Latest News
Three Quarters of a Million Jobs Lost During Lockdown
According to the Office for National Statistics, UK payrolls fell 2.5% from March to July of this year, amounting to the loss of 730,000 jobs. The Telegraph has more.
Meanwhile, the number of people claiming benefits climbed to 2.7m in July, up 116.8% since March.
The ONS also found that nominal pay growth – unadjusted for inflation – from April to June was negative for the first time since records began in 2001, weighed down by lower bonuses and furloughed workers on reduced earnings.
However, the official unemployment rate is not rising because to be counted among the unemployed, workers need to be actively looking for a new job, which many have decided not to do yet, the ONS said.
Jonathan Athow of the ONS said there was also a large number of people who said they were working no hours and getting no pay.
“The falls in employment are greatest among the youngest and oldest workers, along with those in lower-skilled jobs,” he added. “Vacancies numbers began to recover in July, especially in small businesses and sectors such as hospitality, but demand for workers remains depressed.”
What Accounts for the UK’s Unusually High Death Toll?
There’s an interesting blog post by Jason Oke and Carl Heneghan on the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine website, speculating as to what could account for the UK’s high Covid death toll over the past three weeks. They note that the UK is an outlier when compared to every other European country.
Analysing deaths since mid-July the UK is a clear outlier with a Case Fatality Rate (CFR) of 6.57. Every other European country has a CFR for this period less than three, and Spain is as low as 0.15.
Spain has reported over 60,000 cases, but only 94 deaths; Germany has 21,000 cases compared to the UK’s 26,500 cases but reports 93% fewer deaths (129 versus 1,744), and Russia has nearly ten times as many cases as the UK but only twice the deaths.
The difference in the UK is so stark that the primary explanation has to be in the current recording and reporting of deaths. We are expecting the UK numbers to be revised this week to bring them, somewhat, in line with the rest of Europe.
Meanwhile, the Telegraph is reporting that the official daily death toll could be scrapped, following an investigation into the reporting anomalies flagged up by Yoon Loke and Carl Heneghan in a CBEM blog post three weeks ago.
Stop Press: Matt Hancock’s crack army of contract tracers are sitting on their hands doing nothing, according to report done by Independent SAGE. The group said the army of up to 25,000 staff had reached 51,524 close contacts of people who’ve tested positive for coronavirus between the end of May and the end of July. That amounts, on average, to two successful contacts per employee across the period. The Telegraph has more:
The criticism chimes with comments from staff employed by NHS Test and Trace which have emerged since its launch at the end of May.
One, a trained clinician, said the job was akin to being “paid to watch Netflix”. Others spoke of being members of a WhatsApp group called the Mouse Movers Club, which they use to remind each other to move their computer mouse every 15 minutes to avoid being locked out of the system.
The latest “fix” of this fiasco is to turn over responsibility for contact tracing to local authorities. What could possibly go wrong?
Does PHE’s New Study Show Schools Are Safe to Re-Open or Not?
The Sunday Times published a leaked report by Public Health England (PHE) two days ago that purportedly shows there is little or no evidence that the virus is transmitted in schools. About 20,000 pupils and teachers in 100 schools across England were tested as part of the study to monitor the spread of the disease up to the end of the summer term.
According to a Professor Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and a member of SAGE: “A new study that has been done in UK schools confirms there is very little evidence that the virus is transmitted in schools. This is some of the largest data you will find on schools anywhere. Britain has done very well in terms of thinking of collecting data in schools.”
However, the Times has run a story on its front page today saying its sister paper’s summary of the forthcoming report is inaccurate. According to the Times, PHE has studied those aged 10 and under and those over 10 and while there’s little evidence that the first group spreads the virus, the second group doesn’t fare so well.
Secondary school pupils are likely to transmit coronavirus as easily as adults, according to official research used by ministers to argue that it is safe for all children to return to class next month.
Scientists at Public Health England (PHE) believe that tougher rules are likely to be needed for older children, despite finding that primary pupils do not seem to pass the virus to each other.
Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, said yesterday that a study being conducted by PHE of thousands of pupils who returned to schools in June showed that there was little risk in government plans for all children to be back in the classroom for the new academic year next month.
However, the Times understands that researchers working on the study are unhappy with the way ministers have used the findings, which have not been fully analysed. The preliminary results do suggest that primary schools pose little danger, with only six positive tests out of 9,000 tested so far. These cases were not linked to each other and contact tracing suggested that the children had caught the virus from their parents or other carers outside school.
It’s impossible to assess this data without seeing it, but the evidence from European countries that have re-opened schools – including secondary schools – is that doing so has had no discernible impact on the spread of the virus (see graphic above).
Is Boris worried that the PHE data will be used by the teaching unions to justify continuing to obstruct the Government’s attempts to re-open schools next month? Apparently so, because according to the Telegraph he has asked Chris Whitty to carry out a review of the evidence on the transmission of coronavirus in educational settings in an attempt to show schools are safe to re-open.
Professor Chris Whitty is being asked to carry out a rapid evaluation of the research on schools in order to provide parents with more reassurance before the new term starts next month.
One study, to be published later this week, will show that, despite 60 clusters and outbreaks in schools and nurseries during June and July, not a single child has been hospitalised.
Preliminary results from a larger study by Public Health England (PHE) next week are expected to confirm that there is little evidence that the virus is transmitted in schools.
Vicstapo Officer Chokes Woman For Not Wearing Mask
There have been a number of horrific videos in the past 24 hours of police in Melbourne brutally assaulting young women for not wearing masks. Some people naively clung to the hope that the police in Victoria wouldn’t enforce the illiberal policies of state premier Daniel Andrews, known locally as Kim-Jong Dan. But history suggests that if authoritarian, power-crazed leaders ask the police to force people to comply with their loony, draconian diktats they are more than happy to do so. Awful. (If you have the stomach for it, there’s another video here.)
Postcard From Stockholm
A reader has emailed to let me know about his experience holidaying in Sweden.
I wanted to get in touch with you to tell you about my recent short break to Stockholm, it made a wonderful change from old Blighty.
