVID, immediate side effects such as convulsions or long term issue, compromised immune system for the rest of your life How long would I have to live with the potential side effects? Maybe not long if you’re old, but possibly many years if you’re young. However even a few years with potentially disastrous health impairment could ruin the end of your… Read more »
Your views on the current crop of hardly tested and highly experimental are very reasoned and mirror my own. Though I can’t go along with your views on masks and other senseless restrictions, Covid rules are bad rules and should be ignored at all times. Compliance will only lead to further illogical and arbitrary restrictions from the highly corrupt Johnson government.
There are no facts to back up sophie 123’s opinion, but she’s entitled to her view, no matter how misguided.
https://21stcenturywire.com/2021/02/14/germany-whistleblower-in-nursing-home-says-elderly-dying-after-covid-vaccine/
Precisely – and it’s not just the 70’s and upwards without smartphones. I’m in my 60’s and frankly don’t see the slightest need to have one. I’ve got a home computer – so any time I want to look something up I do so there. What on earth use would I have for a smartphone then? I’ve got a dead basic old-style mobile phone that I carry round on me in this remote area just-in-case (ie as a portable phone box in effect). That’s that.
I sometimes wonder if Gates et al are RIGHT to do what they do. They clearly hold the mass in CONTEMPT and so, increasingly, do I.
Maybe we do need a good cull by way of experimental vaccine, anyway. I mean, it is hard to respect muggles. Democidal thoughts.
The first part of your second paragraph is based on what?
The 70-80 age range? We know that risk of death here is exacerbated by factors like obesity and other co-morbidities.
If you are a very unhealthy 70-80 year old (but not quite on your deathbed, hoping to eke out another few years), then the vaccine could make sense.
If you are slim and active and healthy, then take your chances with COVID. Unless a much safer vaccine is developed. These ones seem pretty crappy and would likely not get approved under normal circumstances except for a very high risk cohort.
With all this vaccine hysteria there is little mention of the effective duration of the vaccine? My Yellow International Vaccine card shows my Yellow fever vaccination which is accepted as being effective for many years but I understood these dodgy covid potions have a limited duration, which raises the question of dates and re-vaccination. How long will a covid jab passport last before it needs to be re-done? Also, all this passport talk presupposes that the admin and IT can cope with doing this? Initially vaccinations records were being stored on the pharmacy IT system for transfer to the NHS system I am not sure how well that is going? The talk at the moment presupposes that this is an NHS monopoly but they will need to consider people who were vaccinated in other countries and also possibly people who get vaccinated privately if that subsequently becomes possible. If I turn up with a Nigerian or Russian vaccine ticket will they issue me with a UK vaccine cert? Personally I think they are ramping this up ready for the G7 meeting in Cornwall in June, they want to present the UK as a vaccinated covid free example to the rest… Read more »
Presumably no G7 stooges are coming from Africa or South America.Or Portugal.
I think we can be certain that maintenance vaccines will be required to keep an up to date passport. They will be at least yearly and more often if new strains are found. There was once a time when I thought that nothing could be done about massive global problems, now I understand that there was just no motivation. With the control this vaccine can bring, along with its financial benefits to the pharmaceutical companies and big businesses, the motivation is obvious, and it has nothing to do with our health.
Should we even be referring to this as a vaccine, as by definition it isn’t- did they not say it merely reduced symptoms – experimental drug would probably be more appropriate. Am I detecting a worrying change in stance on this site, as it seems more people are losing their critical/objective view on the vaccines and passports. Remember this has always been about vaccines, right back in April last year, the whole narrative has been that the only solution is a vaccine and then all the COI with SAGE, and so on. The so called vaccine isn’t for our benefit, but is making a shed load of money for certain individuals, as with PPE, PCR tests and so on. Should the view be more towards the real purpose of the vaccines, now Blair is openly pushing his vaccine passports, and thus the push for population control. As with everything, it will not stop with the vaccine passports.
Thanks Hattie, spot on!
I am not sure that the drugs on offer are actually vaccines in any logical, consistent sense of the word. I would like to see a proper medico-legal assessment of these drugs aimed at rapidly mutating viruses. Conventional vaccines are effective against non-mutating (or very slowly mutating) pathogens. In the current situation, my view is that ‘vaccine’ has been used because of its association with ‘warm, cuddly, goodness to which no one could object’ to pre-empt concerns about the method of drug development/delivery.
I suspect this is to scare more people into taking the vaccine as its reported that the number of people taking it up has stalled.
