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Panicking Boris Imposes Second Lockdown
Late on Tuesday night the Government announced a raft of new restrictions would be imposed in England from next Monday. The BBC has more.
Social gatherings of more than six people will be illegal in England from Monday – with some exemptions – amid a steep rise in coronavirus cases.
A new legal limit will ban larger groups meeting anywhere socially indoors or outdoors, No 10 said.
But it will not apply to schools, workplaces or Covid-secure weddings, funerals and organised team sports.
It will be enforced through a £100 fine if people fail to comply with police, doubling up to a maximum of £3,200.
Don’t imagine the “workplace” exemption applies to restaurants, pubs and cafes. According to the BBC: “The change applies to… gatherings indoors and outdoors, in private homes, public outdoor spaces, and venues such as pubs and restaurants.”
This is in response to the rise in cases in the community – 2,460 new cases on Tuesday – which, as I explained in the Telegraph on Monday, is an artefact of increased testing. In the past week alone there have been over 1.3m coronavirus tests, compared to just 95,188 in the first week of April.
Admittedly, daily deaths increased to 32 yesterday, up from a handful on Sunday and Monday. But that’s likely to be due to delayed reporting over the weekend rather than a rise in infections. After all, the mean lag time between infection and death – in those rare cases when infection actually results in death – is 18 days and 18 days ago infections weren’t rising. And the number of deaths in the past seven days is the lowest it’s been since the peak last April.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but the fact that Government has decided to react in this way to what is clearly just an increase in false positives is quite extraordinary. Are senior politicians really that innumerate? The answer is “yes”, obviously. The really infuriating thing is that, with schools re-opening, life was beginning to feel almost normal again and the the hospitality industry was showing signs of life. As of next Monday, we’ll be back to where we were before July 4th.
Stop Press: The Government is considering imposing the UK’s first curfew in Bradford, according to the Times.
People could be banned from going out after 10pm or 11pm in hotspots under measures to tame rises in infections which are largely driven by socialising. It is understood that Bradford is being considered for a curfew after ministers required venues in Bolton to close after 10pm.
Ministers have been impressed by how Belgium brought cases under control by early imposition of tough restrictions such as banning people in some cities from leaving home at night except for work or medical care.
Impressed by Belgium?!? I wonder who “ministers” will look to for inspiration next? Kim-Jong Dan?
Eminent Scientists Pooh-Pooh “Second Wave” Hypothesis, Cast Doubt on PCR Testing Data
Lockdown Sceptics is proud to bring you a new paper today by three distinguished scientists laying bare the Government’s lunacy. Entitled “How Likely is a Second Wave?”, it’s by Paul Kirkham, Professor of Cell Biology and Head of Respiratory Disease Research Group at Wolverhampton University, Dr Mike Yeadon, former CSO and VP, Allergy and Respiratory Research Head with Pfizer Global R&D and co-Founder of Ziarco Pharma Ltd, and Barry Thomas, one of only a handful of epidemiologist to work with the NHS.
Their thesis, in a nutshell, is that the virus has essentially run its course in the UK, as it has in several European countries and US states; the herd immunity threshold is much lower than was originally anticipated, thanks in large part to T-cell cross immunity; any talk of a ‘second wave’ is for the birds and the NHS will be more than capable of coping with the influx of Covid patients this winter without cancelling elective surgeries or turfing patients out of critical care beds; and any PCR test data apparently contradicting this analysis (like that of the last three days) should be taken with a large dose of salt because of the test’s tendency to produce false positives, as well as ‘cold positives’ (when someone who has had COVID-19 and made a complete recovery tests positive).
It’s very clearly written, with the argument set out in easy-to-understand steps, and mercifully free of technical jargon. If I was setting up an “independent SAGE” – as opposed to the rag bag of Labour-supporting has-beens that goes by the name of “independent SAGE” – these three men would be on it.
Here’s the section in which they pooh-pooh the idea that a second wave is imminent.
Daily deaths from and with COVID-19 have almost ceased, having fallen over 99% from peak. All the numbers monitored carefully fall like this, too: the numbers being hospitalised, numbers in hospital, number in intensive care – all are falling in synchrony from the April peak. Viral evidence historically tells us that you don’t generally get infected by the exact same virus twice, certainly not within a short period of time. It’d be a poor immune system which lets that happen and we’d probably not have made it as a species into the 21st century if that’s how it worked. So there’s an expectation of some duration of immunity. It needs studying, but our experience and evidence for coronaviruses (Le Bert et al, 2020) suggests that if you have memory T-cells, durability can be very long lasting. This study showed that people still had robust T-cell responses in 2020, 17 years after the first SARS outbreak back in 2003. The concerns people have expressed about falling antibody levels underscores a lack of knowledge about acquired immunity. It is not efficient nor required for immunity to maintain high levels of antibodies to everything to which you are immune. Instead, cellular memory enables very rapid re-generation of antibodies upon re-encounter with the antigen, if that is required to defend the host. Alternatively, innate and cellular memory responses can be sufficient.
The NHS currently remains ‘COVID-19 ready’ in preparation for an expected second wave, a highly unlikely scenario based upon an initial model with highly sensitive input variables that we already know to be inaccurate. The evidence we’ve presented leads us to believe there is unlikely to be a second wave and that while there have been apparent multi-‘wave’ respiratory viruses in the past, notably 1918-20, in many cases it became clear that this was either different populations being infected at different times or in some cases multiple different organisms involved. There is no biological principle that leads us to expect a second wave based on the accumulation of data over the past six months. Instead, it is likely there will be local, small and self-limiting mini-outbreaks as areas previously unexposed come into contact with the virus.
This is a proper, serious piece of work by three sober-minded scientists drawing on a large body of recent scientific research. Everyone should read it in full.
Unseemly Rant on TalkRadio
I was interviewed by Dan Wootton on TalkRadio yesterday evening and was so furious about the looming over-reaction to the rising case numbers I embarked on a seven-minute rant. Poor Dan could barely get a word in. Not for the faint-hearted.
Update on Maternity Madness
The reader who emailed us about the difficulty her daughter was having persuading the NHS to allow her husband to be present for their baby’s first scan has got back in touch with some good news.
An update on the maternity madness. My son and daughter-in-law have just booked a 20 week scan at a private clinic in Solihull which allows fathers to attend, all for a very reasonable charge of £49 which includes a 4D scan and two photographs. Shame on the NHS for their unnecessary restrictive rules. I think more and more people will be looking to go private when they discover that it isn’t prohibitively expensive, particularly as the NHS currently charges £10 per scan photograph.
SAGE “Expert” Claiming Epidemic “Taking Off Again” Recommended Herd Immunity in March
Professor John Edmunds, a member of SAGE, made quite a splash when he appeared on Peston on Monday night and warned that cases were “increasing exponentially”.
Prof Edmunds, from the Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said that although we are all still socially distancing far more than we were before the virus arrived, we have not “hit the sweet spot” that allows more normal economic activity and simultaneous control of the spread of the virus.
Prof Edmunds said that the autumn will be a challenge, because the rate of reproduction of the virus or R rate is above one – when schools and universities are re-opening.
He raised the prospect not just of more local lockdowns but also of renewed national curbs on our freedoms – because opening schools and universities would have “an epidemiological effect” everywhere.
“I didn’t want us to relax measures so much that we couldn’t open the schools safely without it tipping the reproduction number significantly above 1. And we are already above 1 and we’ve opened schools. So this is a risky period”.
He added: “The epidemic continues to increase and then we have Christmas. And that is very difficult. What is Christmas? Well it’s meeting with your family very close. Restaurants and pubs and stuff like that. And it’s all high risk. And it’s all indoors. Indoors makes a difference.”
Very worrying, right? Well, no, not really. John Edmunds is the same “expert” who told Channel 4 News back on March 13th that the most effective strategy for dealing with the epidemic was “herd immunity”. Tomas Pueyo was the other interviewee in the segment – picked, presumably, because he was a passionate lockdown advocate, unlike Edmunds at the time. You can read a transcript of the exchange here, but the critical section went as follows:
Presenter: John Edmunds, should we be declaring a state of national emergency here – something as dramatic as that?
Edmunds: No.
Presenter: No?
