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“SAGE is Like a Golfer With a One-Club Strategy” – IDS
Former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP has penned a withering attack on SAGE in the Telegraph, targeting its catastrophically one-dimensional handling of the pandemic.
In the midst of this sits the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage). The normal run of affairs is that advisors advise and ministers decide. Yet with Sage it is different. Though it is a public body, it is one which the like of I have never previously come across.
So much of the advice influencing policy that has changed our lives and livelihoods has come has come from this opaque organisation, which operates behind closed doors and whose members were only officially identified in May after a very public clamour for transparency.
Appointments to it of an estimated 100 scientists and academics appear to be made by the Chief Scientific Officer [Patrick Vallance] and the Chief Medical Officer [Chris Whitty] alone. And yet its “advice” has taken on the character of commandments written on tablets of stone – despite the fact that many of its recommendations are hotly disputed by other reputable scientists with relevant expertise. Meanwhile, when the government does not follow its advice exactly, it immediately publishes its minutes, in what appears to be a nakedly political act.
The search for a way to control the virus without severely damaging the economy and causing life-threatening delays to other vital health treatments is an entirely legitimate one. But – as one scientist put it to me – Sage has fallen prey to a form of groupthink that focuses exclusively on a drive to push down the infection rate to the exclusion of all else.
The problem is that if this one aim becomes the only thing that is discussed and advised on by Sage, we end up like a golfer with a one-club strategy – lockdown.
So, while it was gratifying to see the Prime Minister this week break ranks with the scientific technocracy over what Sage euphemistically calls a “national circuit breaker”, however with London and other places now entering Tier 2 restrictions, the risk is that it could come to be seen as a national lockdown by stealth.
Why, he asks, has more not been done to promote effective treatments, such as rolling out pre-emptive antivirals as part of protecting high-risk groups?
With the average age of death from Covid-19 standing at 82, and fewer than 4% of those who have died of the virus having no known comorbidities, such a policy of prescribing antivirals to members of vulnerable groups would reduce both admissions and deaths. Such a move now could help prevent the need to lock down the economy.
Importantly, in 2012 the Government did this very thing by massively widening the prescription of antivirals in the community to combat the risk of flu.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Antiviral drug remdesivir has been found to have “little or no effect” on the chances of survival of hospitalised COVID-19 patients, according to a WHO clinical trial – although the authors allow it may still work early on or as a prophylactic. According to the Swiss Doctor, the treatments with the best current evidence base are: for prophylaxis and early treatment – Zinc, Quercetin, Bromhexine, Vitamins C & D, and Aspirin (early treatment only); for ancillary treatment – Hydroxychloroquine, High-dose vitamin D, Azithromycin and LMW heparin.
Cases Fall Again
How can the Government justify bringing in new restrictions and continue to warn of “exponential” increases in cases when it is becoming clearer by the day that “cases” are barely rising in most areas? Furthermore, this flattening-off happened before the additional restrictions were put in place, just as the autumn spikes in the North appeared despite the local lockdowns. When will the Government give up its conceit of claiming to control this virus and focus on protecting the vulnerable while the rest of us get back to normal?
Lockdown is Political
We’re not partisan here at Lockdown Sceptics and welcome readers from across the political spectrum. However, it’s hard not to notice that lockdowns seem to have a greater attraction for people on the Left than the Right. We’ve known this for some time, but it’s particularly apparent in the latest polling from Gallup in the USA. To illustrate: a miniscule 4% of Democrat voters say they’re ready to return to normal activities right now compared to a whopping 59% of Republicans. Again: 71.5% of Democrats say they avoid going to public places compared to 34.5% of Republicans. (It’s also apparent that women are much more pro-lockdown than men). Partly this will be a reflection of how partisan the issue has become in America around Trump in an election year. And, of course, Democrats tend to be richer than Republicans so are less likely to be feeling the economic damage. But it has also become increasingly clear that the Left sees the pandemic as an opportunity to drive forward some of its favourite causes, such as disfiguring inner cities with endless bicycle lanes. Something No 10 ought to keep in mind when it listens to the demands of Sage, whose members are overwhelmingly left wing.
A Top NHS Doctor Writes…
We’ve heard again from our friend, the top NHS doctor, whose understanding of what’s going on in NHS England gets deeper by the day.
I’m beginning to understand this latest crap from the medical point of view. The ground truth is that there are very few Covid patients in London hospitals.