Stockholm was a marvel to behold – upon arriving we instantly felt transported into another world. It all felt very normal with life carrying on as I remember it. There are some modest precautions in place with sanitiser available (but never forced) and some extent of social distancing. There isn’t a hint of the infantilism we see at home – no markings on the floor, no barked announcements, no yellow and black hazard tape marking social distancing and no marshals outside shops. The population are treated as adults and trusted to behave accordingly. There were plenty of people out and about with many office workers out buying lunch, friends meeting up, business meetings taking place in cafes and restaurants and lots of Swedes on staycations.
One thing I was highly skeptical about has been our media coverage of Anders Tegnell. According to our media, the Swedes all think he’s a raving lunatic. I spoke to about 30 Swedes at our hotel who all agreed with his strategy and felt that he’d made the right choices for Sweden. They were all happy with his leadership and felt he was the right man for the job. This “anger” as I believe the BBC described the feeling towards Tegnell in Sweden is simply non-existent, indeed, we walked past a bakery in Gamla Stan which had named a cake after him!
All in all, it was a lovely break in a beautiful city with wonderful food, hospitable people and endless things to do. I’d highly recommend a holiday in Stockholm to anyone who wants a break from this tyrannical pantomime our country has become. If anyone needs additional persuasion – buffet breakfasts are still very much the order of the day in Sweden!
Postcards From Around England
Several readers have been in touch to tell me about their staycation experiences. Nearly all were positive.
First, a postcard from the North East.
I’ve just returned home from a few days in the North East, exploring the coastline north between Tynemouth and Bamburgh.
Local families and holidaymakers were enjoying the good weather and the beaches, which were not crowded.
In the streets people were easily able to keep a sensible distance without obsessive two metre paranoia. Dinner in two restaurants was relaxed and pretty normal. Tables were well spaced and sanitiser available. Staff wore no face coverings and there was no pressure on customers to provide contact details.
It was uplifting to see groups of teenagers enjoying swimming, diving, and paddle boarding and two Geordie lasses sitting on a rock with their feet in a rock pool singing their hearts out.
And here’s another happy camper just back from Wales.
We’ve just been to Pembrokeshire for a short family break and the absence of masks and people crab-stepping around one another was a wonderful relief, the most ’normal’ we’ve felt for months.
Roads, beaches, shops and restaurants were busy and the atmosphere generally very relaxed. Indeed, we only had one restaurant stipulate that masks were to be worn on entering the building, which could then be removed at the table. Needless to say, we ate elsewhere.
Has Northern Ireland Created a New Criminal Offence by Accident?
An eagle-eyed reader has spotted that the Northern Ireland Executive may have created a new, wide-ranging criminal offence by accident in its rush to push through new regulations making the wearing of face coverings in shops compulsory.
I believe that the Northern Irish Department of Health has accidentally created a criminal offence, using essentially the same regulation-making power which has been used in England to enforce the shutdown and wearing of face coverings.
Yesterday, the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Wearing of Face Coverings) (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2020 (SR 2020 No. 164) came into effect. They amend the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Wearing of Face Coverings) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2020 (SR 2020 No. 151).
The intended purpose of the Regulations is to make it an offence to fail without reasonable excuse to wear a face covering in a relevant place (i.e. shops, etc.)
They do this by providing, in regulation 4A(1), “A person shall not, without reasonable excuse, enter or remain within a relevant place without wearing a face covering.”
Regulation 7(1) then provides, “A person who, without reasonable excuse, contravenes a requirement in regulation 4 or 4A commits an offence.”
However, paragraph (3) of regulation 4A states: “A person shall temporarily remove a face covering when requested to do so for identification purposes by a relevant person, a person responsible for a relevant place or an employee of that person acting in the course of their employment.”
This is a requirement – the use of the word “shall” is unequivocal and identical to the use of the word in paragraph (1). Therefore, in my view, regulation 7(1) makes it an offence to fail to comply with it.
In other words, the Regulations (apparently accidentally) mean that, if a person tries to buy a 6 pack of beer and is asked to remove his face covering so that the shop assistant can check his ID, he commits a criminal offence if he refuses to do so. There is not even a “reasonable excuse” exception, as there is with regulation 4A(1).
Further evidence is that regulation 5, which gives some examples of reasonable excuses not to wear a face covering, gives the following as such an example: “where a person responsible for a relevant place or an employee of that person acting in the course of their employment, has asked that the face covering be removed for identification purposes.”
It appears that this is a mistake, but it appears nonetheless that sloppy drafting has meant that a new, wide-ranging criminal offence has been created by accident and is currently in force in Northern Ireland.
I have brought this to the attention of Francis Hoar, who is involved with Simon Dolan’s judicial review of some of the UK Government’s “health protection” regulations, and he agrees with me about my interpretation of the apparent effect of the Regulations.
Sounds like my correspondent should bring a Judicial Review. If he decides to do that, I’ll link to the crowdfunder here.
New Zealand Prime Minister Orders Second Lockdown
A reader in New Zealand has been in touch to let me know that Jacinda Arden has decided to impose a second lockdown.
It pains me to write this, but Queen Covid – she of the illustrious teeth, who shall be revered across the world as an example of leadership – has just announced Auckland will be going back into Level 3 restrictions tomorrow (schools closed, etc.), and the rest of NZ into Level 2.
Yep, we have cases! All four of them. Who’d have predicted that maintaining pristine isolation of NZ from the rest of the world couldn’t be maintained forever? Announced at 9pm tonight and enacted by midday tomorrow. Precisely and exactly as bizarre and arbitrary as the recent flip-flops in UK policy.
My correspondent isn’t exaggerating when he says this has been prompted by four new cases. Not deaths, cases, the country’s first in 102 days. And remember Jacinda Arden is held up by woke nincompoops as an example of how female leaders have managed the coronavirus crisis more effectively than male leaders! FOUR NEW CASES!
The second lockdown should give added urgency to the one-day conference organised by Plan B, a group of lockdown sceptics in New Zealand. It has lined up a stellar array of speakers, including Oxford’s Professor Sunetra Gupta and Standford’s Professor Jay Battacharya. It’s scheduled to be broadcast live from the NZ Parliament on August 17th. If you’d like a free ticket, you can RSVP here, although they may all be gone by now.