Edmunds: For what gain? What gain would we get from that? So we’re going to get people up into a panic and stuff? We need people to come with us in a stepwise way. This epidemic is not going to be over in a week or a month, this epidemic is going to last for most of this year, and so if we’re going to ask people to change their behaviour quite radically, it’s going to be very difficult for them to do, it’s going to have major economic and social impacts, on them, then we’re going to have to limit the amount that we’re going to ask them to do, yeah?
Presenter: Limit the amount that we’re going to ask people to do.
Edmunds: So we stop the epidemic, or we slow the epidemic right down, so that the NHS doesn’t become overwhelmed, hospitals don’t become overwhelmed, that’s the idea. The only way to stop this epidemic is indeed to achieve herd immunity.
You were right then, John, wrong now.
How “experts” like Edmunds continue to be taken seriously is beyond me.
£35,532 a Year to Play Netball in Masks
An aunt has written to us with some disturbing news about her niece who is at Sedburgh School (annual fees for boarders: £35,532).
Have just spoken to my sister whose four children went back to Sedbergh School yesterday (up in the middle of absolutely nowhere on the Yorks/Lancs/Cumbria border, surrounded by hills) and my niece aged 13 had to play a netball match yesterday in a mask. To my mind this is nothing short of criminal. What the actual?
Forget Dystopialand. Try Center Parcs
A woman has been in touch to tell us about her trip to Center Parcs in Woburn with her four boys. Sounds a lot better than Disneyland Paris!
There are some positives that I have enjoyed from the experience and some basically absurd rules.
Firstly, when you are ordering food and drink in the bars and restaurants you scan in a QR code and get up the menu to place your food and drink orders. So no waiting for ages at the bar to get served, plus while bowling I could ensure a steady flow of porn star martinis without interrupting the game! The bowling seemed to improve too.
On the subject of the bowling another plus we didnt have to wear hideous bowling shoes. Every other lane closed for social distancing though and absolutely no ball sharing with other lanes!
Now to the tropical swimming paradise. Anyone who has ever been knows it’s not paradise, but due to Covid the numbers on how many can go in the pool area are severely restricted. Now it is more like paradise! You had a temperature check on entering the changing rooms but once through that the changing rooms were spotless, it was wonderful. You only had two hours in the pool – back to coloured wrist bands – but two hours is more than enough. You are restricted to two visits to the pool over your whole stay which have to be booked in advance – again more than enough for me – there were very little queues for flumes, cyclone, typhoon ride, but queuing for the rapids was longer, though again not too bad. The real plus was that once you were on the rapids it’s just you and your family – fantastic!
The absurdest of it all is when you enter The Plaza where we went to play badminton, among other activities. You are informed by the Gestapo on the door that you HAVE to wear a mask. But it really is a miracle, because soon as you get to your badminton court or other activity you can’t catch Covid anymore so you don’t have to wear a mask! The Government should look into this technology for shops as I’m sure it would go down well and get more people out spending money.
The time here so far has felt at times wonderfully normal and at times infuriated at the madness of it all. How sustainable it is for the park in the long term I don’t know. The supermarket staff said they are only at 65% capacity and that’s a big increase on previous weeks in school holidays, which surprised me. The restaurants/bars are quieter than normal and all food menus seem greatly reduced but overall it has been a lovely break. Some changes I hope they keep and some I hope disappear very soon. On to Cornwall for a week after this.
Allison Pearson Lets Hancock Have It
Pearson is always worth reading – one of the Telegraph’s best columnists. But her column in today’s paper, laying into Handy Cock, among others, is a joy. Here are the opening few paragraphs.
I despair I really do. The powers of the wretched Coronabeast are waning fast. “It has burnt through the dry grass, mainly those who would have died anyway in the next few months, and now it is infecting younger age groups but not harming them,” says a scientist friend. Admissions are only a fraction of the level compared to peak of the pandemic despite warnings of a second wave rolling across Europe. “Covid has gone from our wards, has been for weeks” reports the head nurse at one of the UK’s largest hospitals, “I can’t understand what the Government are going on about.”
Boy, are they going on. And on. England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Jonathan Van Tam – a Chieftain tank in human form – was deployed this week to warn that the public has “relaxed too much”. Relaxed? How much generalised anxiety, cyclists wearing masks, children instructed not to turn around in classrooms, empty trains, cancelled holidays, people solemnly washing groceries in Covid-free areas and all the other pointless pantomime of panic would be sufficient for the Professor? The nation’s a complete basket case and he wants us to keep weaving.
And then there’s Matt Hancock. Like Private Frazer in Dad’s Army, our Secretary of State for Health has a lip-smacking relish for doom. As children settle back in the classroom after almost six months without friends or lessons and young people prepare for university, Matt had a few uplifting words to give them the confidence they so desperately need: “Don’t kill your gran!”
I can’t believe he actually said that. Either Hancock doesn’t understand the science or he is wilfully misinterpreting the data to keep the population as terrified as possible. Yes, there were almost 3,000 new “cases” on two successive days this week. But PCR tests, like all medical tests, are not perfect and can be unreliable. Covid “cases” sound alarming, but a case can be anyone with a few remnants of virus on a swab test who presents zero risk. ICUs are still, in the main, eerie ghost towns. Corona deaths are down to a handful a day out of a population of 66 million. Basically, I have more chance of marrying Brad Pitt than you have of dying from COVID-19.
At their best, newspaper columnists give voice to the feelings of millions of ordinary people and that’s what Allison Pearson does in this piece. Something is stirring in Middle England and when it fully awakes it will be a sight to behold. Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan have interviewed Lord Sumption for their latest ‘Planet Normal’ podcast.
Postcard From Angola
We got a fantastic postcard yesterday from a resident of Luanda in Angola. Nice to know there are sceptics in every port! The author draws attention to the way in which the lockdowns have been amplified in African states, with corrupt governments using them as excuses to entrench their authoritarian rule and ride roughshod over human rights. We think we’ve got it bad in Western cities like London and New York, but the people of Angola and other African countries have it far, far worse. A sobering read.
Here’s an extract.
I thought it would be worth it to stress the immense, gargantuan damage that the COVID-19 global reaction is causing to most African countries. I’m not here referring only to the obvious economic chaos, misery and hunger that will be spread over years to come, in which deaths will surely be measured in millions. Rather, I’d like to point out that what is happening right now in countries like Angola. It far outreaches, by orders of magnitude, what in the West is perceived as eroding personal liberties and growing authoritarianism. It brings dystopian perceptions to new unthinkable levels.
Angola is a country in tropical Africa of roughly 30 million people, has of the youngest and fastest-growing populations in the world, and ranks quite high when it comes to corruption, child mortality and lack of access to health care, even by African standards. And, of course, it is plagued by all sorts of diseases, in which malaria and diarrhea account for most of the annual mortality. It is also one of the last countries on earth still battling to eradicate polio, and even a few years back experienced an outbreak of Marburg virus, an Ebola-related disease. You would think that a country with this record and problems would have better things to worry about than COVID-19. And, of course, given its young population, with no care homes, the few that reach old age cannot afford to carry lasting and chronic co-morbidities (so, of course, they die of those co-morbidities before even having the chance of contracting flu, let alone Covid). Living in a tropical setting subject to warm and moist weather, the population should be pretty unaffected by COVID-19. And not to mention that Angolans, and possibly most Africans, have likely much stronger cross-immunity developed from being constantly exposed to all sorts of viruses on a daily basis!
Against this background you would hope that Angolan decision makers would take the global hysteria with a pinch of salt, and decide go on with their lives and possibly even try to recover some of the development lag towards the rest of the world, right? Well, no. Instead, we bought into this world madness with a zeal that would make proud some of your most fervent bedwetting western politicians. Maybe it is not so surprising if one considers that this is a free ticket to increased authoritarian measures and a tighter grip on a police state. So Angola quickly went into a strict lockdown in March, suppressing people’s movements and liberties etc., and has remained locked down since.
Worth reading in full.
Round-Up
- ‘There must be a “No-Lockdown Party”‘ – Australian law Professor, arch-sceptic and loyal reader of Lockdown Sceptics Prof Jim Allen tells Sky News Australia’s Allan Jones that it’s time to set up a “No-Lockdown Party”. Interesting idea…
- Journalist and activist Avi Remini arrested at anti-lockdown protest – Shocking footage of journalist and activist Avi Remini being arrested and thrown to the ground while trying to cover an anti-lockdown protest in Melbourne
- ‘Where is the Resistance to CovidMania?‘ – Paul Collits asks why there’s been so little opposition to the emergence of a dictatorship in the state of Victoria from Australia’s political class
- ‘Labs told to run some patients’ COVID-19 tests twice amid concerns of false-positives‘ – About bloody time!