More in the north east sector than elsewhere (Barts/Royal London/Newham/North Middlesex, etc.) but certainly not swamped – maybe 5% to 10% of ICU beds but there is no flu around at all this year so far. So that’s a normal upper respiratory case load and as we know ICU capacity can be ramped up very quickly if needed.
There were 82 patients in total in ICU in London on October 15th – half of them not intubated. We have an ICU bed stock of approx 1,500 across the capital, so well within capacity.
The problem – the reason the NHS wants tighter restrictions – relates to how the medical management have ‘organised’ the hospitals.
Instead of designating certain hospitals as ‘dirty’ (‘fever hospitals’) and other sites as ‘clean’ they have instituted a bizarre and complicated traffic light system.
Red means Covid positive; Amber means Covid suspected but swab not back or negative test with Covid clinical signs; Green means Covid negative.
Patients are mixed up all over the place and this may be one reason for the high hospital acquired rate – everyone knows you can’t keep things separate when staff are coming and going or patients have to be moved about the hospital for tests, etc.
So you may be asking why has it been set up like this? Non-medical people assume that the NHS is a cohesive national system. In fact, it is a series of quasi-independent fiefdoms ruled by princelings – especially so in London. There is a vast amount of under-the-counter professional jealousy and rivalry. Essentially no one wants to be the dirty hospital – so there is vast push back, foot dragging and passive resistance to the sensible plan of isolating patients and their carers on one site.
Allied to that, Simon Stevens has decreed that all hospitals have to continue business as usual instead of scrapping non-urgent stuff – again, this is a political thing and exacerbates the problem of in-hospital transmission by having more staff and patients moving around the place.
So the pressure from the NHS for more lockdown is one of convenience not emergency. They are nowhere near approaching overload. They have had five months to sort this out and have completely failed (again).
When medical managers implement a useless plan which is clearly not working, instead of scrapping it early and starting again, they tend to double down and start blaming external factors – a bit like politicians because they are often incapable of shouldering responsibility and terrified of the personal reputational risk. Of course, they are not the ones to suffer. Salaries and final salary pension schemes are still paid by the taxpayer. Lockdown only affects doctors and NHS managers in a positive way. They get to stay at home and have less work to do but still get the same level of remuneration – what’s not to like?
As Charlie Munger says – show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.
“It’s An Absolute Shambles” – ONS Survey Nurse
The Lockdown Sceptics reader who is participating in the ONS’s Covid infection survey and whom we heard yesterday has written an update.
Amazingly, I’ve just had a visit from a lovely nurse. She spent half an hour telling me what an absolute shambles it is. Her husband is trying to get her to give her notice because of how stressful it is. I asked if she’d let me pass on her number, but they’ve been instructed very firmly that they mustn’t speak to anyone in the media and she didn’t dare. But she did say I could tell you what she said.
Some days they’re given nothing to do. Some days, they’re given more than they can possibly do and she ends up working until 10 at night to finish the paperwork. Sometimes they give her some people to see at one side of her two-hour’s driving area and some at the other, so it’s impossible to see them all.
They get their list in the evening and have to see everyone on it they can the next day. No chance to make prior arrangements with them. They’re not allowed to see people at weekends or evenings, so she keeps missing anyone who has children.
People have been promised their results, but no one has been given any at all.
It’s being administered by several private companies and no one knows who’s supposed to be doing what. When she emails about a problem, they never get back to her in time for the answer to be of any use; usually weeks later, always by a different person.
Lots of people, like me, have had lots of missed appointments, but they’re listed on the system as having happened, even though they haven’t.
In the beginning, it all worked reasonably well, but they keep taking on more and more subjects and it’s getting worse and worse. She, and all the subjects are doing their best to make it work, but it’s becoming impossible.
I felt really sorry for her. Whatever data, if any, is coming out of this, it just has to be a steaming pile of poo.
Best Smoked Salmon For Christmas
Bleiker’s Smokehouse in Yorkshire has won the “Best Smoked Salmon for Christmas” accolade from Good Housekeeping. Well-deserved – it’s Toby’s favourite. And don’t forget, salmon is a natural source of Vitamin D which we now know beyond doubt is an effective prophylactic against Covid. Indeed, if the Government had spent 1% of the money it has spent on NHS Track and Trace (£12 billion and counting) on buying smoked salmon from Bleiker’s and distributing it to care homes, we’d likely have far fewer Covid deaths.