I am afraid the regime will do this in the end. Money is being spent on developing the vaccine passport. At the same time, international travel for the little people is being permanently ended. So how are whichever crony capitalists are developing the vaccine passport to get the full ROI they expected? The answer is a universal application.
Great point. I think most people think, if granny is now safe, why do I need a jab? Of course all the mumsnet crowd will be screaming about the risk to them from children even though there is no proof of this. My wife only wants it so she can “get her life back”. Its hard to argue against that logic, if that is the price to be allowed to travel freely and to be accepted into society. I find the whole thing absolutely abhorrent. The fact that you can make me a non person, invisible, and a person without rights in my own country. Below illegal immigrants who you have jabbed. I fucking hate this country.
Agree and I won’t be surprised if that’s what the vast majority think now. However there are still a bunch of people who will want everyone to be vaccinated even if its not needed. They should read up on why the swine flu vaccine has been taken off the market and if they want to live with side effects for the rest of their lives.
yes
I understand your concern. However, I must admit when I read about this outrageous statement it did make me laugh out loud. For many people, the only opportunity they have to obtain food is through visiting supermarkets and similar. So the strategy now is “take the vaxx or die, you b@st**ds!!!”. Really? I take it from this, they are either desperate to encourage a higher uptake of the vaccine, or just continuing with their general fear campaign against those who they see as dissidents who haven’t fallen for their mind control tactics yet.
I think the outcry would be enormous. We haven’t yet seen the vaccine take up in the younger age groups, which is likely to be much lower. The government have some way to go if enough people are going to accept the vaccine in order to justify such a scheme. They will have to ramp up the fear for younger people if they want them to comply. Fear of death seems to be a very effective way to control the masses.
I have been on a call/meeting this morning about whether or not the community farm I am involved with should state who has had the vaccine (we’ve been offered it to those that volunteer). I was adamant that under no condition should this be public knowledge as at the moment it is not compulsory. Then the discussion turned to setting one against another if people ask – “you’ve not had it so you can’t come near me” & we were then sent by one of the group a BBC (FFS) article on ‘why vaccinated people may still be able to spread covid 19’. It’s not the law yet but if the people on the call were able to vote, it should be. THIS. IS. MADNESS. If – as I think is going to happen – we can only travel with a vaccine certificate – the Johnson and Johnson vaccine is a ‘more’ traditional vaccine and if I really do have to have one, I’m going to hold out for that.
You are correct that it’s absolutely not on that vax status be public knowledge – as there would be people that would go in for vax discrimination (apartheid in effect). I know that if I were involved in any group that let other people have that confidential information (which I’m sure would be against Data Protection Act) I’d darn soon throw a solicitor at them if I found myself getting bullied for not having had it. Do hold out against ANY vaccine – it’s your body and that means it’s your choice. Stand strong.
i agree dont get any . you are right is total madness stay alert good luck !
I’m not worried about a vaccine passport as all the governments have failed in handling this from the beginning. The can’t organise getting two doses of the vaccine out to people on time so instead go against the manufacturers recommend doses and give two doses of different vaccines and they couldn’t get the track and trace system running correctly so I can’t see them being able to organise vaccine passports. That requires more than one organisation to work together. Pity help everyone if our government is left to organise that. We’ll all starve.
Plenty of opportunities to slip through the cracks
never forget the Government and by extension the NHS is incompetent
Tell your GP you have already had the stab then complain when your records aren’t updated
My god, we are now East Germany.
See Peter Hitchens latest on this
Piss up in a brewery
Like I said yesterday: What the fuck has domestic policy got to do with the Foreign Secretary?
So has he run this idea past Tesco’s et al? Is Bob the security guard going to have a passport style desk where he will scan your “papers please” what about those people with natural immunity because the have had the disease? Do they get a special star to sew on their jackets? What about kids? Surely we are not stupid enough to jab those with zero risk? What?……
“Do they get a special star to sew on their jackets?”
The triangle was the usual symbol identifying groups of prisoners. It was a red triangle for political prisoners, which is more appropriate.
Not just prisoners. Certain types of foreign worker – essentially slave labour – had to wear badges sewn on their clothes to make sure people realised they were not German. Poles had to wear a badge with “P”, Russians and Ukrainians one with OST (“East”) although I think some Ukrainians were allowed a blue and yellow one with the Ukrainian national symbol.
They will be armed mercenaries.
It was one of the links mentioned in the “round up”. I agree that the editing is all wrong and this should have been the first item at the top of the page today.