- ‘Sturgis biker rally adds 267,000 COVID cases and $12.2B in health costs, report says‘ – Lockdown zealots keep bringing this up. Someone needs to debunk this. Volunteers please
- ‘United States Looks Set To Lose $155 Billion From Missing International Tourists And Visitors, Says WTTC‘ – Is that all? WTTC stands for the World Travel and Tourism Council
- ‘Trump Says Schools Teaching NY Times’ 1619 Project “Will Not Be Funded”‘ – God help me, if I was a US citizen I think I’d vote for him
- ‘BBC hold “avoiding racial bias” training session with on-air talent ahead of new football season with phrases such as “cakewalk”, “nitty gritty”, “sold down the river” and “blackballed” put on a banned list‘ – The BBC, in avoiding the nitty gritty, has sold viewers down the river. Let’s blackball the Beeb. It’ll be a cakewalk
- ‘France Again Being Forced To Stimulate Is Bad News‘ – France is facing one of Europe’s worst recessions and its deepest since World War Two. The fact that the Government is having to stimulate the French economy again does not bode well
- ‘Summary of case against lockdowns‘ – Good summary of the case against lockdowns by data expert Anthony Bruce. Lots of graph porn
- ‘Subjecting the young to yet more Covid restrictions is stark staring mad‘ – Excellent piece by Annabel Fenwick Elliott in the Telegraph
- ‘Greece exodus begins as flight prices skyrocket‘ – Quarantine restrictions will shortly apply to travellers returning from seven Greek islands so, predictably, flights from those islands to the UK have gone up in price
- ‘Fraudulent furlough claimants may have cost taxpayer £3.5bn‘ – Not us, guv. Honest
- ‘COVID-19 cases and the weekend effect‘ – The saintly Carl Heneghan in the Spectator
- Virus Mania – Check out the book on the massive overreaction to viral outbreaks by paranoid states by Torsten Engelbrecht, an award-winning investigative journalist in Hamburg. He wrote a piece recently about the unreliability of the PCR test for Off-Guardian
- ‘American Airlines policy allowing BLM pins faces backlash from workers‘ – Pin-demonium brewing at American Airlines, according to the New York Post
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Five today: “Life’s A Risky Business” by Honey B and The T-Bones, “It’s Dangerous Business Walking Out Your Front Door” by Underoath, “Don’t Risk It” by Saturn Will Survive and “We’re All Gonna Die” by Slash.
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 attention. We’ve also just introduced a section where people can arrange to meet up for non-romantic purposes. 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.
Small Businesses That Have Re-Opened
A few 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 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) and some of them will have to close again on September 14th. 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! If they’ve made that clear to customers with a sign in the window or similar, so much the better. Don’t worry if your entries don’t show up immediately – we need to approve them once you’ve entered the data.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’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 Oct 10th to Oct 20th). 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 with lanyard for just £1.99 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 over 31,500).
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
And here’s a round-up of the scientific evidence on the effectiveness of mask (threadbare at best).
Stop Press: Check out this ghastly video by a troupe of bedwetting Broadway singers in which they sing a version of “Masquerade”, but shoe-horn in some pro-mask propaganda. Don’t they realise that the longer they promote Coronaphobia, the less likely musical theatre is to survive?
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 a lot of work. 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. (If you want us to link to something, don’t forget to include a link).
And Finally…
In the latest episode of London Calling, the weekly podcast I do with James Delingpole, we rant about the Government’s panicky reaction to the rising case numbers, complain about the double standard whereby anti-lockdown protestors are fined £10,000 but XR and BLM protestors can do whatever they like and sing the praises of Cobra Kai and The Boys Season 2, which is even more politically incorrect and violent than Season 1. Listen to it here and don’t forget to subscribe!
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On the PCR test false positives which King Carl flagged up and looking at the documents linked by, the great swedenbourg? earlier. Houston has a problem. Reading the document from SAGE beside the new PHE recommendations it is clear to the reader (or at least it is to me) that they are admitting in an academic speak, arse covering kind of way that positive, infectious test results are presently overstated by several orders of magnitude. I also notice that neither document refers to positively tested people as ‘cases’. Hancock has been taking away the freedoms and livelihoods of millions of citizens on the basis of flawed testing procedures and the erroneous definition of a ‘case’, both of which he has known about for some time. I notice that the SAGE document is dated 31 August and I am sure that it took some time before that to produce it. Even today he is screwing peoples lives up on the basis of positive tests knowing full well from at least 9 days ago that SAGE and PHE determined that the present testing procedures are seriously in error and it needs at least two tests to confirm a positive ‘case’. The key… Read more »
I seriously doubt whether Boris has the mental capacity to grasp these matters.
Perhaps mine is lacking too. For Pillar 1 labs (but not Pillar 2) they recommend retesting the existing sample. Can someone explain to me how this is not likely to result in the same finding?
I agree, I have just re-read the section again and I do not see the logic either. Neither document has addressed what the actual threshold for infectivity is nor have they quantified how many have tested positive who are likely infectious or non infectious. They surely must have data to be able to work this out.
Someone said, maybe Einstein, that “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”
This might also apply to comment posts.
The same might be said these days for the reproducion of the human species.
Never understood that aphorism (nothing to do with Einstein). If I field the same football team every Saturday using the same tactics I don’t expect to get the same result every time.
But do you play against the same team every week too?
Of course if any of these people die of anything withing the next 28 days they will be counted as dying “with Covid” whatever the cause of death.
They’re not ”cases”. ”Cases” are a result of testing someone with symptoms, after a clinical diagnosis, surely. But, then, I’m not a medic. It just sounds dodgy to me.
The recording from a NZ doctor a few days ago was good on testing, her argument is that the PCR test is a diagnostic test to be used in conjunction with clinical assessment. For all the sort of reasons we are seeing here it is not suitable as a mass screening test to be used on its own to determine public health policy.
The Politicians wanted an easy yes/no black/white test and started using it without any proper evaluation as to whether the test could be used in this way. In the end this is potentially medically damaging as it will undermine the credibility of PCR testing, which when used properly is very helpful.
Do you mean this one – PCR Test Update
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcONxyAJ8S4
Dr. Sam Bailey
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Dr Sam talks about what is happening in NZ in regards to COVID-19 and important information you should know about the COVID-19 PCR Test.
“ her argument is that the PCR test is a diagnostic test to be used in conjunction with clinical assessment.”
… but even that amelioration is wrong. The deviser of the test was quite explicit that this is not a diagnostic test.
The clinical assessment is an essential prior necessary condition. A PCR test may have some validity as further information. But it isn’t a diagnostic tool, except in, perhaps, distinguishing between different viral agents.
A differential diagnosis is based on symptoms (subjective patient history) and signs ( objective clinician observations). If you’re lucky this could be a single illness, but may need further tests to identify the real problem. These could be ECG, EEG, blood tests, X-rays etc. For CoViD19, which is not very symptom specific another test is needed, the RT-PCR would suffice. The inventor said that it was a qualitative test not a quantitative test and shouldn’t be used as a diagnostic test in isolation, not that it couldn’t be used as a confirmatory test.
And if the retested sample is positive as well that’s two positive tests two infections
Double plus good!
I am confident we will discover that the “problem” is any “positives” they retest that come back positive again count as two tests, hence the ridiculous 50% rise in one day. The Johnson has now condemned himself to being the shortest serving and worst PM this country has ever seen. He will be gone before the anniversary of his landslide election win, and not before time.
With Nappy-Head BOJO gone, who will we get? Priti Patel for the next 3 years. That is gonna be good.
I can’t speak for Tory supporters – but – looking fairly dispassionately at what is on offer, I can’t see much sign of viable life inside this raddled skeleton of a party.
But, should you think this is just political prejudice, I am no more hopeful in terms of the main opposition, let alone the invisible LibDems.
I mentioned earlier that I had been looking at Aneurin Bevan’s Trafalgar Square speech at the time of Suez – an event that split the nation.