Order it here.
Charity Commission Censors Lockdown Sceptic
A reader has written to tell us the shocking story of the Charity Commission threatening a charity trustee who has dared to question the wisdom of lockdowns.
More evidence of attempted censorship of anti-lockdowners, but this time from the Charity Commission.
Yesterday, the Charity Commission sent a threatening email to a small local charity in Norfolk called Hey Jude, which supports people with chronic neurological diseases and cancer.
A week ago, its founder, Dr Henry Mannings, wrote an opinion piece that was published in the regional newspaper Eastern Daily Press and widely shared. In it, he essentially argues along the same lines as the GB Declaration.
The Charity Commission has alleged in its email that the article “could give the impression that Dr Mannings is writing in his capacity as charity trustee”, and warned that although no action will be taken at this time this incident has now been ‘”saved to the charity’s records”, and they may “decide to proactively look into the concerns in future”.
But if you read the article, there is no mention of the charity in the article at all, other than in the caption below the article’s photo, which correctly states that Dr Mannings is the founder of the charity.
But even if he did mention the charity in his article, what on earth has that got to do with the Charity Commission? If it’s verboten for a trustee of a charity to have a point of view on the lockdown and associated measures, why isn’t the Commission censuring those who toe the Government’s line?
Lastly, in case you missed it, note how pernicious the allegation actually is. It wasn’t even that Dr Mannings spoke on behalf of the charity, it was that the article “could give the impression” that he did.
This is a clearly a completely unfounded warning email that has been sent to intimidate Dr Mannings and the charity – the nasty implication being “shut up or the charity may face consequences”.
I would use the word unbelievable but I think I’ve exhausted its use over the last six months.
Round-Up
- “Truth about the claims scaring us all to death: Soaring infections, teeming hospital wards, and terrifying death rates… but do the numbers justifying crippling new lockdowns REALLY stand up to scrutiny?” – A tour de force of Covid myth-busting from Ross Clark in the Mail
- “Crucial Viral Update Oct 15th: Why are the Media Undermining Science and Data?” – Latest from Ivor Cummins
- “London calling… Genghis is working for the clampdown” – Richard Littlejohn in the Mail on the terrible reign of Khan the Destroyer
- “JD Wetherspoon boss attacks COVID-19 restrictions as pub chain slumps to loss” – Tim Martin takes the Government to task for imposing “an ever-changing raft of ill-thought-out regulations” none of which “appears to have any obvious basis in science”, in Yahoo
- “We have to get out of this spiral of authoritarianism” – Brendan O’Neill in spiked calls for some serious dissent
- “Covid suppression strategies will never work for a freedom loving democracy such as Britain” – Jeremy Warner in the Telegraph makes the mistake of thinking it was China’s heavy-handed reaction that rid the country of Covid, even though, as he acknowledges, Japan also saw low impact despite a much lighter touch. In fact, five million people fled Wuhan before the lockdown – some containment. The real source of the East-West difference is much more likely to be pre-existing cross-immunity
- “Covid has killed off our civil liberties” – Blistering attack on the progressive creep of public health regulation that reached its apogee in the Covid pandemic, from Lionel Shriver in the Spectator
- “How likely is the NHS to be overwhelmed by Covid?” – Not likely at all, says Fraser Nelson in the Spectator, although that’s no thanks to ministers telling the NHS not to prepare for a second wave in the winter because test and trace would take care of it
- “Warning of extra cancer deaths after more than 25 million GP appointments lost during pandemic” – More signs of the huge health costs of lockdown in the Telegraph
- “Five per cent of care homes have had no Covid testing of residents” – And 40% of residents were not tested in the last month, despite the Government pledging in July monthly tests for all residents
- “Woke teaching has been a disaster for working class kids” – Excellent piece by Calvin Robinson in the Telegraph criticising the malign role of Critical Race Theory in education in holding back working class children of all ethnic backgrounds
- “Courts overturn 11pm coronavirus curfew for restaurants and pubs in Berlin” – Another legal decision goes the sceptics’ way
- “GDLN Covid-19 webinar – Q&A” – The latest from Professor Ramesh Thakur – former UN panjandrum and one of the most intellectually agile lockdown sceptics – on face masks, rising cases, balancing risks and benefits, population immunity, and the way forward
- “Backing lockdown isn’t proof of caring more” – Good sceptical piece from Janice Turner in the Times. Better late than never Janice!