Absolutely so – with knobs on!!! Should have been first – by a long way…
In their wet dreams, yes. Unfortunately for them, we still have a few Human Rights…at the moment. Again see this as a more “Nudging,” a bit more fear-mongering propaganda, a bit more coercion, a bit more bullying – more proof, if any more was ever needed, that we are being dictated to by psychopaths. It also tells me they’re desperate because there’s lot of beans at stake here!
My best guess is it’s fear tactics. They are trying to deal with those of us that have decided not to have The Vax – by scaring us we might not be allowed in supermarkets etc – since they can’t scare us with the Boogyman Virus. In the event – supermarkets themselves wouldn’t be very happy about that – as they’d be likely to have food riots or the like by people breaking into supermarkets to just take what they require, rather than paying for it in the normal way. If ever I spot such an occurrence ever – I shall do 3 Wise Monkeys (hear no evil/see no evil/speak no evil) – or join in….
The other thing of note is that it’s today the BBC has chosen (by sheer coincidence – yeah right…..) to put out a programme later on this evening entitled “Vaccines – the disinformation war”. So, to me, this looks like a pincer attack on us – from one direction they are threatening to cut off our supplies and, from the other direction, they are rubbishing us (one doesn’t have to watch that programme to know that’s exactly what they will be up to on it). It’s basically war tactics.
A lot of people just can’t get their ahead around the fact that their government would happily kill them.
The police would happily beat their brains out.
The judges only care about their careers.
That the machinery of fascism is coming down on us all.
It’s a big ask for many and cognitive dissonance will always be too high a hurdle for some of them. Like the rest of us though, they will still go down with the sinking depopulation ship, while remaining absolutely clueless to the bitter end.
Fresh from Marianna Spring.
Covid-19: How did a volunteer panel react when we showed them an anti-vax video?
By Marianna Spring
Specialist disinformation reporter, BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/blogs-trending-56047409
Motivation for the article appears to be a propaganda piece because mRNA injection uptake is lower than she and the BBC want. Yes joyrnalist ‘want’ there to be a good up take of mRNA.
The writing style is epically wooden and lifeless.
That the BBC has such a unit is disgraceful in itself
who the fuck is Marianna Spring and why are we supposed to be interested in her drivellings?
Good question. I believe those are questions she asks her self in quieter moments. She has quite a life ahead of her coming to terms with what she is.
Here she is in all her lovelyness.
we are interested in the same way that a kid would be interested in a dead fox they have found by the canal which they then poke with a stick.
She is the BBC fact checker .
Officially the Specialist disinformation reporter, Which i think means that she reports disinformation. Although that is what they all do at the BBC isnt it.
But she seems to have the ability and nouse of an 11 year old
They are all about 12 with as much nouse as an empty sack of shite.
Some 24-year-old who *somehow* got to be the BBC’s “specialist disinformation reporter”. There’s a lot of speculation going round that she’s really a security services plant.
“There’s a lot of speculation going round that she’s really a security services plant.”
How does that distinguish her from all the ‘frontline’ BBC ‘information warfare fighters’?
“Over the course of 27 minutes, the Ask the Experts video relentlessly introduces 33 people, many brandishing their credentials, often sitting in what look like medical consultation rooms. They confidently and calmly repeat similar messages…” So 33, mostly medical professionals have come to similar conclusions but the junior journalist continues”…although many of the claims are misleading or just plain untrue.” Why would anyone listen to the journalist?
There’s that number 33 again! But that’s just conspiratorial thinking on my part.
Indeed!
33 was on the building where whitty stood outside in his shirt to get called a liar by a young man, and same number on the microphone when a nurse collapsed after her dose. all just coincidence I am sure!!
33 yes 3 3
It’s for panorama this evening.
She should check her article for mis information.No one knows the medium to long term effects of this ‘vaccine’.That is undeniable fact.
Paranoiarama surely?
Not usually one for conspiracy theories but….
Just over one year ago, political populism was running wild. Donald Trump was in the White House, a socialist was running the UK opposition, Brexit was according to the leader of the Conservatives party, proudly going to “fuck business”. Even France had a nominally “alternative” president taken not from the two main parties.
Fast forward to today. Thanks to the most invasive and all encompassing propaganda campaign since Goebbles, the people are back in their houses, quite literally. A vaccine miracle cure was announced just days after Trump lost. The political mainstreams of both left and right hold sway.
Pharmaceutical companies stand to make trillions from rolling vaccines. Internet giants now own a broken high street.
And most crucially, we are all grateful to the leaders of our world who have delivered us from a virus which, if taken over a ten or twenty year period, would be quite hard to spot in terms of mortality rates.
As I say, conspiracy theories rarely hold together, but opportunism is another matter.