The comparison is a sad reflection of the deterioration of democratic political life. Compare the wheedling self-interest of Starmer backing the Tory measures! – avoiding any embrace of principle in case of slippage on the greasy pole.
‘Contempt’? Too weak a word.
Patel is as weak as Home secretary as Theresa May was it’s high time We ditched the LIBLABCONSNP permantely out of Our politics forever https://www.eutruth.org.uk
Late next year more likely.
Who’s going to get rid of him? Tory backbenchers? Labour? Cabinet coup? Can’t see anyone moving against him.
Depends where the false positive came from. If it’s a “cold positive” (smashed up non-viable) virus the same sample might test positive again. Also if the sample itself was contaminated. But if the first result was contamination of the equipment or somebody pressing the wrong button or ticking the wrong box you’ll probably get a negative the second time. So it’s better than nothing but really you should get a new sample.
OK, admit I haven’t read those papers. But on the retest question, I have always assumed that a second test (preferably from a second sample, ie swab) gives some confirmatory signal (or otherwise) as it rules out the chance of an initially contaminated sample (not completely but to a high probability).
So in other words, it protects against false positives. What it wont’ do is protect against what seem to be called “cold positives” ie those from residual virus elements that are non-infectious and not the sign of a current infection (which would be a “hot positive”).
Nor does a retest help in terms of finding out the false positive rate of the test or calibrating it (see Heneghan and/or John Lee).
Personally, I’d like to see all positives followed up by a retest before taking them as meaningful. And I’d like to see the Ct levels quoted in all cases, as they seem to have been running at such high levels that they can nearly get a positive from a vacuum!
N hs Louise Hampton (New) – NHS Whistleblower
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JpqAa25uZ0
They took a car boot load of party treats into the local Track’n’Trace centre yesterday.
Can’t imagine what they have to celebrate on the day their boss was on the radio expressing her heartfelt apologies to those who wanted to be tested (! ? WTF ?) but could not be because of the failures of her organisation.
Not this again, all you do is spam us with these same links!
It’s a different one
Yes it is thanks, it’s a follow up and more detailed video. Some people jumping the gun!
Maybe check it out first before jumping to wrong conclusions!
Viral Issue Crucial Update Sept 8th: the Science, Logic and Data Explained!
Ivor Cummins
The ultimate update on our viral issue, bar none – Sept 8th 2020 . Get educated guys and gals – or gkeep your head in the sand while your errant leaders destroy society around you… 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvFhIFzaac
Studies show hydroxychloroquine cuts ‘virus mortality in half in high risk groups’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKK6Q5kHBlM
Sky News Australia
Victorian doctors argue the lockdown is ‘causing more harm than good’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XunhpcchiLA
Victorian surgeon Dr Geoffrey Wells says a growing number of doctors in the state believe the lock-down is “causing more harm than good”.
Is he going to be the next one locked up then?
It appears to have affected their police. They are verging on Nazi SS style.
Lots of information from Sky News Australia on Youtube.
Tests conducted per confirmed case ratio is basically the same over the last few months, confirming that the increased ‘cases’ are just due to increased tests. For the UK, the ratio is around 1%, which funnily enough is pretty much what the PCR false positive test rate is.
//:0 https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&year=latest&time=2019-12-31..2020-09-07&country=ESP~GBR®ion=World&testsPerCaseMetric=true&interval=smoothed&hideControls=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc
Apparently the 1000+ positive results in Germany are ALL within the false positive ratio.
Hello,
agree with what you say if these politicians had drawn themselves a decision tree with false positives and false negatives even with a 98% accuracy you would find out of two positives only one would actually be infected. I know it doesn’t make sense but that’s how unreliable these tests are. I’ve heard of people whose partner had symptoms but tested negative while they had no symptoms but tested positive. In the last century H.G.Wells said the citizens of the future would be able to think statistically as yet we as race have yet to achieve that. This is why lockdown occurred as their over estimated deaths and infections and why they in a panic. In those countries like Sweden and experts like Carl Henneghan we should look for inspiration to fight covidiots like Hancock etc.
The guidance is missing how many maximum duplicates are allowed. The more you duplicate the sample, the higher the chance of a false positive. Very disappointed. Still wishy washy procedures with no-one taking responsibility or charge.
N hs Louise Hampton (New) – NHS Whistleblower
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JpqAa25uZ0
2nd time this is posted today by yourself. You must’ve posted this hundreds of times on here now. Stop the f*cking spam!
Thanks for sharing this – I hadn’t seen her updated video before.
Viral Issue Crucial Update Sept 8th: the Science, Logic and Data Explained!
Ivor Cummins
The ultimate update on our viral issue, bar none – Sept 8th 2020 . Get educated guys and gals – or gkeep your head in the sand while your errant leaders destroy society around you… 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvFhIFzaac
More spam!
I’m watching it right now, thanks
Studies show hydroxychloroquine cuts ‘virus mortality in half in high risk groups’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKK6Q5kHBlM
Sky News Australia
Yet even more spam, copied for the 2nd time today in just 30 posts this morning!
Must be nice to have nothing else to do than count the posts here.
You shouldn’t give yourself an up-tick. It makes you look desperate.
TOBY
I thought you were very restrained, Toby
Great rant Toby
Toby made excellent points and well done to Dan for letting him speak.
You were great, Toby – told it like it is. And Dan let you, which was also good.
Good on you!!!
Of course if any of these people die of anything withing the next 28 days they will be counted as dying “with Covid” whatever the cause of death.
**********
2nd time you’ve posted this too. Why do you keep doing this?
Because it bears repeating. Every day. To everyone.
If you’re bored – why don’t you try to formulate some sort of argument of your very own? Do you think you could do that?
Interestingly, I had a look at the test dates of the 2,460 reported. Of those, nearly 500 are over a week old. What do we think that a sample over 7 days old tells us in terms of the progress of a not very serious virus?
Where do we find the test dates please? I’ve been looking at the government’s coronavirus dashboard today but could only see the date the test was processed – certainly helps to contextualise it with test date if that is available…
Can’t we find some superhero hacker that can inject a live LS broadcast over the BBC feed and have Mr Young let fly? There must be somebody out there!
I’m usually ready with some wit or wisdom – sometimes both – but I’m finding it hard to even comprehend what you all are going through over there in the UK. The idiots running things are simply out of control and doubling down on policies that have been DD’d to death already. Every day the absurdity is topped by another layer of measures that baffle the logical minds here.
I feel bad sitting here in Canada with my feet up and enjoying a mask free existence while you all are subject to such…jeez I don’t even want to use a nice big word for it…it’s just bulls**t at every turn. Love you all, keep up the good fight!!
I have that same feeling. I am Dutch, but know quite a lot of Brits personally including family. And my God, the Brits have been so much more terrorized by their government (and still are!) than we (the Dutch) have been these past 6 months. The level of histrionics in the UK are beyond ridiculous. I know a lot of Dutch people (like me!) being angry about the sheer incompetence by the Dutch government to grasp that we are effectively looking at some nasty flu type disease, but we have for instance no mask requirements (except in public transportation, which is also therefore still at less than 50% passenger numbers).
The reason why Belgium was mentioned in today’s update by Toby is clear to me: the Belgian government (and their version of PHE/SAGE) have gone just as mental as the Brits! And even weirder: the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, Flanders, is the insane part, while the French speaking part, Wallonia, is now turning skeptical very rapidly. I wonder: is there such a divide in Canada as well?
Thanks for your concern Willem, I don’t know about other parts of the UK but around here you can spend most of the working day more or less unaware of Covid/lockdown except for the masks, newspaper headlines (I don’t actually buy them) and ‘news’ reports on the Radio which I listen to for research purposes only ( know thyne enemy ).
But with last nights news seems things are about to change for the worse especially as our friendly neighbourhood Coppers seem to have morphed into Cybercop Goons stomping on legal dissent with impunity. I can feel my attitude to the government changing from benign disdain to outright hostility.
I have visited your Country many times, each one a happy experience in many different ways and wish you well.
Hi Willem
do you know if there was any come back on that Dutch policeman who hit the lady with his baton? I think it was back in June.
I really wanted to visit Amsterdam with my children but if it’s the kind of place where baton wielding maniacs can smack up middle aged women with handbags for no apparent reason with impunity I will give it a miss.