- “The New Zealand story” – Hector Drummond on the tragedy of a successful ‘Zero Covid’ strategy and the delusions of those who tout it here
- “Jacinda Ardern wins the New Zealand election in a LANDSLIDE” – Depressing news from New Zealand – the toothy tyrant won the election
- “Pandemic disruptions indirectly killed 75,000 more Americans than reported, study says” – Researchers with the Virginia Commonwealth University found that an estimated 75,000 of the 225,000 excess deaths in America between March and July – a third of the total – were caused by the shut downs, not Covid, in the Miami Herald
- “The BMJ Interview: Tim Spector on how data can arm us against COVID-19” – The inventor of the Covid Symptom Study app tells the BMJ there’s almost no evidence of reinfection and he thinks London has reached herd immunity
- “Hitting the panic button will cripple Britain… How DID they turn a crisis into an epidemic of madness?” – Strong and well-argued editorial from the Mail
- “Dead at 31 after her chemo was ‘paused’ due to Covid” – Tragic story of a young woman who couldn’t get critical care from the Covid-only NHS
- Judicial Review of the Coronavirus Act – Fundraiser for a Judicial Review
- “Just 0.05% of healthy under-70s who get COVID-19 will die from the disease, study claims” – As many as that?
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Two today: “Life Is A Risk” by Red Metafor and “Outdoors And Indoors” by The Creams.
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. We have a team of moderators in place to remove spam and deal with the trolls, but sometimes it takes a little while so please bear with us. You have to register to use the Forums, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.
Sharing stories: Some of you have asked how to link to particular stories on Lockdown Sceptics. The answer used to be to first click on “Latest News”, then click on the links that came up beside the headline of each story. But we’ve changed that so the link now comes up beside the headline whether you’ve clicked on “Latest News” or you’re just on the Lockdown Sceptics home page. Please do share the stories with your friends and on social media.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a one-stop shop 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 (takes a while to arrive). 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. And, finally, if you feel obliged to wear a mask but want to signal your disapproval of having to do so, you can get a “sexy world” mask with the Swedish flag on it here.
Don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face masks in shops here.
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: A new preprint study by Dr Colleen Huber and colleagues reviews the evidence on masks and finds “mask use is not correlated with lower death rates nor with lower positive PCR tests” and that due to risks of contamination the “use of face masks will contribute to far more morbidity and mortality than has occurred due to COVID-19”. Worth a read.
Woke Gobbledegook
The new Belgian Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford – which has inspired generations of students with its rag bag of fabulous oddities – doesn’t seem very fond of the institution. Martin Fletcher in the Telegraph has more.
When the museum reopened for the first time since the Covid lockdown last month, visitors were greeted with brightly-coloured new signage warning that the PRM is ‘a footprint of colonialism’; that its labels ‘use language and imagery that is derogatory, racist and Eurocentric’; and that ‘often the interpretation in the cases evades the complex and devastating circumstances in which many of the objects were collected’.
Under the leadership of Van Broekhoven, who conducted similar work in the Netherlands before her arrival in Oxford, it has conducted an ‘ethical review’ of its entire public collection. Displays are being systematically relabelled and ‘contextualised’ to explain their historical and cultural significance. Around 120 human remains, including skulls, scalps and a mummified Egyptian child, have been removed from public view and put into storage.
The PRM has even removed – from a case labelled ‘Treatment of Dead Enemies’ – the celebrated shrunken human heads with their sewn-up lips and eye sockets and great cascades of hair.
The Shuar and Achuar people of the Upper Amazon produced these ‘tsantsas’ by removing the brains and skulls before boiling the skins and filling them with hot sand and rocks to shrink them. They were allegedly a means of imprisoning the souls of enemy warriors, or possibly of honouring Shuar chiefs.
Last month the Oxford Mail called the removal of those heads ‘the latest symptom of a politically motivated curatorial revisionism sweeping the land’. A Times art critic accused the museum of ‘patronising’ the public and observed that ‘nobody will be attracted to the Pitt Rivers by the slogan: “It’s the museum that won’t let you see its shrunken heads”’.
But Van Broekhoven is unrepentant. ‘Our audience research has shown that visitors often saw the museum’s displays of human remains as a testament to other cultures being “savage”, “primitive” or “gruesome”. Rather than enabling our visitors to reach a deeper understanding of each other’s ways of being, the displays reinforced racist and stereotypical thinking that goes against the museum’s values today.’