Revelation 18:21-24
21 Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “Thus with violence the great city Babylon shall be thrown down, and shall not be found anymore. 22 The sound of harpists, musicians, flutists, and trumpeters shall not be heard in you anymore. No craftsman of any craft shall be found in you anymore, and the sound of a millstone shall not be heard in you anymore. 23 The light of a lamp shall not shine in you anymore, and the voice of bridegroom and bride shall not be heard in you anymore. For your merchants were the great men of the earth, for by your sorcery all the nations were deceived. 24 And in her was found the blood of prophets and saints, and of all who were slain on the earth.”
The word sorcery there is pharmakeia in the Greek – the root word of the modern word pharmacy etc.
At the rate we are going, bring the rapture on I say.
I’m not a Christian – but I wonder whether this is “our turn” for the high jump. That being I’m 99% convinced there’s been at least one “highly advanced technologically literate” civilisation on Earth before now and they clearly did a pretty comprehensive job of destroying themselves and I think we’re now in the Crunch Time – where we see whether we are going to go the same way or “learn and move on”. I’m afraid I’m not optimistic personally, as it does feel like the lunatics are running the asylum. I hope I’m proved wrong.
Do you mean masker?
Check out the Hindu Kali Yuga, not to mention the good old Norse Ragnarok, all leading to 2025 ..30
Steve and Dave discuss the beasts of Revelation here:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/5AgJVU6U5gaU/
And Tech giants control free speech. Stick to the narrative or be removed. There is one correct point of view on politics and only one way to end the virus and the vaccine can only be described as one of the modern wonders of the world. All hail the jab!! The jab will free us!!
Where is Doland Turnip when you most need him? Out with some Swede,I’ll be bound, or possibly she will.
Guardian-
“Vaccine hesitancy in some health workers in England ‘may undermine rollout’
“Vaccination rates lowest among BAME staff, under-30s and those in the most deprived areas, analysis finds”
“..doctors had the lowest rate of vaccination, at only 57%”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/14/vaccine-rollout-caution-some-health-workers-england
Why would that be. Notice the Guardian doest have the grit to label Doctors and nurses ‘vaccine deniers’.
This is very uncomfortable for the guardian types. Poor people and ethnic minorities against vaccines?
But we are doing all this for you don’t you know?
That is why we virtue signal. We don’t wear a mask because we are scared, oh no. It’s for the great unwashed masses.
It is delicious isn’t it? Reminds me of when some Muslim parents started objecting to teaching kids about trans issues in primary schools. You just know that if it had been Christian parents Owen Jones et al would have been all over it like a long Covid rash.
yes – the “Owen Jones dilemma”.
A gay person is abused by a muslim because homosexuality is haram. eventually young Owens’s brain will explode trying to resolve this in a politically correct way
Even a little good news is welcome.
Why don’t the 43% of doctors collectively tell the world of their reservations?
Why don’t the say…. a fine point. I didn’t make myself because I am sick of saying NHS employees for the most part are spineless wretches. They have the power to end this crime yet are feeble in the face of their oath and duty.
because they’re self-serving cowards and charlatans, that’s why, and enablers of genocide. shame on them. well, they won’t escape, like the rest of us, they may avoid the vaccine, but they won’t avoid the gulag and the bullet to the head
I don ‘t think they are cowards at all – I think they are LOVING the worship and adulation and want it to continue for as long as possible
I do. But I have to ba careful.
It’s down to the fact the vast majority of people are pretty weak and spineless imo. Personally, I’ve learnt to stand up for myself and what I believe to be right – but I am not at all convinced that most people operate on a basis of “See Truth, say Truth” I’m afraid. I wish I were wrong on that…
If this vaccine was needed by everyone, the doctors would know. These figures tell us that many doctors think Covid is nowhere near as bad as the media says. The Guardian should just say that. We might buy it if they did.
Its too expensive!
Come on, Grauniad, out with it. Black people are wicked vaccine deniers and they all ought to be jailed, yay.
The next few months should be fun as 2 belief systems clash in their heads.
They will need a stronger dose of doublethink.
Or the new, mmmmm! What place frightens people? The Greek mutation. No not scary enough. How about the China mutation, nah we already did that. I got it, the Barbary mutation. Yes link with pirates and nobody has a fucking clue where it is!
The Barbary mutation is here and real Lock up your daughters (genius!!) The streets are not safe, only our brave nhs guardians can save you with our jab!!
Not a place, a person, the mutant Piffle variant will do it, spreads like the black death and kills with a unique combination of faux concern and pig ignorance.
