Further Reading
‘Dissent in a time of Covid‘ by Brendan O’Neill, Spiked, March 23rd 2020
‘We Need the Habits of a Free Mind to Think Through This Crisis – Together‘ by Pamela Paresky, Arc Digital, March 28th 2020
‘I was “cancelled” for criticising the lockdown – but now more than ever we must hold the government to account‘ by Toby Young, The Telegraph, April 3rd 2020
‘Coronavirus: Ofcom formally probes David Icke TV interview‘, BBC News, April 9th 2020
‘Confessions of a COVID-19 truther‘ by Freddy Gray, The Spectator, April 11th 2020
‘Coronavirus lockdown: German lawyer detained for opposition‘ by Alex Thomson, UKColumn, April 14th 2020
‘The corona conspiracies are unhinged – but is denouncing people all that helpful?’ by Oliver Wiseman, CapX, April 15th 2020
‘Daniel Hannan: The abuse, outrage and viciousness is hurled overwhelmingly at those of us who back ending the lockdown‘ by Daniel Hannan, ConservativeHome, April 15th 2020
‘I have herd immunity‘ by Lionel Shriver, The Spectator, April 18th 2020
‘Covid19: criminalising & pathologising dissent‘ by Catte Black, off-guardian.org, April 16th 2020
‘Letter to Ofcom Following its Decision to Sanction ITV and London Live‘, Free Speech Union, April 24th 2020
‘Why Did YouTube Remove The Doctors’ Briefing?‘ by Rod Dreher, The American Conservative, April 26th 2020
‘Lockdown Critics May Have Some Valid Points‘ by Joe Nocera, Bloomberg Opinion, April 30th 2020
‘From Fahrenheit 451 to “censortech”‘ by Izabella Kaminska, Financial Times, May 12th 2020
Further Viewing
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I’m curious to know – who is checking the mathematical validity of the Imperial College model? As someone trained in science and bioengineering myself, it seems odd to me that governments blindly rely on these sorts of assertions without creating cross-disciplinary work groups to produce models that take all parameters into account. Biological systems don’t act according to the results of stochastic modelling. We already know that the vulnerable are largely those with underlying health conditions – COPD, heart disease, cancer, diabetes and even old age, if this can be classified as a ‘disease’. The young and the healthy, languishing at home and watching their futures being destroyed by collapsing economies, find this – if anything – to be an inconvenient flu-like illness of short duration. Since we know this, why are we isolating whole populations? Why not ask the vulnerable rigorously to self-isolate and be cared for by the community to protect them from the disease? Another advantage of doing this would be that the COVID -19 virus would then sweep through a population that could cope with infection and thus bring about the herd immunity that we need if we are not to experience this sort of thing… Read more »
“[W]ho is checking the mathematical validity” – reminds me of Yanis Varoufakis’ book a bojut negotiating with the EU, “Adults in the Room”. When he was finally allowed to see the model of the Greek economy that the EU were using, he found that it did not reduce consumption as VAT was increased.
It seems to me that there are some gaping knowledge holes in the team advising the Govt. When Matt Hancock was challenged about the purported 150,000 expected “lockdown deaths” he replied that they didn’t form “part of the analysis”. I am really very concerned that the policy the Govt is pursuing is not science based. It certainly isn’t looking at all at the wider picture. The experts seem locked into their own echo chamber. I don’t know if they aren’t keeping up with emerging science or are just ignoring it. Surely with the lower IFRs emerging from multiple studies, Ferguson should be updating his model? Models should be dynamic and reflect the changing landscape they are modelling. I’ve seen no evidence that is happening at all. The view and the direction being followed seems incredibly blinkered. Apart from not incorporating economic and social costs into the picture, they don’t appear to have consulted immunologists. If they had, how could they be surprised that the tests they purchased would not find antibodies in the blood of those recovered with young, vigorous immune systems – how could no-one have told them that antibodies aren’t there because they weren’t needed! Normally, evolutionary pressure… Read more »
WSJ: Coronavirus Lessons From the Asteroid That Didn’t Hit Earth
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-lessons-from-the-asteroid-that-didnt-hit-earth-11585780465
Scary projections based on faulty data can put policy makers under pressure to adopt draconian measures.
By Benny Peiser and Andrew Montford on 1st April 2020 6:34 pm ET:
Tweet from Prof Neil Ferguson on 9:13pm 22 Mar 2020
https://twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1241835454707699713
the Bernician has a court case against ferguson whitty hancock and vallance..alleging fraud and crimes against humanity
What more could we do to end the lockdown?