Sounds like Van Broekhoven is aiming to close the museum altogether. First tell visitors it’s a monument to white supremacy, then give away all the exhibits.
The Great Barrington Declaration
The Great Barrington Declaration, a petition started by Professor Martin Kulldorff, Professor Sunetra Gupta and Professor Jay Bhattacharya calling for a strategy of “Focused Protection” (protect the elderly and the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with life), was launched on October 5th and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it. If you Googled it last week, the top hits you got were two smear pieces from the obscure Leftist conspiracy website Byline Times, and one from the Guardian headlined: “Herd immunity letter signed by fake experts including ‘Dr Johnny Bananas’.” (Freddie Sayers at UnHerd warned us about this hit job the day before it appeared). On the bright side, Google UK has stopped shadow banning it, so the actual Declaration now shows up in the search results – and Toby’s Spectator piece about it is the top hit – although discussion of it has been censored by Reddit. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job).
You can find it here. Please sign it. It now has more than half-a-million signatures.
Stop Press: The number of experts signing a petition doesn’t have any bearing on the truth of its claims, of course. In the “hierarchy of evidence” for evaluating healthcare interventions, expert opinion is dead last. This letter in the BMJ by John Ioannidis on why petitions and open letters should be taken with a large does of salt is very good.
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. Samaritans is available round the clock, every single day of the year, providing a safe place for anyone struggling to cope, whoever they are, however they feel, whatever life has done to them.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. Doing these daily updates is hard work (although we have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending us stories and links). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here. (Don’t assume we’ll pick them up in the comments).
Special thanks to graphic designer and Lockdown Sceptics reader Claire Whitten for designing our new logo. We think it’s ace. Find her work here.
And Finally…
Comedian Simon Brodkin thinks he’s figured out how the Government picks its coronavirus policies – and it bears an uncanny resemblance to the National Lottery. Watch his latest YouTube video.
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Hi
Hi yourself
More links an letter Matt Hancock is wrong about herd immunity Confusion about the Covid-19 science is hampering debate — and costing lives BY SUNETRA GUPTA https://unherd.com/2020/10/matt-hancock-is-wrong-about-herd-immunity/ * * * * * * * * * * * * MP Chris Green, The First UK politician to resign from government over the crisis – 16th Oct 2020 INTERVIEW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eBSwspojh4 * * * * * * * * * * * * From Daily Telegraph Letters Although I am able go to shops and restaurants, I miss being able to talk to shop attendants and waiters, and having a laugh. I am hard of hearing, so cannot make out what people are saying while they are wearing a mask. I feel isolated and lonely, as I cannot speak to anyone. Godalming, Surrey * * * * * * * * * * * * My wife and I live in Essex and so from today cannot receive visitors from another household. My daughter and her family, whom we haven’t seen since February, were coming for Sunday lunch tomorrow. That has now been cancelled. This daughter lives in Suffolk. Another lives in Hertfordshire and a son in Cambridge. None are allowed to… Read more »
Re the letter from the person in Saffron Walden: why have they cancelled the visit? Why not just say ‘fuck this shit’ and go ahead?
My son will be visiting today just like he has done throughout the past six months. People should ignore these stupid rules.
Exactly.Its this craven acceptance of these stupid restrictions that emboldens the government to institute more.Only mass civil disobedience will end this as our entire establishment is either too cowardly or complicit
Yesterday evening we went to the cinema. It was a film club night and the film was introduced by one of the members. By law you have to wear a mask in cinemas in France and everyone stuck to the letter of the law. Maybe they were afraid they might be ill without knowing it. Or maybe they were so grateful to be able to go to the cinema again unlike the big cities which are under curfew from nine o’clock that they don’t want to take any risks. Still, the audience was made up of people who have been going to arthouse type films together for years, and know and presumably trust each other so you might think they would have left their masks aside. Or else the person introducing the film could have taken the opportunity to say something like, “Look, we all know masks are useless outside a hospital setting so if you don’t want to wear one please don’t bother. The police aren’t going to come busting in and we won’t tell on each other, will we, ha, ha ha?” Instead of which he talked about the director and the setting and so on through a… Read more »
Not surprised if the message of the film went over their heads!
Because someone else, a neighbour, would possibly, probably report them to the police, and they’d face fines or some other punishment.