“Rules for Radicals”
Hold your opponents to their own standards
Someone who was actually not racist, as opposed to someone concerned with signalling their virtue, would not go on and on and on generalising about the behaviour of a certain ethnic group with respect to vaccines.
Thanks for posting that. It’s super encouraging. The report itself for those who can’t face the Guardian article can be downloaded here
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.11.21251548v2
The report admits that ‘Most who will accept vaccination have already done so‘ so the 35.5% overall unvaccinated percentage isn’t going to be far off the final number.
And here’s a table of the experimental vaccine uptake based on the report
I think I just heard some Guardian readers and other normies blowing brain fuses earlier on, when I was leaning out the window, it’s so quiet here in our carbon neutral traffic free community, even the birds are behaving themselves and not tweeting, mindfull of those who are living with covid, its like the sound of snap crackle and pop, if you listen carefully enough.
All around…..
A few other points about Seychelles:
(1) They’ve now vaccinated 45k of their population, against a target of 70k.
(2) Only 3 people have died with Covid – despite their very low healthcare capacity.
(3) Around half of their reported cases are down to international travellers or caught within quarantine. (A few Jumbos carrying 300 pax each day has a big effect on their population stats)
(4) There’s an indoor + outdoor mask mandate – despite the 95% humidity. Heaven knows what that infection rate might otherwise have looked like… 50k per day? 100k per day? Did Neil Ferguson do a model for them?
You think that masks helped?
This post is incoherent. If they put ‘with covid’ on the death cert, then certainly nobody died of covid. Reported cases mean nothing. Infection rate? Well,you didn’t tell us what you thought it was, but that would also have been meaningless. If everyone has the virus and no-one is sick, that is the best possible situation to be in.
Just received …
I am not mad.
For anyone planning on living more than 5 years post vaccination, I recommend you wait a few years to see if ADE is a risk before taking any vaccine for coronaviruses. You risk turning what is very likely to be a mild illness at worst, to something potentially life threatening.
That is my assessment of the situation: I consider it highly rational because unlike most people in this country, I have not succumbed to an irrational fear of the virus and am able to make assessments based on statistical evidence rather than emotional responses.
I’m not afraid of ‘the virus’ at all – there is no virus, there are just usual colds and flu. I am VERY afraid of this injection which the regime is so desperate for us all to have, which I believe is a genocide.
Me neither.
I’m mad in the way Peter Finch was mad in The Network, and that scene pops into my mind a bit these days:
So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell: ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’
I will be declining the vaccine when offered although if people want to take it then that’s up to them.
However I disapprove strongly about what seems like a push to get children vaccinated. I believe AstraZeneca/Oxford are preparing to test the vaccine on young children.
I can understand why. It must irk Pharmaceutical companies no end that a large group of the population, for whom the virus is virtually no threat at all, have thus far escaped their clutches.
Who in their right mind would even consider vaccinating children for this?
how many children under the age of 16 died of covids last year? About 7. three of them were new borns or premature and the others had serious health issues.
I didn’t fact check this number it might be 14 or it might be 4. What ever it is it’s a freeking tiny number.
Such a scam. Still at least there will be less people in the world, in the next twenty years. Which is I am sure the whole point of it.
Couldn’t agree more re the plan to test the vax on innocent children – will the littlies aged 6 or thereabouts be able to give anything even remotely close to informed consent to that? will their parents consent for them? I was HORRIFIED when I saw that – is there no end to the evil of these companies?? but then you are missing out on a WHOLE stream of revenue if you don’t test it on children as well – why would you want to miss out on all those lovely profits. And, after all, it is being “tested” on everyone who currently receives it, quite literally as they are forming part of the overall dataset on the vaccinations.
I think the time has long been overdue when people get off their devices and instead get on their feet and defy the restrictions and start to protest against all of this. Start being vocal in a public place. What can the police do? they can’t arrest everyone or police everyone.
This was Dr. Sucharit Bhakdis response when asked if he would take it…
Posted last night – thorough, clear and concise article, one to share.
__
Is it all a lie? – Stay at Home > Protect the NHS > 100K Deaths – An analysis of ONS and NHS data
https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/02/06/protect-nhs-100k-deaths/
But what would you do if you found out you had given up a year of your life due to a big fat lie? What would you do if you found out you’ve been staying at home to protect an NHS that has been at an all time low capacity compared to the last five years? What would you do if you found out there haven’t actually been 100,000 deaths due to Covid-19 but instead a campaign of fear that has manipulated data to trick you into thinking there have been thousands of Covid deaths per day?