Dutch government might want to think about possible impact on its tourist trade if it allows shit like this to go down. I haven’t forgotten about it.
thanks!
As far as I know that particular police officer never got into trouble. However, the group organizing that demonstration (now called “Viruswaarheid” or “Virus Truth”) did create a lot of buzz around that type of behaviour, it seems it has since become a lot less. Take for instance Amsterdam: even when there were (during August) mandatory mouth caps in a few small areas of Amsterdam (yep, just a few streets, nothing more, see maps in this page from city website) local police and such didn’t really gave people fines until just the last few days of that month. You could see that even they didn’t care, in other words didn’t believe in it. And now even that silly period is over. It turned out that those few streets with the mandatory mouth caps lost a lot of customers, even when the rest of the shops all over the country including Amsterdam did see an uptick of shoppers (there too still not at pre-March levels of course, but much better than in mandatory mouth cap areas). Towards the end of August the shops and marketeers (one street was a daily market) even started a court case against the city because… Read more »
Thank you for that last sentence, I’ve had one or two interactions with Amsterdams Police, all very polite.
The Amsterdam Police:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSZLGAuJTLQ
Back when things were funny.
Thank you very much for the insights! Much appreciated.
I am also considering Venice as now might be the time to go without giant cruise ships clogging up the place. I have never been but I will not bother if it is a dystopian nightmare with a downtrodden populace.
Little more research required…
Don’t research by watching ‘Death In Venice’, it’s set during a cholera epidemic.
Went to Venice at the end of July. Very few people. A joy to be there.
Odd you should talk about Venice, because that is exactly what some Dutch including me were talking about just today: going to Venice! It seems everybody is now wondering “what if I go to place XYZ now, it won’t be overcrowded”…
We in the UK haven’t been nearly as terrorized as the poor souls in Melbourne, or Victoria generally.
Where are you sitting in Canada? I’m sitting in Montreal.
Langley, BC
Cheers Richard!
“The changes will apply . . . in venues such as pubs and restaurants”.
So they are expected to survive with just six people indoors including staff. Jesus H Christ johnson has gone completely fucking insane.
I have looked but cannot see the detail of how this is going to work? I sort of get the impression that it is directed at suppressing family life and trying to stop people having crowded social gatherings in their houses. But I cannot see how this will work in pubs?
The Government’s callous disregard for family life in all this hoo-haa has been shocking.
Presumably this gives the filth the excuse to go barging into any house they choose without a warrant on the grounds that a CoronoCrime might be in progress ?
Like Australia.
I don’t think they ever cared. Governments and the public sector are never there to serve – its basically a hotbed for people who either have Hitler and Stalin complexes or are not good enough to get jobs in the private sector or want to be paid a lot for doing little.
The damage these insane policies are doing to people and especially children will come home to roost in the form of divorce, breakups, increase in addiction and violence, greater mental health issues and suicide. Children especially are being betrayed and the adults currently responsible for the kiddies should be careful – once the kids twig what’s being done to them, when they grow up they will extract revenge via care homes and finances.
Parents, teachers, heads – you have been warned.
It’s (obviously) directed at suppressing freedom, no more, no less.
Breakup of the nuclear family. Part of the plan.
I’d be fairly sure that this applies to gatherings of 6 per party in a pub or restaurant, not to total capacity. I will leave it to your judgement whether that makes a nonsense of the whole bloody thing anyway.
Got it now, the current limit of 6 per party/group is currently advice, law from Monday so not a lot different really
It is not clear what a group is: Sitting at the same table? Talking to each other? If the Gestapo raid the venue how can they prove you are a group of 8 not two adjacently seated groups of 4 if there is a gap between tables?
The Gestapo never needed to prove anything
In my early 20 when in my local I would know about half a dozen from school, twenty or so others that I went to parties or rock concerts with and be on ‘hello’ terms with everyone else in the pub.
How big was.my group ?
With hindsight that was one of the things I liked best about that time in my life, the knowledge that I could go to a particular pub and be certain of meeting someone I knew and liked and would enjoy spending time with.
Maybe he always was insane and we just didn’t notice. Psychopaths are good at hiding their true selves.
Surely it means no groups bigger than six in pubs and restaurants. So you might have 50 people in a pub but all in groups 6 or smaller?
Where are the good men when you need them, they are all in Parliament and around the country letting this car crash continue. Johnson, Hancock and friends need to go, they have been compromised big time, this virus is a smokescreen, keep everyone distracted about a virus doing basically nothing.
Possibly to draw attention away from the the Brexit negotiations train wreck?
Britain is being bankrupt in revenge for Brexit. Look at how happy sturgeon is barefaced lying everyday to Scottish people while the country burns.
Nero with a brogue.
https://www.wikihow.com/Talk-With-a-Scottish-Accent
Hilarious. On your reading it would be called cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Bigger than that.
Another reader posted this consultation document for the covid-19 vaccine lat week, I think it is worth another look as the prospect of a “second wave” looks ever more likely. There have been some concerns that governments would rush through licensing without adequate safety testing – we could only hope ! This document is seeking views on proposals to roll it out without even waiting for a licence ! “If there is a compelling case, on public health grounds, for using a vaccine before it is given a product licence, given the nature of the threat we face” . Don’t worry, they go on to assure us, ‘unlicensed’ does not mean ‘untested’ “the licensing authority may consider that the balance of risk and benefit to patients justifies the temporary supply of the relevant vaccine pending the issue of a product licence.” Considering the current risk of dying from Covid is practically zero for anyone under 60, and the recent testing of the Moderna vaccine, for example, produced side effects in 100% of testers (80% being very serious) how can this risk be justifiable? Well, we are now used to the tricks governments use to increase the numbers. If we continue to to focus our energy on politicians’ every decision and view their actions as… Read more »
I think the truth is that in some chink of. their tiny stunted little minds, the cretins who oppress us want to get out. They want it all not to have happened. Like someone who’s just crashed his car, entirely by his own fault, wishing he hadn’t made that avoidable mistake, wishing the car could be miraculously put back together again.
And the only way that can happen, they think, is by magic. And the magic is the vaccine. Because they dare not admit to the mistake.
So let’s inject everybody with a drop of distilled water, pretend it’s a vaccine, Get a new car, and pretend that it’s the old one and we never crashed it.
Spot on Annie, I’ve thought for a while that johnson is like a naughty schoolboy standing outside the Headmasters Office refusing to admit his offence, but the longer he does so the greater retribution he will face.
I don’t think there’ll be any retribution. This smokescreen is an international effort. Anyone who challenges what they’re doing is a “headbanger” and places themselves outside society’s “shared reality”. We’re in a nightmare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZeaCohfWsY
Alice Cooper
Like Ted Kennedy.
I won’t be taking their poxy vaccine, tested, licenced or not.
A pox on them! All of them!
Many clergy are wondering whether this will apply to churches. Exemptions apply to funerala and weddings but normal Sunday services are not mentioned.
Why schools and not universities? What about Alcoholics Anonymous and other support groups?
As recent infections are mainly in the 15-44 years group, they probably did not think about churches.
Just had an email from my vicar confirming church services were taking place and I read this on the BBC website.
“Similarly, places of worship may remain open but with a limit of six people attending per group.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51506729
That is the understanding of our church, which has very many 15-44 year olds..
Noticed a comment underneath a Youtube video: “Dandruff has killed millions. Anyone dying of heart disease, cancer etc who died “with” dandruff as a contributing factor shall be deemed to have died of dandruff.” The answers were also quite good: “and to think there is a cure in the form of a special anti-dandruff shampoo that you can get at ANY supermarket, but do they tell you that ? noooo they don’t.” “get stuffed my 102 yr old gran father died from dandruff. just wait untill it effects your family and tell me its still a joke.” That last line made me think. The other day there was a woman claiming on some Youtube comment she had had 3 deaths in the family. THREE. Even 1 in one family is (statistically) rare! I asked her if she had poisoned her family members and was trying to hide it through COVID-19. Never got an answer of course, but then realized that actually that would nowadays be indeed the perfect crime: kill whomever in your family who has tested positive for COVID-19 (in the last 28 days) and they will be registered as COVID-19 deaths. No deaths registered as murders equals no… Read more »
Somewhere there will be an expensive PR firm tasked with presenting 20+ daily suicides as Dandruff Deaths.