Canadian politician leaks new COVID lockdown plan and ‘Great Reset’ dictatorship – Australia is part of it
https://cairnsnews.org/2020/10/16/canadian-politician-leaks-new-covid-lockdown-plan-and-great-reset-dictatorship-australia-is-part-of-it/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Yep totally agree with this. Happening right now. Totalitarian tip-toe. Those in denial will be whacked hard.
They are no longer tip-toeing. This is unwarranted and oppressive and is all being done to prime us up for the genocidal vaccines that are on the way. This is war on the people, though most are far too stupid to notice.
It is a hoax.
https://www.greaterfool.ca/
I despair, I really do. Our NSW premier dealing with corrupt scandal in her government, nothing to see here people just wear your masks, social distance blah bloody blah people whilst my boyfried sells us out to China, Scomo, Mr bloody benevolence who wont pull the states into line, what will happen when Jobkeeper finishes you idiot, millions on the street looking for jobs, killing themselves, etc.. We have the health minister carrying on about the number of cases. When you delve into the NSW health website yesterday, 1 in intensive care not on ventilator, the 67 others looking after themselves at home thank you very much. What a load of fucking crock. Deceitful, misleading rubbish, I am angry, so angry. I urge all of you to check out Michael J Matt, and his website, very Catholic, so apologies but if you want to hear some coomon sense from the USA, remnant newspaper. He is spot on. Today about Canada, oh dear.
I know the feeling, I am in Victoria. I have been feeling more hopeful since I joined a campaigning organisation, it has only been going a few weeks and already has 30,000 members and has been on Sky News. It really can make a difference when we come together and bombard an MP with 1000’s of calls and emails instead of just one… we had some success with Victoria’s evil Omnibus Bill, Andrews was forced to drop the worst parts to get it through. If we had 100,000 members I think we could have had it scrapped altogether – I am hopeful we will get those numbers soon. Feel free to check out the website and facebook page Reignite Democracy Australia, it is concentrating on Vic but there must be something similar in NSW as people are finally starting to wake up.
Well done. We will never stop this insanity unless the people start pushing back.
Thank you ! We can fight back, and we must.
Hear hear. Saying ‘I despair’ is NO BLOODY USE AT ALL.
Hi Nat thanks for the reference. I just joined up and will look for something in NSW as well. I have been emailing politicians in NSW and some in opposition in Victoria too. They don’t always get back. Sorry for the mad rant last night folks, everything just got to me. Doesn’t help when you have spent the evening with people who are so ‘passive’ about the whole thing and then bang on about my ‘selfishness’ in expressing a desire for things to return to normal.
Thinking of you this morning too. Just about to jump on Sky to see what Andrews has announced.
Thank you ! A little bit more freedom. I know how frustrating it is when all your friends and family believe the propaganda. I don’t know how I could have coped without finding likeminded souls online. I am glad you joined reignite, I wonder if she could put you in touch with other members in NSW ?
I was sorry there wasn’t more easing of restrictions for you Nat. Can’t believe he is still insisting on mask wearing. And no one back in offices yet, can travel 25 ks but what an odd distance. He is such a creep. So condescending and sanctimonious. I have got a couple of sceptic friends, but most are completely taken in, which is why I skulk round here on a regular basis. I don’t feel so alone. I will make contact with reignite.
I know how angry you are. I can ‘hear’ it in your wild post. Me too. Never been so angry for so long. Day and night. Week in, week out. There are many of us but not enough and never in the same place, which is why these pages are so important. If it weren’t for knowing there are others who feel like this, it would be hard to carry on and keep sane. Good luck. Chin up. Soldier on. We are right and they are wrong. I’m sure of that. So are you..
Thanks Monty.
Dr. Scott Atlas, coronavirus advisor to President Trump:
Sinful. Wicked. Diabolical.
This is a load of bucking bollocks. No wonder some peop,e think skeptics are mad when they reference shite like this.
You’re a hi-flier!
Hang in there guys
Most people are ignoring the lockdown
There are just so many ridiculous rules that make everything so complicated this just had to be the case. The only thing that keeps bothering me is that great, people are doing what they like(herd immunity possibly building anyway, yay) but businesses are still tied to the law. And until they all say no life still looks different going out and about.
Yes, it’s all very well individuals ignoring some of the rules – unfortunately I don’t think this happens much and only in a marginal way – when the government has business in a vice. Apart from not donning a face nappy, this gives little scope in a vast area of public life to “disobey”. Businesses will never disobey.