Well ‘The Daily Expose’ investigated, and we suggest you fasten your seat-belts because this is what we found…
There has been a steady stream of these solid articles from Daily Expose in the last few days.
True, there are links to some of the other gteat articles at the foot of the article above. Worth exploring.
Fantastic Article. Thank You!
Will try to persuade my husband to read it today, before he goes ahead and books his Experimental Vaccine appointment 😪
COVID-19: First guests from high-risk countries due to check into quarantine hotels today
http://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-first-guests-from-high-risk-countries-due-to-check-into-quarantine-hotels-today-12218607
I love the use of the term ”guests”. What a way to treat a “guest” – imprison them for two weeks at their own expense!
Unproven Lepers, prisoners, inmates, meat hooked pounds of flesh providers, yes guests is the wrong term.
The guests at Auschwitz, the guests at Dachau…
Even actual prisoners are not required to pay for their own imprisonment!
I forget what tyranny it was that used to charge prisoners families,for the bullet that killed them
In the past they sometimes were in England, if they did not pay their conditions were worse and friends or relatives were not allowed to bring them food or clothes. The money expected by the gaoler was called “garnish”.
warm smell of colitis …
Wasn’t ‘guests’ a term used by Saddam for his hostages.
Even POWs are not usually expected to pay for their own accommodation.
Creative.
“The Telegraph highlights the prospect that Grandparents will allowed to hug their grandchildren.”
FOR FUCK’S SAKE
All of us who post here know that “hugging” has NEVER been prohibited, but imagine people hovering on the border of scepticism coming here for the first time reading this shit
And the use of the word “allowed” without any comment around it just makes my blood boil
At this stage I think we’d be better off without the daily update, just pick a “best of” anti lockdown articles, videos, graphs and links to other sites and maybe have a tiny section for “news”
Most of the comments on this article in the DT derisory.
Well said.
Or get someone to offer Jonathan Barr the job at the Daily Telegraph he so obviously craves. His updates are consistently woeful.
Yes he is a vax loving dick. When I see its him I go straight to btl.
I have always been sceptical about how they draw up red list countries. So many of the countries on the list have a lower case rates than the UK. Feel there little understanding where some of these places are and their populations etc. It seems it has been very much like pinning the tail on the donkey or in the case of the Nigerian borders, drawn up by a diplomats’s wife on the tablecloth after a dinner party. Yes that’s true. So many boundaries drawn up in the past with a little understanding!
That Red List looks racist to me. Just saying…..
I expect they just threw darts at a map of the world. this is the level of thoughtful analysis we’ve come to expect of them.
So now the idiots at SAGE are ‘modelling’ a summer spike for the…..flu. In. the. Summer. Really. Last summer more people died of choking than Rona. We need to start a petition and movement to defund and jail, SAGE.
So why would you need modelling when you have actual data from last summer? And secondly every single one of your models has been 10 times the actual numbers of deaths so why are they even listening to you? If every day the weather forecast said it was going to rain and we ended up with heavy snow after a couple of days they would be called out and change demanded because of the chaos this would cause. But these fucking idiots keep on bringing out incorrect data and the arsehats in the msm just publish it unchallenged?
Another day, another article about the mystery of the falling “cases” in a country with no lockdowns.
Jesus, every single infectious disease in the history of infectious diseases has naturally spread and then subsided. Every single one. Naturally.
And yet we carry on pretending to. be mystified when this coronavirus does exactly the same thing?
Perhaps the human species deserves all the misery it gets for its wilful stupidity.
👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻
bravo!
I wonder if Ferguson will ever even consider putting seasonality in his model?
Or even better putting his head in Noose.
Only way is to dangle a noose over Al Johnson’s ringpiece
It’s horribly ironic that the government and other bodies who say they are so keen on these vaccines have, with a combination of bad intention and incompetence, distorted the way information on covid “cases” and “deaths” is gathered and presented so badly that any meaningful analysis of the efficacy is impossible
Almost as if they don’t really care
… as if …
Pantsdown gives them all the numbers they need.
Right out of a part if his body that is conveniently accessible.
Where are the dead from the vaxx’s in any analysis? Or those injured.
Never see an article ATL on this.
Indeed true, but I think it’s even worse that the govt couldn’t produce a plausible case for the vaccine having done any good, because any potential good is hidden in the mess that is PCR testing and misattribution of deaths
Talk in papers today about UK, Austrailian and Canadian armed forces to perhaps combine into one of the worlds largest armed forces. To fight who? The Roman empire draughted different nationalities to police foreign regions of their empire.