Round-Up
- ‘Parents should listen to Trump, not the teachers’ union boss‘ – Strident piece by the redoubtable Kathy Gyngell in the Conservative Woman
- ‘Pasteurisation of the pub‘ – Niall McCrae laments the neutering of pubs in the Critic
- ‘Invasion of the New Normals‘ – CJ Hopkins in Off-Guardian fears the emergence of a new totalitarian society
- ‘A message from your Prime Minister‘ – Amusing parody by Peter Lloyd in the Conservative Woman
- ‘A letter to Sir David King‘ – John Church writes a critical letter to Sir David King, lockdown enthusiast and chair of the “Independent SAGE” for Hector Drummond Magazine
- ‘Life has become the avoidance of death‘ – Good piece in the Critic by David Sergeant
- ‘The Lockdown Lobotomy‘ – Patrick Fagan on how we’ve allowed ourselves to be lobotomised by Project Fear Mark 2
- ‘Renowned European scientist: COVID-19 was engineered in China lab, effective vaccine “unlikely”‘ – Professor Giuseppe Tritto, an Italian expert in biotechnology and nanotechnology, says that the China Virus definitely wasn’t a freak of nature that happened to cross the species barrier from bat to man
- ‘High streets in ‘red wall’ seats face biggest hit to retail‘ – Time to end those local lockdowns in the North Boris
- ‘Germans flout virus rules at “crazy and wild” U-Bahn parties‘ – Freedom-loving Germans are holding spontaneous “corona parties” on crowded Berlin subway trains late at night
Small Businesses That Have Re-Opened
A couple of months ago, Lockdown Sceptics launched a searchable directory of open businesses across the UK. The idea is to celebrate those retail and hospitality businesses that have re-opened, as well as help people find out what has opened in their area. But we need your help to build it, so we’ve created a form you can fill out to tell us about those businesses that have opened near you.
Now that non-essential shops have re-opened – or most of them, anyway – we’re now focusing on pubs, bars, clubs and restaurants, as well as other social venues. As of July 4th, many of them have re-opened too, but not all (and some of them are at risk of having to close again). Please visit the page and let us know about those brave folk who are doing their bit to get our country back on its feet – particularly if they’re not insisting on face masks! Don’t worry if your entries don’t show up immediately – we need to approve them once you’ve entered the data.
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums that are now open, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of publicity. 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, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.
Julia Stephenson, a Brexiteer and lockdown Sceptic, has written a piece in the Telegraph today saying she’s “thrilled” we’ve started a new dating forum.
I’m thrilled to hear that Toby Young has added a new dating thread to the forum on his ‘Lockdown Sceptics’ website. I have long thought a Brexit dating bureau was long overdue. If you are a Brexiteer you are often on the same page regarding many other issues, including lockdown, so it is a shortcut to finding someone with whom you’re compatible.
Brexiteers make up the majority of this country (51.89 per cent, to be precise) but you’d never know this to look at most dating sites which are rampant with virtue-signalling latte drinkers. It’s as if only left-wingers deserve to find love.
Welcome to the forum, Julia. Worth reading in full.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
I’ve created a permanent slot down here for people who want to buy (or make) a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and it has the advantage of not explicitly claiming you have a disability. But if you have no qualms about that (or you are disabled), you can buy a lanyard from Amazon saying you do have a disability/medical exemption here (now showing it will arrive between Sept 25th to Oct 5th). The Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. You can get a “Hidden Disability” tag from eBay here and an “exempt” card that looks like as if it’s been issued by the NHS for just £2.79 from Etsy here.
Don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face nappies in shops here (now almost 28,000). If you need an additional incentive to sign, check out this study from Duke University which shows that some masks increase the risk of transmission.
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
And if you want a laugh, take a look at this skit from a satirical Indian TV show showing self-appointed mask-enforcers becoming a little too enthusiastic.
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. If you feel like donating, however small the sum, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in future updates, email me here.
And Finally…
You can listen to the latest episode of London Calling, my weekly podcast with James Delingpole, here. This week we discuss the need to re-open schools and whether Boris can “do a Ronald Reagan” and fire teachers who don’t show up for work (he can’t), as well as the new Lockdown Sceptics dating site and Dawn Butler’s unconvincing attempt to cast herself as the victim of racial profiling. If you enjoy our weekly whinges, don’t forget to subscribe to London Calling on Apple Podcasts.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
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Am I first today?
First across the line, first to be maligned. An old saying I just invented.
According to the ONS, deaths for week 31 (25–31 July) of 2020:-
Total: 8946 (up from 8891 prev. week, down from 5 year average of 9036)
‘flu/pneumonia: 928 (down from 958 prev. week)
COVID-19: 193 (down from 217 prev. week)
‘flu/pneumonia:COVID-19 ratio is about 4.81:1 (4.14:1 prev. week), COVID-19 deaths as a proportion of all-cause deaths: 2.16%, ‘flu/pneumonia: 10.37%
— https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending31july2020
193 deaths? That’s a lot – I thought the NHS England data was showing single digits per day as of late. Wonder where all the extras are coming from…
ONS count all death certificates in E&W mentioniong COVID-19 as diagnosed by a lab (code U07.1) or clinically/epidemiologically (based on symptoms or people around the patient) (code U07.2). NHS count hospital mortality.
or any certifictate in the pile mentioning covid
is there anything left that isn’t a scam?
Not a lot…
It’s basically scam, scam, scam. scam (to the tune of the Monty Python spam song).
Not that much, but it’s will be hard to fiddle the total death count over the longer term.
That is only for hospitals
The total number deaths for the week was 1% below the five year average and that is the only statistic that actually matters. Deaths described as being Covid related are likely largely fictitious and in any event even they are down on the previous week.
This is interesting because there’s also a table in the ONS data that says that of people with Covid symptoms (cough, fever, etc) about 10% have Covid.
So if there are 1/5 the Covid deaths out of about 1/10 the cases, that would make Covid 2x as deadly as flu.
But those Covid deaths are inflated (for the reasons explained by Carl Heneghan– you currently aren’t allowed to recover from Covid so anyone who ever had it is a “Covid death”).
This also assumes that flu has the same number of asymptomatic infections as Covid. If Covid has twice as many then the IFRs become the same. But we don’t know the asymptomatic infection rate for flu. My guess is it’s similar.
Somewhere recently I read 15% asymptomatic for flu, so a lot lower.
Back in Feb I found a paper from 2014 from a PCR test based study done in Edinburgh that showed it was about 80pct for flu as well. I haven’t saved the link unfortunately. But basically they surveyed people all winter to see if they had flu or flu like symptoms and did PCR tests on them and way more people had flu as shown by the test than actually reported feeling unwell at any point.