I agree with you, PhilipF. The government’s clever – well, in its shrewd use of psychology to manage the population, at least. They’ve passed the buck to the people to do their dirty work. A mixture of fear (based on fake stats), fines and fomenting division (see what I did there, with the ‘3 Fs’ ..:-)) means that they can leave ‘us’ to self-police, effectively. The threat of retribution, both fiscal, legal and social (via ostracisation) does the job nicely for the. Fecking fascists (that’s another 2 ‘Fs’ …).
Exactly. Businesses and institutions are now forced to do the government’s dirty work for them.
Still baffles me why they don’t band together to resist this. If they’re fined, they should refuse to pay.
By refusing to pay, they will waste police time and clog up the courts for 10,000 years!
Have a party at your place.
An entirely sleepless night next door to a rampaging party tells me you are right. A head scramble, normal time I would have broken my way in an sprayed the joint with my oozie. Today I must feel haapy and grumpy all in the same cup of coffee.
‘mon the revolution!
Ps it is still going.
Rule of 6 obviously broken there. Would be good if it hadn’t kept you awake. Which of the blessed new fangled tiers is your area in, Basics?
Basic rule when there is a party next door, get round there with a couple of bottles.
Good.
From a fellow sufferer of “Party central(s)”
Oozie, or ouzo?
What’s an “oozie”?
Colloquial mis-spelling of “Uzi”, an Israeli-made submachine gun, designed by an Israeli IDF officer to avoid the sanctions of the day, famous for its’ use by the IDF.
All that does is ‘prove’ to the lockdownistas that everyone is selfish and they just get more angry though and want us to try it again, properly next time. We need them to accept it is pointless and not have a chance to say we were why it didn’t work
Kick their tight little arses.
It doesn’t matter what we do. “They”are working to an agenda and that won’t be altered by our not playing along with their silly games.
Hope so.
Unfortunately not at Primrose Hill Farmers Market today. Until last week everyone had taken their muzzles off, unfortunately today a huge increase. Geez folks you are out in fresh air.
There’s nowt so stupid as people.
Enjoying this week’s Spectator. Lionel Shriver on top form with, “Covid has killed off our civil liberties “
Australian Spectator appears to have more balls than UK version. But hey.. it’s still anti-lockdown. Just pretends not to see the great reset. Though has on occassion whispered about it.
The Great Reset is just a great rehash of the New World Order that Alex Jones was warning about 20 years ago. Many of the things he was saying that seemed absurd are now coming to pass.
Not rehash, rebrand.
Not really nit picking but I think it’s worth saying. The G Reset has not just been chopped up in some emergency fashion. Ling slow deliberately planned. It’s a rebrand in aqua and axur blues, confidence calming assuring colours. Not Nazi red and black.
Thanks for that link late yesterday. you should repost it to give it a wider viewing. I’ve rewatched Endgame twice now, quite hard going because it’s a mess, but he even got the Social Credit thing and it was nearly 20 years ago.
Jones was well ahead of the curve calling his website prisonplanet.com
Yes, pity he got so shouty and ended up as a shock jock.
It is a pity, I used to like Alex Jones, yes a massive American but still good to listen to. He got compromised with buckets of cash.
So true, I could never watch him but I think he has got more serious this year and sometimes has some good information on his site.
The Georgia Guidestones are pointing out the end game.
I didn’t pay them any attention at all but I’ll have another look. I’ve got the 2.5 hour Endgame on an external hard drive but found it yesterday on one YouTube site cut into 10 bits with Greek subtitles.
The first hour is all Bilderburg, the China stuff comes about halfway.
They have an article this week on the great reset:
https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/10/dangerous-elites-planning-the-great-reset/
Also Sky News Australia did a great piece on it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeykREAlYSg
And the UK has the brilliant UK Column ! Its taken Australians awhile to wake up but we are finally forming campaigning organisations and starting to fight back in increasing numbers.
Go it.
Every little helps.
You can always bring one with you,
This is happening 100% BEWARE! https://cairnsnews.org/2020/10/16/canadian-politician-leaks-new-covid-lockdown-plan-and-great-reset-dictatorship-australia-is-part-of-it/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Lionel is always always on top form but this was her at her best
Matters legal:
There’s another legal case here: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/the-coronavirus-act-2020/
Seems similar to Dolan’s main JR. People may wish to donate or read the submission.