Might UK be policed by Canadian peace keepers, etc.? Or are we really going to see war with China Eurasia after the old bat soup heated tensions in globalist skulls.
Silly communist Michie in her behavioural science paper wrote that convid is tge gravest threat to humanity since WW2. How transparently stupid can one ‘expert’ be?
We have always been at war with East Asia.
The main threats today: 1-Communism (internal, Global institutions, Financial groups) and 2-Muslim Jihad both internal and external. 3-China, though it is difficult to see how bought for stooges like Bidentard, Justina Turdope or Bozo would fight China on anything. The Chinese could yacht over to Taiwan and subdue it and there would not be a reaction nor fake news mention.
Many of our enemies are within. We apparently love to import them.
The Canadian military does not exist. There are more officers in the Canada Revenue Agency. I doubt the Cdns could take a firehall in Detroit. Ergo useless alliance. And what is NATO all about me asks?
“Many of our enemies are within. We apparently love to import them.”
The crime of mass immigration.
In the runup to the explosion of violent islamist resistance to US power and interference in their societies, we imported muslims in sufficient numbers that we had the material for a significant internal security problem, requiring police state measures including state control of speech and education.
In the runup to a potential long term direct confrontation with China over its rise to challenge US power globally, we are importing Chinese people in sufficient numbers to create such an internal security problem again for the future.
It’s almost as though these people are clever enough to plan decades ahead to justify their police state measures.
[I don’t believe that’s the case, by the way. The people pushing mass immigration are the same as they’ve always been – leftists for ideological motives, in unholy alliance with big business for cheap labour and undercutting of indigenous labour power. At most there might be the odd security apparatchik noting the usefulness of these processes and removing obstacles here and there.]
To fight who? – The French of course! That’s what we do. 🙂
And Michie would know this because? She is not a scientist.
She isn’t stupid; she’s evil.
Marx got the idea of the dialectic from Hegel. Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis and the synthesis becomes the new thesis and the process begins anew. For Marx, the thesis was the capitalist system and the antithesis was the people. The synthesis was to be a decent, people-led society which he called communism. What’s interesting today is that the capitalist thesis has met itself as the antithesis and the synthesis is neoliberalism. The people appear nowhere in this analysis and, as it goes on, the rich will continue to clash with each other while the people fall off the planet’s edge. Karl would certainly have a lot to write about, were he alive today. I wonder if he would consider LS bloggers to be the true antithesis?
“I wonder if he would consider LS bloggers to be the true antithesis?”
Nope, to much neolib.
How many people have been lifted out of poverty by communism? Where did C-19 come from?
Do you mean President Xi’s definition or Karl Marx’s? Later in life, after Marx had read many things attributed to him, he wrote “It is clear that, whatever I may be, I am most certainly not a Marxist!”
“How many people have been lifted out of poverty by communism?“
None, obviously, because “communism” is a rather silly fantasy.
On the other hand, many, many millions have been executed or killed by attempts to achieve communism.
How many people have been impoverished by capitalism?
You’d have to define capitalism. Unlike communism it isn’t really an ideology whose adherents can brainwash others, it’s more just the situation (for good or ill) that arises naturally when property rights are respected.
Aside from their injudicious use of the word “cases”, this isn’t a bad summary page:
https://www.hartgroup.org/covid-19-bulletin-for-mps/
This is worth reading in full: https://www.hartgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/HART-Mutants-and-Borders.pdf
“Our Response HART Scientific Advisors believe that closing international borders will not stop new mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus circulating in the UK population. It is a futile endeavour with no scientific basis. Mutant variants, emerging overseas or domestically, are an inevitable biological reality once a virus is in the population.”
One of the replies to their posting on Twitter gives an interesting insight into how a lot of people form their opinions:
“The fact that people who support them retweet Ivor tells you all you need to know really.”
I presume it’s a reference to Ivor Cummins, who the Tweeter presumably thinks and know others will think is “beyond the pale”. So there’s an overlap between Cummins “followers” and Hartgroup followers means that everything Hartgroup say can be disregarded without further argument or examination, for ever more. Taken to its logical conclusion you’d never listen to any argument from anyone about anything because you’ll always be able to find a connection between that person and some who is Literally Hitler
Yes indeed. Hitler was a vegetarian. Who would argue that that fatally discredits vegetarianism??
*hand up*
Me. I would. Every vegetarian I have ever met has been utterly insufferable.
Like vegans, militant eejits brainwashed by eating tofu.