I am quite sure that the CV-19 death that was actually murder will become a crime fiction trope for many years to come.
Pity the nurse looking after Boris Johnson didn’t think of that.
Note to police: It’s a joke! Please don’t come storming into my house… it’s just a joke…
Did you use a VPN and a Tor browser and did you destroy all digital traces after posting that particular comment? YOU DIDN’T?! Well, good luck finding some Head & Shoulders in prison…
Joking ist verboten!
But I suspect there were many inner nods as your post was read.
Do we know if the deaths were “with dandruff” or “from dandruff”?
Never mind the cheap and readily available “shampoo” you speak of – I demand the expensive, DNA-altering untested dandruff vaccine!
#WHOcares
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/oscars-2019-lacked-luster-stars-who-cares/
2019 Oscars.
Doing nothing would reveal the truth about the virus – it is gone. Over. It never was all that great a threat. The country has been trashed for no good reason.
Doing ‘something’ – the more drastic the better – conceals the truth. I think it was in April or May there was a podcast (one of Toby’s?) where someone said that the spouse of a minister had let slip that a second national lockdown was planned for October.
The country is being run by criminals.
Many people seem convinced we are about to be enfungeled by a tumultuous second wave that will leave us all dying in the streets. The catch 22 is that if we do not now get a second wave they can claim it was because they had the foresight to take these drastic measures.
It is as if they know it is all over and they know the vaccine work is in trouble and so they are doing this now so that they can later claim a great victory and that it is all over because of their actions. And many people will believe them and hail them as heros and vote for them again. I see the cunning hand of Dominic Cummings behind all this.
If we imagine they will ever be held accountable, perhaps through some mythical ‘public inquiry’, I think we will be disappointed. It is clear to me that the greatest brains in the world cannot convey to the man in the street (or inquiry) what is going on. The more people like Carl Heneghan or Sunetra Gupta talk, the more they can be portrayed as “headbangers” (as a Guardian writer put it yesterday).
I think an expression in the Guardian the other day describes this: most of society has a “shared reality”, and it is formed primarily through interaction with the media.
Although, in the papers where the balance seems to be shifting towards more sceptical pieces, it’s notable that the comments turned sceptical before the articles did. The guardian may think that they can create a reality for us (and no doubt the bulk of their readership is smugly lapping it up, while feeling quite breathless about how virtuous they are) but for the great majority of the country, they are wrong. People are beginning to realise that something’s up and they are beginning to get annoyed.
I hope you’re right, but the headlines this morning are all hysterical. Typical examples:
Safe Six: So You Think Covid’s Over? Think Again.
(The Metro)
The Government’s Warning System is Flashing Red
(BBC)
The headlines will continue to be excitable whenever there’s an excuse to be excitable – especially on the BBC and in the Groan – but fewer and fewer people are being taken in. I can feel it happening, I can see it in the comments sections online, I can hear it in overheard conversations and I can tell because nobody ever disagrees anymore when I start a sentence with “the whole thing’s bullshit and government are a complete #@%& shower.”
I’m afraid that’s not true for The Times btl comments, there are very many that are bedwetters and insisting that people are selfish, selfish, selfish if they don’t wear a mask, or if they have a party or do anything at all that the government forbids. It’s a terrible newspaper, but my husband kind of likes it and won’t let me cancel the subscription, but reading the comments is a depressing and disheartening experience. I feel I have to monitor it from time to time though, to find out if people are turning into sceptics…from today’s reading few are.
Such conflicts. A bit more measured this
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54064347
Then this: 83% of excess deaths in Scotland due to CV-19 (of Covid/with Covid who cares eh?)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54085694
Accountability in this context means the Tory Party ceasing to be an electoral force, and the Labour Party failing to make any gain from its current low base. It means political realignment.
Well overdue.Dead parties who represent no one and don’t reflect how the country has changed
Oxford vaccine Programme suspended, R4 news, 8am.
Sorry if it’s common knowledge but news to me.
Very much new news. And big news. One immediately suspects that they are seeing disease enhancement, which led to all attempts to create a vaccine for SARS and MERS being abandoned. One patient falling ill? Has to be more than that. The US gave over a billion dollars to AstraZeneca (which is the Oxford vaccine). The UK bought at least 70m doses at I don’t know what cost (nearly a billion?) We could easily see several billion going down the drain, when you add in all the other countries who ‘advance purchased’.
Still never mind, the UK Govt has bought at least another five candidates!
Strangely, it was probably the least dangerous vaccine when you compare it to the various RNA and DNA candidates that turn one into a GMO.
Frankenstein’s monster.
There is a cat disease, FIP caused by a corona virus. Most infections cause a mild digestive upset, a handful progress to FIP and are usually fatal. There have been attempts to create a vaccine but although cats never exposed to the virus were fine, those that had had a mild version of the virus became seriously ill. We need to know nothing like this would happen in a human vaccine before giving it to people.
A billion here, a billion there….pretty soon it’s starts. To look like serious money….😜
They will never get my vote. Ever.
The government are putting themselves in a win win situation as they see it.
If there is no “second wave” they keep hyping up doesn’t occur. It will be thanks to all their warnings and restrictions.
If it does materialise well it won’t be their fault – it will be down to selfish buggers like me sen who’ve striven to live like a normal human being.
Dominic Cummings; who also has his man in charge of the Brexit non-negotiations, and is also deciding the outcome of the defence review.
And the third wave? Merry Christmas.
Boris must go#
Civil Disobedience #
Johnsonmustgo#
I thought that the hashtag is at the front?
Fuck knows. 🙂 I just get nauseated by ‘Boris’, as if he were our mate.
I agree. Doing something to appear like they are managing the virus and not get found out that nothing needed doing in the first place is to me the most plausible explanation for all this.
There is plenty of material here for a great detective story. Unfortunately this is not fiction.
Gatherings of 6 or more banned in the U.K. after more people died of Flu this week than Coronavirus.
Ten times more people, in fact, died of flu/pneumonia last week than succumbed to the not-so deadly CV-19.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/it-s-time-for-the-nhs-to-get-back-to-work
https://off-guardian.org/2020/09/08/covid-19-scamdemic-part-2/
Yesterday the local council sent me its latest public consultation questionnaire on ‘experiences in recent covid pandemic
Respondents’ suggestions and opinions sought in the final question:
I doubt whether my short sharp suggestions will be welcomed by the covid control planners.
Excellent articles, should be read by everyone
Every single person on this site needs to write to their MP begging them not to extend the Co Vid Act – would stop this in its tracks if MPs would vote against any extension
Are they voting about anything, laws seem to be going through without any parliamentary scrutiny and my MP doesn’t reply now, are they still working for the people or just taking the salary
All 600 plus MP’s will vote to extend it anyway.
I think you’ll find that virtually everyone on here has written to their MP multiple times, makes f*ck all difference.
They only have to look around London,still empty with many businesses still shuttered and closed.
Same here, no sign of my local MP. Seems to just be hiding behind here staff on responses to letters and emails, and the odd tweet.
Taking a leaf from the warmist playbook, the latest graph in The Mail Online lumps past fatalities and present “cases” together as “infections”.
The graph resulting from this fraudulent conflation implies an imminent tsunami.
My MP has not acknowledged receipt of the letter in which I ask him to vote against renewal of the Act on 26th September.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8711477/Dont-panic-Ten-reasons-fear-second-wave-coronavirus.html
I thought the mail’s output was quite sceptical
Agree, I did it last night.
Are people able to share their letters so that there are ready made templates? I know people have shared previously but cannot see that these are stored anywhere? It would to quote some up to date pertinent stats.
I believe the Keep Britain Free website has templates.
You’re living in the past. We don’t have a parliamentary democracy any more, I’m afraid. We are in a soft dictatorship. (This is no exaggeration. I include”soft” to be accurate.)
They are still hard boiling the egg. Us.
It goes like this. Faux negotiation. Tories ask for 2 years extension, Labour push back and give 6 to 12 months. Everyone wins. We continue to inflict untold horrors on a nation
Don’t beg, demand. Or you might lose your seat in the next election.Or sooner than that.
The way things are going, there won’t be any more elections. The Cabinet have effectively performed a coup.