Just tried to sign the petition by Robert Kok mentioned above, only to find it is being ‘checked’ and therefore unavailable for a ‘few days’. Anyone know if this is normal?
I tried too and found the same – cynically it is easy to imagine why the “checking” is necessary.
Brian, I also tried to sign the petition yesterday and failed for the same reason. I don’t think you can call a questioning attitude cynical – are ALL scientists cynical? Including those at imperial College? Surely not.
Hi David, would you please do the same with our Petition and see if you can sign it? We started a Petition against Lockdown over a month ago. Despite having contacts in 3 countries and responses from 3 others, the Petition has been blocked and censored at every turn. I have the stats to show how many times it has been shared but apparently Facebook blocks it. YouTube has already ‘ghost censored’ me for posting it, and I’m running out of options of how to publish it further. Any ideas and your support would be great.
https://www.change.org/IPAL-Petition-Against-Lockdown
Please Sign and Share!
I can only suspect that there is a suppression on counter opinion, but can think of no way to prove it as a single citizen not employed in the media. There has definitely been a downshift in tone and levels of vigorous questioning by journos at the daily briefing – even the usually robust Robert Peston seems to have backed down. Is this because they have simply tired of failing to extract an answer, or been pressured in some way, or a bit of both ? There must be urgent change in the way the situation is being reported if the fear across the masses,that has been unncessarily created, is to be dispelled. Numerour articles in the Telegraph online report this fear today, Professor Richard Sullivan, co-director of the conflict and health research group at King’s College, London is reported as saying : “I think the fear out there is extraordinary. Now, it’s our view that the fear is out of all proportion to the threat and the risk. There’s been a real perspective loss here. “I keep saying to people we have as many if not more people dying of pneumonia and loads of other conditions. I think life… Read more »
Regarding the suppression of sceptical voices: We started a Petition against Lockdown over a month ago. Despite having contacts in 3 countries and responses from 3 others, the Petition has been blocked and censored at every turn.
I’m hoping that posting here will help:
https://www.change.org/IPAL-Petition-Against-Lockdown
Please Sign and Share!
Visit our website: http://www.ipalnow.com
it wont censoring here very bad
Having watched Newsnight last night – 07.05.2020 – what struck me was the lack of acknowledgement that the BBC has sat on its hands in scrutinizing government policy for nearlty two months. I must admit to not having watched all the Newsnight interviews over the last two months however it has been exceptionally rare to find dissenting voices on the efficacy of locking down a nation. Professor Giesecke being a notable example. The reporter last night said she was sceptical at the time of the Ferguson paper on the 16th of March. If that is the case why did she not immediately raise her concerns at the time? And if she did, why were her concernes not aired on Newsnight? Surely it would have been helpful to have had a debate at the time about the draconian mesures being considered. Suddenly last night it seemed the dam had burst and various sceptical scientists were suddenly everywhere to be found. It seems the BBC wasn’t really looking hard enough, if at all. Was this just stupidity or mass self censorship? After the horse has bolted the BBC attempts to do the job it should have been doing all along and provide… Read more »
The BBC has completely toed the lockdown line, only having a dig at indivduals with regard to lack of PPE supplies and adequate testing. There has been no mention about what’s happening in Sweden because that would be to contradict the UK government and, as such, I view that as news censorship. Unfortunately the BBC never apologize; anyone who has tried to send the critical voice of reason to their weekly Newswatch programme will know they simply invite a BBC spokesperson to justify their original output, effectively adding insult to injury. Thankfully the internet and more informed journalists make wider views available to those who seek to question the situation, but sadly the majority of the population are stuck regurgitating the mantra of project fear.
The standard scientific approach is to test a hypothesis by designing a method, performing an experiment, assessing the results and finally concluding with a long discussion as to the relevance of findings with previous research. It is of course acceptable to review other papers but this is fraught with errors if the original publications were of dubious quality or non validated by peer group review. The approach of the governments worldwide is frequently described as being led by the science. Many of the individuals quoted are in their own field preeminent however this does not mean infallible or appropriate. In the absent of new experimental data the conclusions that any group makes, on what is essentially a review of publications should be subject to peer group review itself. An example is the use of masks. There are a number of reviews including a Cochrane publication none of which validate the public use of masks in Covid-19. The Sky news reporter touched his mask on camera but seems to have escaped criticism because the media and public are convinced of their effectiveness. If mask are capable of a specific action then that needs to be demonstrated scientifically but to date this… Read more »
yes i just commented here and it was taken off.. only truth was on there about the fake pandemic..