Wow that’s interesting, thanks! Any research on whether or not those people were infectious by any chance?
Very interesting thanks! I just replied above before I read this…
https://www.nhs.uk/news/medical-practice/three-quarters-of-people-with-flu-have-no-symptoms/
I just found this.. Am going to have a closer look.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(14)70053-0/fulltext?rss=yes&code=lancet-site
Here’s the original paper. Guess what they found?
75% asymptomatic. 20% antibodies after a flu season (and they acknowledge openly this may be an underestimate because the threshold of the test is high and not everyone develops antibodies).
And what about transmission? As you might expect, following the Pareto principle, they estimated about 80% of the transmission is done by the 20% with the most symptoms.
A little off-message for 2020. Too bad it’s the truth.
Someone remind me why we’re expecting to find 80% seropositivity for SARS2 and jumping on every asymptomatic infection we can find as if it was the end of the world?
That NHS paper contains the following paragraphs:
This information is important, as it indicates that current surveillance systems that rely on people visiting their doctor underestimate the extent of infection and illness in the community. This, somewhat counterintuitively, can lead to overestimates of the severity of the disease (only people with the most severe symptoms are identified as being infected).
There is also the worry that people unaware they are infected may pass it on to people more vulnerable to infection, such as those with weakened immune systems.
Sounds familiar…
It sounds all too familiar. This is a way to push or even try to mandate flu vaccines. It’s my long held view, that those whose end may just have been speeded along by Covid-19 will almost certainly have been vaccinated against flu. Also many of those over 65, and perhaps some other vulnerables, were “lucky” enough to be given a so called stronger version of the flu vaccine last time around. It seems as if the oldies were being primed up to be the main victims of the coming Covid Plandemic.
Yes yes yes! It’s what I have been saying for months. The over 60s are their target, not just here but worldwide too they’ve figured we are more of a drain on society so need to be bumped off sooner. Factor in the not so efficient NHS who is barely functioning anyway and you can see there is an all out attack on the elderly and sick. The NHS is the biggest employer and costs around 150 billion and it still wants more!
They are expecting and hoping to find low seropositivity in order to further promote or mandate Bill Gates’s extremely dodgy, but free of all liability vaccines. A great scam it certainly is.
Just don’t let the busybodies read “The Presence of The Prevalent Strain Between Epidemics” section in Ch. 15 of the Hope-Simpson book or they’ll never let anyone who ever tested positive for COVID-19 out:-
Preceeding that in “Interepidemic Absence of The Prevalent Influenza Virus,” Ch. 7:-
Maybe PHE was onto something but they just didn’t know it—it is a chronic incurable disease! 😯 :-)) Welcome to the permanent lockdown!
Interesting. The thing is how would anyone know? We’ve never gone around doing mass PCR testing of people with no symptoms before. I guess you don’t need that big of a sample.
I think the “null hypothesis” is that SARS2 probably isn’t any different from any other coronavirus. There may be a bit less cross-immunity between flu viruses.
Agree with your null hypothesis! But by studying the virus’ every move they have turned it into something inexplicable and special. I’m sure exactly the same thing would happen if flu was given this much attention.
They don’t need any samples at all, they might just lie.
I suspect the “Second wave” will involve a lot of mendacity.
That’s a dead certainty!
If you’re ‘asymptomatically infected’ aren’t you, er, well?
Up until March, that’s what I thought too.
Imagine consulting your GP:
You: “I’ve got Ebola, doctor”
GP: “Oh dear, why do you think that? What are your symptoms?”
You: “Oh I don’t have any symptoms doctor. I’ve got it asymptomatically.”
GP: “Bugger off.”
honestly I think humour might be a way out of this
hilarious btw!
Humour is very welcome, but it will not get us out of the hole, that they are digging ever deeper.
Yes there is no such a thing as an asymptomatic covid-19 infection. It is just a false positive from the PCR test – viral debris in the cell from a previous viral infection.
However THEY use ‘asymptomatic infected’ to scare people
It doesn’t have that many false positives. If it did how is it that the ONS found 7x as many asymptomatic infections in April as now, and also 7x as many symptomatic ones, using the same test? I agree with you about the second part however: that the obsession with asymptomatic positives is meant to scare people. It also creates the need for the whole pointless testing infrastructure. But, since it’s there, we might as well try and learn whatever useful information from it that we can.
The obsession with asymptomatics is also to distract attention away from the lack of hospitalisations and deaths.
I think the problem is what is defined as “asymptomatic”—is it not currently a qRT-PCR positive, a test that says it found some genes on a swab to react with—is there a decent T-cell test yet?
There are tests, but not that you can do cheaply and easily on 10s of 1000s of people.
But they have the same problem as the antibody tests. Cross-immunity from another coronavirus can be so effective that you might not end up with any SARS2-specific antibodies (or T-cells) at all. So you can’t easily tell for sure if someone was ever infected with SARS2 or not.
If you widen the test to include those other antibodies (or T-cells) it’s more of a test for immunity to SARS2, but doesn’t tell you if you have actually been exposed to SARS2 itself.
And that’s the problem:- you’re supposed to use lab tests on people who present with signs/symptoms, not whimsically test population—I don’t recall any time when this was ever done—when did medicine become less evidence-based than clinical psychology?
Because there’s never been a Plandemic before!
Or some could theoretically be in the pre-symptomatic phase? Are people who are pre-symptomatic infectious?
If they’re pre-symptomatic, that means that they’ll develop symptoms within a short number of days.
Yes that can certainly be the case and you might be infectious for a day or two before you have symptoms. But I see no reason to disbelieve in asymptomatic infections as these seem to be also normal for flu.
If they do develop symptoms then they don’t lead to hospitalisations or deaths. Nice try though.
And it might just be viral debris from some other infection, but that’s just a bonus for them.
Yes 🙂 But it affects two important issues of our time: herd immunity thresholds and IFR. When we say we reckon flu has an IFR of about 0.1%, are we including asymptomatic infections? We generally are when estimating Covid IFRs.
The truth is, as has been pointed out many times, its very hard to estimate IFR because you never know how many people were infected. People are still arguing about what the 2009 Swine Flu IFR was and there is at least an order of magnitude variation in the estimates. The only reliable measure of anything (or as close as you get) is excess deaths.