I’ve said this below, KH, but I’m fairly sure that what they’re doing is banning groups of more than 6, not imposing a total capacity of 6 on venues. That is – no more than 6 at a single table. In fact, I think the”guidance” already said this, but this proposes to bring it into law and impose fines.
It’s still mind-bogglingly insane, but it is at least not going to impact pubs and cafes etc (except that it puts an upper limit on the size of a table).
I would say not only insane, but completely unenforceable
Yes, right on both points.
I’m just looking forward to the footage of a dad being pepper sprayed when two families of 4 meet in a play park.
Ay up, we’re all equal now. Surely they’d pepper spray a mum first ?
I wish it was unenforceable but pound to a penny local councils will try their best to enforce it. For 6 months my son has been forced to train in a park, uncoached, with a small group of friends because the council closed the outdoor track to prevent groups of kids and others gathering in one place. It opened last night for the club with restrictions. I am now almost certain they will shut it again. The restrictions last night included no long jump pits (cos they can’t disinfect sand – I’m not making this up), no high jump or pole vault because of the impracticalities of disinfecting the landing mats.
i effing give up. Curfews next and we will do nothing.
How hard would it be for ‘someone’ to re-enable access to the track, Rr ?
I think there is also going to be some sort of complex,probably unintelligible, rule with regard to household and household bubbles (whatever they are?) where there are 6 or more people in the household already. So when the police break in to your family gathering they will need to see your family tree, birth certificates etc.
I suspect they will be relying on people to snitch on each other, which they will do. As a lady said to me in the village the other day, this has brought out all the little hitlers!
No problem. I haven’t actually seen the legislation yet. Sorry, strike that – I haven’t actually read Matt Hancock’s twitter feed, yet, but I’d be surprised if this wasn’t what they’re doing.
We had a couple of weeks away recently – for the first week, we were with my mother and a couple of friends (so, we were 7) and the second week with some different friends and their kids (so, 8). We found that many places wouldn’t seat us together for dinner because the guidance said 6. I think this is “just” mandating that guidance and imposing a fine.
Also, KH, my reading so far is that the individual is liable, not the venue (as with the mask mandate) so if your customers want to sit in larger groups, I don’t think you need to stop them.
I may be wrong. I’ll look at the actual wording once it’s published.
Completely understand the hair trigger, KH. And no problem at all.
Gosh, it’s that intelligent virus again, isn’t it? It strikes in people’s homes but not in pubs, restaurants or cinemas!
Plus it can count!!!!
Correct, it was explained by the nice lady on R2 7am news.
AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine: Huge setback for Australia’s hopes
https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/health/shock-setback-in-vaccine-australia-bought/news-story/1a5ed8bef2d58f840b71da8a135ac814
Transverse myelitis, apparently.
Just after having signed a safety pledge too. Knowing how these things work, it’s highly likely AZ would have known about the reaction before the pledge was issued. But there is no way they couldn’t have signed it, when all the other vaccine manufacturers had. That would have looked even more suspect.
Very good points.
Anyone want to believe this is what is happening, an agreement which is not mandatory but being implemented, Agenda 21 is a UN plan to deprive nations of their sovereignty, and individuals of their property rights. On the fringes of the right, a benign agreement encouraging social and environmental stewardship became a disguised attempt to impose global communism on free citizens.
The Great Reset, people still dont understand what it means and what the zealots in this country are doing.
Whether planned or opportunistic, that is pretty much what is happening.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/do-face-masks-work-8-peer-reviewed-studies/5723124
They do work!
They are very effective at killing a democracy and at INCREASING viral and bacterial infections.
Including Corona, as the virus load increases in an asymptomatic person through their use, turning him into a symptomatic and infective one thereby alone.
Which is why Sweden, DK&co do not even have a casedemic problem currently, but why the UK, F, D&co do and will continue to have it.
So, the only reason for not abolishing mandating or even better for not prohibiting facemasks is, if a government wants to continue to see the Corons virus spreading.
Masks are being using to achieve herd immunity. With the uproar back in March when we were going down the herd immunity route, what better way than to implement masks which people think protect them but which spread infection three times more than no face mask at all (this taken from the CEBM paper into the 7 face mask studies since the 2009 Swine Flu).
Yep.
And everyone should be able to understand that, after the NYT article about the PCR tests and the importance of viral load for infectivity it demonstrated was punlished.
I am now afraid. Not of the virus but of my government who seem to have the evil intent of destroying the country economically, socially and medically. For a virus that is now not even a bad flu season. Based on faulty “science” . We are being led by psychopaths and morons
Every country gets the government it deserves.
If only they pledge in their manifesto’s “If there’s a random pandemic that is effectively harmless to 99.99% of the population, this is what we will do…”
All you hear on the BBC is:
“Infections are rising.”
“Do you think we should have a cerfew? asked with glee”
Post 1. How many more times will we see this today?
I thought you might enjoy it a second time, in German, back to front
„Denkst du, wir sollten eine Ausgangssperre haben? fragte vor Freude “
“Infektionen steigen.”
Alles, was Sie auf der BBC hören, ist:
Spamtastic!
Mein Rat ist; Hör auf, der verdammten BBC zuzuhören!
I still don’t buy that the government is participating in a global grand plan, but I now absolutely think we’re past the point where their actions can be put down to mere incompetence. The extent to which they are still trying to manipulate the situation to cover their backsides and are prepared to take absolutely everyone and everything down with them is now comfortably into the territory of psychopathic.
I’ve been saying for a while now that the only way that they can still be seen to act in the people’s interest and in good faith is if they know of something really bad upcoming, which they can’t or don’t want to tell us about in order to prepare better for it.
Like an asteroid hitting Earth or so.
There is no other explanation and excuse left.
That’s the conspiracy theory I’ve been hearing from lockdownistas for months. “It’s worse than they’re telling us.” It’s the only way supporters can make it all add up.
How would the measures they’ve imposed help in the event of an asteroid impact?
I suppose it would assist in the cultivation of resignation in the final hours. The bad news is, we’re going to be wiped out by an asteroid. The good news is, at least you don’t have to put up with any more of this Covid B.S..
Maybe Covid came from an Asteroid? Or a comet?
What they did in Leicester,where they ramped up testing then used the results to lock down the city,they have replicated nationwide.They know there wasnt a corresponding rise in deaths and hospitalisations in Leicester.This is malign intent there can be no other rationale.
Yes. Nobody could be that incompetent. Therefore it is being stage-managed. If it is not part of a grand plan, then how else do you understand it?
“Nobody could be that incompetent.”
I beg to differ. One of the reasons for limiting the powers of government is precisely that governments are made up of humans, and humans can cause spectacular damage even without being particularly evil.
And furthermore, emotion (especially fear) negates reasoning, rendering any amount of personal intelligence and education non-functional..
Universities in the U.S. are implementing contact and tracing measures already.
They have completely dismpowered the actual government and are following the advice of the nudge unit. There is nothing incompetent about this. It’s being very effectively stage-managed.
Yes, I think that, as many have pointed out before, it is not unlikely at all that many governments around the world are now just cynically trying to keep the fear level up to make it seem like the destruction of the economy was justified and they are simply trying to buy time to come up with some way to get out of this because they know that if they just came out and told the truth all that fear in the population could easily to turn to anger on the scale we have not seen in recent history – and they are scared.
Do they think that the vaccines will help boost the economy? What if everybody dies or is rendered incapable of working?
Was thinking about this while watching John Edmunds’ spectacularly bedwetting performance on ITN the other night. The man’s neither particularly stupid nor I think necessarily the kind of actor he’d have to be to pretend all that. Nor can I see any reason to suppose he’s personally corrupt, at least in the obvious sense.
These people mostly, I think, have committed themselves to an understanding of reality that is just about rationalisable, but is diverging increasingly from the observed evidence, but they just cannot bring themselves to admit that they were wrong on such a vital matter.
Particularly ironic for Edmunds, who has already made one switch of sides on the issue.
I don’t think it’s irrelevant, either, that they see the matter as nasty right-wing brexit types, with whom they would prefer not to be associated, versus decent upstanding establishment respectability.
The global grand plan is psychopathy at its finest.
I’m tempted to think that, but then I look at France, Spain, Italy, Germany, etc. etc. It is a symptom of a much wider problem: global guardians with magic money.