Every vegan would happily feed you into the grinder if they thought it would protect Mother Gaia
Just referencing the Guardian article in the links ATL about Nepal. Got an Uber on Saturday (went to my Mum’s, one of my brothers and sister went over too. Had a drunken sleepover. We are all adults in our 30’s, 40’s and 50’s but extremely immature).
The driver was Nepalese. We had a long chat about the low death figures in Nepal – he said the country was poor, the health system was shit and therefore there were no really old people to speak of. So it’s not really rocket science is it.
Also, they’re wirey and fit, and have genes that enable to deal with altitude and thus low oxygen levels.
Like this chap who found being a Gurkha and in SBS not quite exciting enough. Took the time to rescue other climbers who had been left for dead at altitude while breaking climbing records. https://www.forces.net/services/gurkhas/aim-high-gurkha-wants-break-mountaneering-record
Yep, amazing chap. To see the Nepalese carriers with their loads on the mountain trails is to understand straight away how fit they are, and why covid is unlikely to bother them.
Was it mentioned last year by an American doctor that the most serious Covid 19 symptoms were like altitude sickness?
Indeed it was – which made me think that people or races used to or comfortable with working at altitude may well be naturally resistant to the worst effects of covid.
I’m in an area with high rates of Covid and a huge Nepalese population. Would be interesting to see if rates were low within their community. Most of them seem to be working in supermarkets or the test centres so it’s not like they’ve shut themselves off from the rest of us unclean people.
There is probably some interesting insights to be had here – if anyone could get hold of the data to dig it out.
I wonder if our ‘100k deaths’ are just ‘100k people saved over recent years by the flu jab’ and that we just built up a load of dry tinder. 2020 death rates were the highest since 2008 and were higher every year previously
Quite a lot of wiry oldie Gurkha veterans worthy of support. https://www.gwt.org.uk/
https://www.independent.ie/business/farming/news/world-news/coronavirus-strain-found-in-polish-mink-can-pass-to-humans-government-says-40092388.html
And so it continues. A new variant – the Polish Mink.
Get your Polish mink here – doubles up as a handy duster!
And nothing whatsoever to do with the Polish kickback to the government measures. God these people are so fucking predictable.
The effect of face masks on CO2 concentrations. https://aaqr.org/articles/aaqr-20-07-covid-0403.pdf The use of face masks is among the measures taken to prevent person-to-person transmission of the virus (SARS-CoV-2) responsible for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Lately, concern was expressed about the possibility that carbon dioxide could build up in the mask over time, causing medical issues related to the respiratory system. In this study, the carbon dioxide concentration in the breathing zone was measured while wearing a surgical mask, a KN95 and a cloth mask. For the surgical mask, the concentration was determined under different conditions (office work, slow walking, and fast walking). Measurements were made using a modified indoor air quality meter equipped with a nondispersive infrared (NDIR) CO2 sensor. Detected carbon dioxide concentrations ranged from 2150 ± 192 to 2875 ± 323 ppm. The concentrations of carbon dioxide while not wearing a face mask varied from 500–900 ppm. (my emphasis), Doing office work and standing still on the treadmill each resulted in carbon dioxide concentrations of around 2200 ppm. A small increase could be observed when walking at a speed of 3 km h–1 (leisurely walking pace). Walking at a speed of 5 km h–1 , which corresponds to medium… Read more »
What is this and why have you posted it?
It is a research paper on the effect of mask wearing on the level of CO2 in inhaled air. I have posted it because it supports the argument against mask wearing by underlining one of the consequential harms.
And very useful , not least because it has over 20 other references which will lead to further literature . Not all the references agree with the abstract above , but that is the nature of scientific debate . I can understand that some people are angry that the subject is raised , but most of us here will appreciate this
information .
What is bad for rabbits is probably bad for humans.
https://bakerstreetrising.home.blog/2021/02/15/covax-through-the-looking-glass-part-4/
In an experiment in 2017, New Zealand white rabbits were inoculated with a zoonotic coronavirus – MERS-Cov. The rabbits became sick and developed antibodies, the measure of success for a vaccine. With most viral illnesses, once you recover, you won’t contract the illness again. However, the antibodies developed by these rabbits were a different sort to those that normally block infection – known as neutralizing anti-bodies. These antibodies were what is known as non-neutralizing or binding antibodies. When the rabbits encountered the MERS a second time, the binding antibodies actually facilitated the entry of the virus into the cells and they became even more severely ill than previously.
As the authors noted:“In fact, reinfection resulted in enhanced pulmonary inflammation, without an associated increase in viral RNA titers,(I think this means ‘concentration’ – Basileus)”