Quite so. If people are not showing up ill at hospital or indeed dying of (or even with) Covid19 there really is ‘nothing to see here’. Covid19 wards are reportedly closing all over the country even in the areas with ‘cases’ from what I understand.
You have summed it up rather concisely, but what you say will be anathema to Bill Gates, Big Pharma, Big Government and of course the BBC.
Have you just told me what I think you have just told me? In a non lockdown situation, looking at flu in Edinburgh 2005 to 2011, the infection rate was 20%, of whom only 20% showed any symptoms, i.e. 4% of the population. And you would expect a case fatality rate of around 2% of those, or 0.08%. So, without lockdown, you might expect for CV19, 60M people to suffer – 48000 deaths? In other words, pretty darn close to what we have got, only WITH all the downsides of lockdown, on top?? I think I’m going to come over all Victor Meldrew in a minute…
Better late than never.
Yes. That’s why this is the “herd immunity plus” strategy. First you wait for infections to peak, get that out of the way nice and early. Then you have a lockdown anyway now that it won’t make any difference. This avoids any risk of a second wave. Then you can ad lib from there, maybe mandate masks in shops, perhaps destroy the arts, it’s all good.
It’s a lot like Derren Brown or somebody. The actual trick has usually happened when you weren’t looking, before most of the patter has really even got started.
Like the analogy, thanks! Feeling even more bitter about cost of ‘the whole pointless testing infrastructure’ though, as well as all the rest …
The lockdown was by far the most harmful of all the things they did. The masks and T&T are just theatre, relatively far less expensive (even if T&T really does cost £10bn) though no less pointless.
For £10bn we could have built a base on Mars. Sometimes I despair of the human race.
Yes, ‘flu IFR includes extrapolated non- and sub-clinical infections, otherwise if you merely count clinical infections it’s called CFR 😉
This actually raises an interesting question: if they are counting “asymptomatics” as “cases,” they should be adjusting CFR accordingly, not just the IFR 😉
Poundstretcher DC in Leicestershire suffered coronavirus outbreak
https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/discounters/poundstretcher-dc-in-leicestershire-suffered-coronavirus-outbreak/647219.article
The Grocer can also reveal Poundstretcher owner Aziz Tayub was this week questioned by police over an allegation he failed to self-isolate after returning from a trip to Dubai and instead went to work at the Kirby Muxloe facility, which is also Poundstretcher’s headquarters.
“At around 8.55pm on Tuesday (4 August) we received a report that a man was not adhering to Covid-19 government regulations,” said a Leicestershire Police spokeswoman.
“The incident was reported to have taken place at 9am the same day at a premises in Desford Lane, Kirby Muxloe.
“An officer contacted the man at his home address. He was given words of advice and encouraged to follow the recent government regulations regarding self-isolating.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSq3d07WXa4
The British Government Admits the COVID 19 Deaths are Inflated
Yes and Hancock said there would be an inquiry but it seems to have been quietly dropped.
Results are due this week I think?
Thanks I’ll be very interested in seeing them but I fully expect a sweeping under the carpet exercise concluding with “nothing to see here”.
I’m sure the BBC will be keeping tabs on this one.
Anyone else fancy setting up a “Non-COVID Lives Matter” campaign to highlight all the people being killed by the Gov’s and NHS’s pure focus on COVID-19?
Good idea, sadly I don’t get the impression that many in senior NHS positions or establishment actually care about anything other than about their ‘new normal’ agenda.
I’m sick to the back teeth of these stupid selfish f*ckers now spouting their “Save grandma” or “If it saves one life”. They don’t care about anyone apart from themselves and making themselves look virtuous. They’re complicit in allowing people to die by denying them treatment by endorsing these restrictions. These people are the real killers and murderers, not those who will not wear masks or want to end this stupidity.
Of course.
Our lockdowns were known from the start to lead to 1.4 million more tuberculosis deaths in the 3rd world (Ditiu) and tens of millions of poverty and hunger related deaths Oxfam, World Bank, common sense).
The decision makers, their advisers and the supporters of the decisions made, least of all the eticists, didn’t give a fig about those people, and still don’t.
The ethicists business now just seems to be legitimizing racism and genocide.
Only Belarus and Sweden have evaded any co-responsibility for this mass murder, or if you want to be nicer, mass manslaughter.
They should all face trial in The Hague, ASAP.
And their heads on spikes, just before the trial.
The response to this virus is the apotheosis of the abomination that is “if it saves one life its worth it”
This thinking has been so prevalent over the last 20-25 years that it has infantilised society, made people risk adverse and weakened even destroyed bonds of trust between people.
What we’re seeing now is pretty much what we’ve been having for a while now but only in a more large scale and grotesque way.
If we want our society back then we must expunge that poisonous thinking and trust people once again.
The real problem is those in government, who have have taken the Bill Gates shilling.
Ask them if they think they have killed anyone in the past? “Eh? No. What do you mean?” Before you wore a mask maybe you killed people with flu. Do you think you are a killer? Gives them someyhong to think about. Again, only suitable for certain types.
Careful with that – they’ll just say we should wear masks forever then to keep us “safe” from flu – now that they are a-woke-n to the danger!
Save Granny: never,ever visit her again. You might have an asymptomatic infection, any one of a thousand pathogen infections that could kill her. Let her rot alone in the care home entirely cut off from family. That will signal your virtue.
Why don’t grandad lives matter, by the way…
In most people’s subconscious:
Granny = sweet little old lady knitting bootees
Grandad = smelly, hairy old git
This is scary, you know who we are!! (Except Grandad’s not all that hairy any more, especially on top. 🙂 )
Hairy in all the wrong places 😉
That’s about it – so you do know!
Well put. Their concern for elderly relatives leads them to leave them to rot lonely and terrified in a care home. Despicable cowards.
Some Grandparents have been refusing to see their grandchildren. Or expecting them to stay out in the garden, like dirty dogs.
Grandads are often already dead.
I despise these selfish, ignorant cowards, who hide their selfishness, ignorance and cowardice behind their “concern” for other people. They are as responsible as any in our criminal governments around the world f or the economic destruction, the denial of medical treatment to the sick and the psychological abuse of our children. Their concern for others rings hollow as their gleeful cheerleading for the criminal restrictions, designed to suck all the joy from life, rob us of our basic humanity. I wish we could quarantine these people, live our lives apart as normal and leave them to the death in life that they seem to crave. I really ducking hate them.