The global guardians are the leaders of the global psychopathy.
I have been afraid since mid March. Not of the virus, but of governments, almost worldwide.
On the bright side, the whole thing will be over after Christmas in the UK, as Johnson’s sole concern always was, is and will be to make the upcoming, now even illegal, no-deal Brexit look as good as possible.
I hope they don’t bring in a curfew down here. Otherwise I’ll have to go out walking late at night. I need my sleep!
Absolutely, I don’t normally go out after 10pm but if it’s made illegal then I’ll do it every day!
Our old police station custody suite had a dozen cells, the new one has eighty, just sayin’.
Do you get tea and biscuits?
Horlicks before bed time?
I’m afraid the BBC, and others, are engaged in a deception when they talk about “cases”. We are much too mild in our criticism. It’s not just that positive tests may not be reliable. It is that a positive test is not a “case” at all. The word is designed to elide between the symptoms and the test result.
Look at it this way. After a vaccine, everyone will test positive. So how will they know if anyone has the disease? They will all be asymptomatic “cases”.
The BBC has form on this. If they reported that positive tests are rising but no-one is going to hospital, then everyone would immediately conclude that the test is not much use. By calling it a “case” they imply the disease, without saying so. “Positive tests are rising but no-one has symptoms” doesn’t have quite the same propaganda value.
Exactly, politicians,journalists and officialdom have in the main failed to understand science and tend to either ignore it or accept everything the experts say without question. Peter Hitchens has pointed out the extreme failure of journalism over this virus hoo-haa. Why has no journalist sought to question this whole testing business?
Why has nobody challenged the current concept that test results alone should determine public health policy, as far as I am aware this is quite unprecedented?
Sloppy terminology that fails to differentiate between SARS-Cov2 test results, infections and actual medical cases of Covid19 has only helped fuel the hysteria.
Boris Johnson still looks ill, Hapless Hancock looks increasingly manic and the blinkered hysterical views of SAGEare accepted and implemented. They have created Frankenstein and now do not know what to do with him?
The hospital stats for COVID-19 yesterday were 757 in hospital in the UK, with only 77 of these being serious enough for the patient to be on ventilation. As there’s been 32,274 cases in the last 21 days in the UK, surely if this was a serious 2nd wave then we would be seeing thousands admitted into hospital each day like the 4,000 at the peak at the beginning of April. As it it only around 100 people per day are being admitted, and as there is only 757 people still in hospital they’re being discharged pretty quickly.
Much of the public believe that the hospital cases and deaths are coming in the next week or two. If there is any thought behind this it is that Dominic Cummings has realised that there is no second wave and thus they will look stupid and so they have done this so that when no second wave happens, they can say it was because they took this drastic action. They can then proclaim themselves the great victors.
But they can be held to what they’ve just done.
Mr. Hancock et al should be asked now what they expect the seven day mortality rate will be at the end of the month.
If it transpires to be way above the figure which materialises it will show they have panicked.
For any prediction to be near or below the figure that materialises, my guess is the predicted increase will have to be very modest – certainly not the same rate of increase as there has been with “cases” – and theretofore not one they will want to give as it doesn’t suit their message.
Well the BBC are reporting something to that effect now. Although with no balls to call it what this is.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54064347
Newspeak in the 21st Century.
Will read all the comments and Toby’s summary later. Just woke to the news of the restricted gatherings. So it looks like the round Reading heritage walk I booked next week as part of Heritage Days now won’t go ahead, it is already limited to 10 participants but is all outside. I imagine our hoped for church services will also now be cancelled and our first radio club meeting tonight the last. This government (not even government, it is not even a cabinet decision) has totally lost its way..
I am hopping mad at this latest insanity from Hancock. Just sent the following to my MP.
This latest insanity from Matt Hancock must be opposed. He is destroying lives and businesses for no reason.
More people are dying in car accidents than are due to Covid.
The number of people who have died due to lockdown (due eg to suspension of normal health care, cancer diagnosis and treatment etc). than have died from Covid.
Parliament has the power to put an end to this.
Got my grammar scrambled, but just shows how mad I am.
Don’t kill grammie!
“Don’t kill your grammar” would have been funnier. Don’t you hate people who do that?, he said, getting coat and running 🙂 🙂
Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks. Bad Grammar Baby.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEDrbq_ZRFg
Waking up to find the insanity has suddenly got worse is a depressing experience. Boris plainly does not understand the damage he has done to the mental and physical health of the people of this country. The use of curfews is really chilling , straight out of North Korea and Victoria.
A quick perusal of the news from the southern hemisphere indicates to me the madness of the sham medical police state overseas. . New Zealand has bulk bought hundreds of ventilators ! ( So March 2020 ) ” We must have ventilators ! ”
The Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Victoria has recommended making your own bed first thing in the morning to improve your mental anguish . I suppose it is as useful as face masks. !
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12362816
Airing a bed is by leaving the covers pulled down all morning is better for your health, or so my grandmother who lived healthily into her 90’s taught me.
On the whole, ventilators did not work very well. That fact was exposed in April or May 2020.
NZ locked down so successfully it clearly wasn’t aware of that – or it’s bought a job lot of all the ones the other countries soon realised were surplus to requirements …..
Good question. Many people are still asleep and believe the hullabaloo about “cases” and the “second wave” narrative. It does make one feel despair.
I’m beginning to wonder if even the threat of losing jobs and bankruptcy will wake people up.
Agree. Add also scientifically illiterate as well.
If we had the testing capacity that we do now back in March/April, the ‘spikes’ we’re seeing now would be dwarfed by the likely hundreds of thousands of cases we would have found, both symptomatic and supposedly asymptomatic. We were also only testing ostensibly sick people, so the thousands of cases we had back in March/April were just the tip of the iceberg. I imagine the waters were muddied by every single hospital patient getting tested rather than just those with Covid symptoms, as well as false positives, but the point still stands. Now, asymptomatic young people are being tested in their droves when previously it was just sick people. So now the government is being plainly dishonest in imposing more restrictions and not even following ‘the science’ anymore. The 3000 cases we saw over the weekend were a totally different sample to the 3000 we saw a day at the end of May, and the net is also cast much wider now due to increased testing capacity. I find it utterly astonishing that the government isn’t putting these new ‘case’ figures into their scientific context to reassure the frightened public that this isn’t the beginning of a second wave,… Read more »
Don’t pass it on to granny? Like all the years we had the flu?
It’s a mark of stupidity saying that.
But as for the government being rational and led by science, they’ve been using “the science” to push their climate agenda for over a decade. The Met Office with its temperature anomaly chart allowed to be used like a national standard when it is pure speculation.
This hasn’t changed in years. These people have no concept of how to apply science to the real world yet would get annoyed if their cars, food, phones developed faults that may be dangerous.
Only an ideology can drive that blindness.
What’s interesting here is the Blade Runner effect – he who burns the brightest burns the least. We have a clear as day public record because of all the virture signalling, of just how bad they’ve got it wrong.
Provided we survive this that’s their legacy. It is up to us and others to take advantage of this
When has the Gov ever been concerned about saving Granny and Grandad? Just think of how many Grannies and Granddads they have killed or let die over the years who have died from poverty, loneliness, not being afforded medical treatment based on age, neglect, abuse in care home, and not to mention Harold Shipman and the many similar cases that have gone under the radar.
Dead right. Look at the way they grumbled about the cost of care for the elderly. Kill ’em all off, save the money, blame the young.
Excuse me while I vomit.
Manslaughter at the very minimu.
Didnt the government kill enough grannies themselves when they shipped the infected back to the care homes .
Exactly, they couldn’t give two hoots about granny and granddad back then.
excellent point. Someone should prosecute Hancock for senecide.
Yes but that was to ‘save the NHS’
And transfer all the grannies to the care homes.
Don’t kill the NHS. More important than grannies.
Don’t kill granny!
Carl H made the wonderful point that locking young people up with restrictions during the day will lead to a release of pressure at night.
This is such a good point. If they would open music venuesnand nightclubs and allow bars to operate in a more normal manner, there would be fewer house parties and unlicensed raves. Instead, the clowns threaten pub closures and curfews which will increase big house parties and raves. If young people are supposedly passing it on to each other, might as well do so while supporting nightlife economy and not annoying the neighbours or the police.