Well said totally agree I hate them
In a chilling reminder of the times we now live in, readers in comments below a sceptic article by Ross Clark on The Telegraph’s website are thanking the paper for publishing free thought rather than expecting it.
“Save grandma” or “If it saves one life”.
My answer to those are that the NHS has already killed people’s grandmas and grandfathers by sending infectious elderly into care homes, and what about all the lives not saved by the NHS because the NHS shut up shop to everyone without CV19, and people were too terrified to go to hospital. Not to mention the withdrawal of all cancer treatment and diagnoses…
The video from Australia is absolutely shocking but even more shocking is the lack of public or media condemnation of the police actions (can you imagine the outrage and protests if this was a BLM protestor being treated this way). This is a young lady not wearing a mask hardly a big deal. People really need to stand up to this authoritarian nonsense.
I see them all over the sidewalks, gutters and streets of Montreal.
Last week I saw a local bus with a 5G ad poster pasted outside on its billboard. This week I saw the same bus and the billboard was empty. Too early?
Not black so nobody cares
The Aussie High Commission phone number is 0207 379 4334.
I suggest ringing to let them know how inspiring their police behaviour and draconian nonsensical legislation are, and how acceptance of this totalitarian shite enhances their country’s image.
I think we would be wasting our time. Absolutely no resistance from the Australians, they will have to live with the new authoritarian country they are creating. Very sad.
Agree – totally shocked by that video. That was Australia !!! Are they serious ????
My thoughts exactly. What happened to that young lady is not very far removed from what sadly happened in the US and fuelled the BLM protests. The police officer was proper strangling her.
Makes you wonder what he would have done if he wasn’t being filmed. I have a feeling she would have had a stay in hospital.
….and died of covid.
Was it the same police officers from last week?
I have seen lots of authoritarian police videos from Australia recently. The police chief wearing an all black uniform saying people will be dealt with if they break the draconian laws was incredibly sinister. Sadly the police seem to have full public support – unbelievable.
The video of the Police manhandling the girl in Australia was shocking. Her only crime seems to be that she wasn’t wearing a mask. Her boyfriend claimed many times that she had a medical note from the doctor. At the very least why did the police not try to find out what the medical exemption was for. Not one of the many police who appeared on the scene asked to see the note or to telephone her surgery. ..What a dreadful dreadful advertisement for Australia –
I know I know, I am signing petitions as fast as I can, calling for state premier Dickhead Dan to get the sack. Meanwhile we are told we face years of mandatory mask wearing until a vaccine is found
https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/australia/coronavirus-victoria-facing-years-of-mandatory-masks-and-restrictions/news-story/7b2b9fccb48f9c0b5c62af3769d7c3c5?fbclid=IwAR0cYZlzPkGBNInzkNuT-LX2O6TwmfOsqqCK_gW1NG_EpPMVgx__CKyIkx8
Have a laugh at Dan’s expense. Reporter asks him why traffic wardens are allowed to work during stage 4 lockdown/curfew. Very funny
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRp0_TyLvaQ&feature=youtu.be
It just goes to show that democracies are only a sliver of fear away from totalitarianism if police can act in such a way to enforce the pointless health theatre of wearing a mask in the street. That officer should be ashamed of himself.
I wish but the public are supportive of this. They’re glad that these people are being ‘taught lessons’.
If the comments are correct in the video, she actually has a doctor’s note to say she doesn’t need one.
Just posted this on my FB page:
‘I’ve just had to pick up and discard a face mask that was blowing down the road outside my garage.
If you insist on wearing the stupid, useless things then can you at least dispose of them properly?! If you believe the rhetoric then presumably they’re a potential bio-hazard since they trap so many germs, so you’re actually potentially putting other lives in danger.’
Well, they are medical waste and therefore supposed to be dealt with by incineration.
If your dud arded mask destroys one life, it’s worth it.
I hope you had a bottle of sanitiser on you so you could cleanse your hands afterwards!
Seen gloves and masks littering the streets ,disgusting.
Has Matt Hancock breached people’s Article 2 ECHR Rights?
http://opiniojuris.org/2020/04/01/covid-19-symposium-article-2-echrs-positive-obligations-how-can-human-rights-law-inform-the-protection-of-health-care-personnel-and-vulnerable-patients-in-the-covid-19-pandemic/
Cancelling Cancer Treatment – is there a case for negligence? The law – Singh LJ summarises the position in medical cases between paragraphs 83 and 89: ‘Article 2 imposes both substantive positive obligations on the state and procedural obligations. The primary substantive positive obligation is to have in place a regulatory framework compelling hospitals, whether private or public, to adopt appropriate measures for the protection of patients’ lives. The primary procedural obligation is to have a system of law in place, whether criminal or civil, by which individual failures can be the subject of an appropriate remedy. In the law of England and Wales that is achieved by having a criminal justice system, which can in principle hold to account a healthcare professional who causes a patient’s death by gross negligence; and a civil justice system, which makes available a possible civil claim for negligence. We note that, in the present case, there is in fact an extant civil claim which has been brought by the Claimant against the NHS Trust which ran the hospital (which is the First Interested Party in the present judicial review proceedings). The enhanced duty of investigation, which falls upon the state itself to initiate… Read more »
Original lockdown breached seven fundamental articles of the Human Rights Convention.
Most of them still breached. Right to travel, right of assembly, right to religious worship…
The Act doesn’t mention the right to have a face. Presumably the draughtsmen couldn’t envisage any government being so monstrous as to forbid that.
I cannot get the forums to work. Using Chrome on a Mac.
try using another browser, re-boot, etc. without error message impossible really help. Working fine here with up to date Chrome and OSX.
My bad. Forgot to include a link. Fixed now.
The Victorian policemen and – women are prime candidates for any Milgram experiment.
How quickly Eichmann and Harrah Arendt have been forgotten.
No one has the right to obey!
Eternal shame on them, or ideally, prison.
A real life Stanford prison experiment. How quickly people forget indeed.
Feed them to the crocodiles.
What did the crocodiles do to deserve that?
The crocodiles deserved better. Death by a thousand cuts is preferable.
3/4 million off the payroll plus 250,000 newly not self-employed.
1 million
Cheers boris, 4 months ago I actually thought you were great. Btw, what have you done with Jacob ? Stuck him in the broom cupboard with Diane & Jezza ?
Alex’s Droogs have taken over the Melbourne police force.
80% drop in apprenticeshios being started in Scotland, stugeon to hit the problem with £10 million. £2 for each head of population. A very sickly, nay baggy, dishevelled looking sturgeon has been rolled out to the pulpit today. Not a good night’s sleep? Now telling the nation that where you can you must work from home. No deaths for 26 days from her own gob which yet again contradicts the rigisters of scotland death count which says at least seven deaths occurred in the early part of that period. Schools Any child that wants to mask up will be supported to do so. Hand sanitizers for leaving and entering rooms, at breaks and so on. Self isolate. Super vigilance required by schools. Asked to return home if symptoms seen. Household 14 day isolatation. Questions now. BBC then ITV both on Football – schools are off limits clearly. Sturgeon, “I regret that some football players are not following the guidance”. Flagrantly breaching ‘the’ guidelines … oh how calderwood echos through the ages, sturgeon can’t have priviledges footballers breaching – but sut calderwood was a blip until calferwood got out of the clutches in the only way open to her professionally. Now… Read more »
Her 6 figure salary is not reflected in her performance.
Scotland is shaping up to be one of the dreariest places, thanks to our Stupid Numpty Party.
On that basis, Scotland is now officially done for.
Each day I have to suffer several minutes of her hand gestures while waiting for the snooker to start. Muted, obviously.
i read that but i must have had a stroke because i’ve no fucking idea what you are saying. Are you pissed?
The State is Great. Everybody kneel down and give praise. OM!
Hi Toby, many thanks for yet another excellent post. Just a suggestion-several of us have posted on yesterday’s page within the last 15 minutes before “changeover”
Any chance of giving us a nod that the new post is imminent please? It may save people having to post twice. Knowing that if they waited half an hour, they could then post on the latest page would be helpful. Thanks!
New Zealand got the RONA!
What a surprise.
And no immunity.
What? Here i was thinking that unemployed meant “doesn’t have a job”. Who the heck makes up these absolutely idiotic rules?
the number fudgers aka nudgers
This will help you to understand the numbers, it’s pretty straightforward:
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/deaths-covid-19#comments-top
It was one of the many tricks brought in years ago to make the unemployment figures look better.
There is a US group called shadowstats that measure unemployment using the traditional counting methods from pre 1994.
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
If anyone knows of a similar site in the UK, I’d love to know.
Shadowstats! Great site, I’d forgotten about them. Yes, they add long-term discouraged workers to U6 and a rate closer to 35%. I suspect the real rate is somewhere between the 16+% of U6 and 35%. Horrifying, regardless.
That’s government Newspeak from days gone still going strong today. It’s a brilliantly successful way to confound the public.
Unfortunately, this has been true for a while. To count as unemployed in the US and the UK, you need to be actively seeking work. That was the US definition back in the late 80s when I used to teach economics in America.
As Steve says, it’s intended to make the figures look better. You can see a breakdown of U1 through U6, along with definitions, for the US here: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm.
Apparently, U6 hit a high of 22.8% but has fallen to 16.5%. I expect that we will see similar rates here once the distorting effect of the furloughs goes away.
… and where do they get these ‘actively looking for work’ numbers? Not everybody go via job centres or claim unemployment benefits.
Is Jacinda Ardern wearing Coronadentures?
A very toothy smile.
A smiling psychopath.
And another ‘chosen one’ with a made-up back story that does not ring true:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacinda_Ardern
She is ‘ordinary’ and from a ‘state school’ like that other chosen Blairite globalist, David Miliband.
Mediocre is more like it.
From the wiki page
“After graduating from the University of Waikato in 2001, Ardern began her career working as a researcher in the office of Prime Minister Helen Clark. She later worked in London, within the Cabinet Office, and was elected president of the International Union of Socialist Youth.”
A sequence of long distance digital nods and winks to groom, shape and mould.
Yes, also her dad, a policeman who ended up as a diplomat!
Her aunt a political something. Wiki has her in both new york soup kitchens and employed in NZ gov at the same time if my reading is better than my writing.
Milliband like is a good call. She was in Blairs uk gov researching.
Thanks kh! PS my new bin was delivered this morning! The hills are alive with the sound of music…….lockdown themes……🙄
Little things mean a lot-( when life is so restricted)😐
🥛🥛😃
If it’s got a lid, you’d better donate it to your local school. Teaching unions say schools can’t open without a bin with a lid.
The Patrick Fagan article is indeed splendid and spot on.
The Victorian police confirming its observations and conclusions most impressively.
The ‘Face Masks make you stupid’ study also already observed that people, even children, commit more crimes and fall into more antisocial behavior patterns when hiding behind a mask.
And the support or non-reaction of the public has been well explained by Gustave Lebon, over a hundred years ago.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-dangerous-is-covid-a-swedish-doctor-s-perspective
Absolutely brilliant article from a Swedish doctor on how Sweden has practically eliminated Covid after 4 months, all while avoiding a state-enforced lockdown. I like this article because it is written in a very measured, rational way so fence-sitters may be more receptive to it as opposed to aggressive diatribes about how harmful lockdown is.
Once again, Sweden is embarrassing the rest of the world.
Totally agree. Brilliant article for all the reasons you state. It was extremely well timed with the news coming out from NZ that Jacinda Aherne has put their country back into lockdown.
We are at a point of inflection. A month or 2 ago everyone was castigating Sweden and lauding praise on NZ, but the truth of THIS matter cannot be hidden and as Sweden (and other countries) now start to look very normal, and as NZ and Australia continue their self destruction, it will not be possible to just gloss over these facts.
No doubt this catalogue of mendacity is also to blame: https://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2020/06/how-false-hydroxychloroquine-narrative.html
Thanks for posting this. It is is a very good piece of work and I strongly recommend it. The doctor catalogues the dirty dealings so far about HCQ and it makes shocking reading.
We have three genocides here:
How do we get this across to the brainwashed?
This is a really excellent article – thank you.
Julia Stephenson seems my kinda girl.
Are you tall enough?
Every day confirms Johnson and Co. are a disaster for this country. Whilst he takes photo opportunities at schools he avoids any adult confrontation proving the government to be utter cowards. The longer they draw out this farce the greater the kickback when they discover what a fraud Johnson really is. If only we had an opposition party worthy of the name, Starmer is just another hopeless Blairite waiting in the wings.
I imagine they will be in less of a hurry to repeal the Fixed Term Parliament Act now….
Yes, Starmer is a hopeless and ineffectual Blairite, but he will be Prime Minister in just over 4 years. BoJo has handed it to him on a plate and is just keeping Starmer’s seat warm in the meantime.
The Mayor of London is a sadistic con.
He needs to go. Does nothing but virtue signal, jump on every bandwagon and sticks his nose into affairs that has nothing to do with him (ex. Trump)
Whilst at the same time he has done SFA with knife crime, gangs, transport, housing – precisely the stuff that’s under his remit.
Sounds like the Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio.
https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/london-crime-weekend-tragedy-sees-18742175
14 stabbed ,murders and 2 bodies found over last weekend both Kahn and Cressida Dick need to be sacked pronto as they both think asking people to shame their fellow citizens for not wearing masks is far more important than tackling violent crime
Yep – both useless, stupid and have misplaced priorities – the Twedledum and Twedledee of London.
He proves the motto like Boris & Cranky, scum always floats to the top
The freakishly risk averse attitude to schools reopening comes in part from America, where it’s so expensive to get ill if you aren’t insured. Hence the measures advocated by Harvard below, which look capable of ensuring no child ever gets a cold again! To the child’s detriment of course, as no exposure to, or immunity from, disease is dangerous. They are likely to suffer worse effects in the end:
https://schools.forhealth.org/wpcontent/uploads/sites/19/2020/06/Harvard-Healthy-Buildings-Program-Schools-For-Health-Reopening-Covid19-June2020.pdf
America has a middle class that’s very different to the British one, but does share that risk averse attitude. The poor, on the other hand, just have to suck it up. They probably need schools to reopen since they can’t afford to stay home and do child care. Without even a furlough, I’m sure things are already far more dire than here.
Out and about this morning posting the letters to Boris and his cohorts. I know, waste of time and money but I feel better knowing I’ve had my rant and told them what I think of them even if they never read it. I even slept better. Conversation in Post Office: “You’re not wearing a mask” Me: No I’m not “You need to” Me: Not going to and as a shop staff member you don’t need to either “I’m vulnerable, I’m taking mumble mumble mumble for mumble mumble” – couldn’t hear here as I’m mostly deaf but wasn’t interested anyway. Me: Has the Post office given you a risk assessment and told you to watch out for bacterial infections, pleurisy, low oxygen and so on? “No but I will take the chance with a bacterial infection rather than a dose of covid” Me: You prefer a nasty bacteria in your lungs that can be very dangerous, could kill you or take a long time to treat when you have a 99.93% survival rate for a virus that has gone from the population? ” Funny you say that, the local doctor was in here a few days ago and he mentioned… Read more »
So many [idiots] think like that. If they only know vulnerable and bacterial infections are a recipe for getting very sick and like you say is very dangerous.
as has been mentioned before . the overuse of bacterialogical sanitisers on top of the unmitigated overuse of antibiotics over the years are going to result in mutations of bacteria for which antibiotics are no longer effective.
Then we go back to the good old days when a scratch on the finger leads to an infection for which we no longer have a cure and so your arm falls off and you die
I’ve told many this but it seems to go over their heads.
I think bacterial pneumonia kills more people than viral pneumonia…
yep
Yes, you are correct, it does. Fortunately, the older antibiotics are the best ones, now. There is still one antibiotic that works, on almost every bacterium, and you can make it yourself.
You should have told him that he is recycling bacteria with every breath he takes.
The stalkers song.
I don’t like the way the BBC is discussing wearing masks in the heatwave showing photos of people wearing them on the beach. There is no requirement to wear masks outdoors in the UK. Also the article fails to mention exemptions.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53688259
The headline just shows how much lockdown is costing us dear. The government’s harebrained scheme to get people out and about to spend money and visit our cultural treasures via mandatory muzzling has backfired. This will continue to ensure that people will continue to vote with their feet and wallets and avoid any leisure activities that involve a muzzle plus continuing to shop online or click and collect.
We haven’t seen the worst with redundancy and businesses going bust I’m afraid and it will continue as the months roll on, the longer this insanity continues.
At the garden centre good to see more people realise outside is not enclosed so no mask needed but still many sanctimonious wankers around. A few old people puffing and struggling breathing in the humid heat with a mask on. One couple saw me and the wife unmuzzled so sneakily lowered their’s to under the nose. Later on we saw them the masks were off. As we walked past them we saw they were looking round, very worried so I said along the lines of “don’t look so worried, you are not breaking the law as there is an exemption that says if you suffer distress or harm then you do not need to wear one and not breathing is pretty distressful and harmful plus only a policeman ask you about why you re not wearing a mask but you do not have to answer and he can’t force you so relax”. Walked off and notice quite a few other older couples who must ahem been listening in slowly lowering their masks. At hobby craft we were the only unmuzzled. Chatting at the till while the wife’s material was being measured and cut she asked about exemptions as they had… Read more »
Very well done AG. Proud of you. It sounds like my modus operandi-speak loudly and hope that the ear-wiggers are listening.
Was this by any chance at Bridgemere? We haven’t been there since muzzles were brought in so your report sounds very promising.
That’s the place.
Outside getting better.
Staff been told not to challenge anyone so walk straight in.
Talking loudly and let people eavesdrop seems to work quite well to eb honest.
Here’s a blast from the past. Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark: Talking Loud & Clear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Piq–jBz8Zc
Too bad that we can’t clone you a million fold. You have the gift of persuasion and reason.
Wife gets a bit pissed off with me at times when I’m doing it though.
Yes OH has to rein me in sometimes!
Me too! (Oh, should I have used that phrase?)
Fantastic work!
Anyone noticed that ‘improve you immune system’ is missing from the Government / NHS messages?
Stay indoors, reduce your vitamin D synthesis.
Yes, made me mad at beginning of lockdown. Told everyone to stay inside and deplete yourself of Vit D and compromise your immune system. What idiots!
Apparently the stupid lady doctor on ITV Good Morning gave “advice” how to protect yourself against flu this winter; Get vaccinated…
What about go out, get sunshine, eat healthy, exercise and loose some weight?
This year the vaccination will most likely be the totally wrong strain, like the last few years,