I notice the Dolan wedding case judge seemed to rule on the grounds that what the government did was justified, rather than on the grounds that the decision was the sole province of govt and not courts. I was surprised by that – I guess it leaves the door open for another court to rule differently.
Our legal system is broken. Far too many judges seem to be in the pockets of government.
It’s finally time for the Quiet Man, best PM we never had, IDS
its is only when you see the morons we have had recently do the politicians of earlier years rise in stature .
nostalgia isn’t what is used to be !!
I agree with his lockdown rules but his welfare reforms probably killed far more than Covid. The BMJ estimated over 100,000 people.
Lockdown views I mean.
See the little chain symbol 🔗 to the right ? Gives you ten minutes to edit post.
Many thanks, I didn’t know that.
That’s a link symbol. You want the little wheel, bottom right.
IDS made the lives of the sick and disabled a misery. Gove wrecked the careers and health of tens of thousands of teachers. Now Wanksock and Doris are going for glory. And who do we have on the ‘opposition’ bench? A Rockerfeller lockstep great reset man. It’s a coup, that, like Toby, IDS seemingly does not see.
Treason May and Doris should teach us that there isn’t enough checks and balances on UK democracy to stop a coup. 1922 is not enough. Neither is the lords.
And Steve Baker has been ‘bought’ with a promotion to the Privy council…
Nor the judiciary or the press.
I fall under neither category but I was unemployed while he was heading the DWP. My stint on the Work Programme and experience of the welfare-to-work industry that flourished on his watch makes it hard for me to have a positive opinion of the man.
The Lords has almost abolished itself and is now useless as a check on our maniacal government.
As has the Church of England and other denominations.
Which reminds me. A Moslem friend told me last week that one of the tenets of public prayer requires that they group together closely, the 2 meter rule upheld by his Imam invalidates this in his opinion.
I think the ‘blindness’ to the -overwhelmingly obvious- big picture may be selective or self-preserving…
Post-Doris caretaker, but nothing more.
Osborne was the guilty party re Universal Credit.
IDS resigned over cuts to it that caused unforgivable hardship to a large number of people.
Best choice to take over, in my view.
Putting Sir Ian in charge of the country is probably about as sensible as putting Sir Jimmy in charge of Childline.
Could this be really happening https://cairnsnews.org/2020/10/16/canadian-politician-leaks-new-covid-lockdown-plan-and-great-reset-dictatorship-australia-is-part-of-it/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Good to see it getting an airing but paying off everyone’s personal debt is fanciful nonsense. Where would they get the money to pay off mortgages and why would they want to ?
Perhaps to sequester your home in lieu of massive tax rises ?
Hyperinflation will ‘pay off’ debt and destroy savings at the same time. Can’t have one without the other.
That’s the magic of fiat. The difference between £1 and £100,000,000,000 is really just a few more taps of the zero key.
Smells like bullshit to me. Very specific, with things like debt cancellation making no sense.
What, if anything, about any of this makes sense?
Saw this yesterday and called BS. It’s probably disinformation
Well then you’ve done exactly dick for research, because it’s fucking everywhere. They’ve even published books on it!
It’s right the fuck THERE….. you need but eyes and a brain to see it.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/COVID-19-Great-Reset-Klaus-Schwab/dp/2940631123
Spot on right in our faces now.
They will never lock populations down. It’s just a conspitact theory…
It’s for real….https://www.weforum.org/great-reset
Eh, there’s a difference between thinking there is an attempt at a societal reset and believing that this specific plan is how it will go and to what schedule.
It’s pretty advanced in Melbourne. Even the MSM here are starting to notice.
Okay…. let me clarify some delusion on this. IT AIN’T FOR YOU! The Great Reset might wipe out some debts (and that’s another discussion on how the money we have is created as debt), but it’s FOR THEM. We will be dragged into the one-world, digital currency accessible through microchip. Go google ‘Trust Stamp Africa’ which is a a GAVI and Mastercard venture.
Furthermore, the hyperinflation is inevitable at this point. The “money printing” going on right now is insane. 2008 kicked the can down the road, and now this is how they are really going to sort it out.
BUT FOR THEM….. Not you! Don’t be a fool and think you’ll benefit from this. You may in some small way, but just like furlough now, it isn’t worth the true cost. It’s a pittance compared to what you are going to lose.
You got it. I can’t understand people on here still banging on about cases and test n trace. The HAMMER is coming down on us FAST
So true.
When will the cost of Rishi’s borrowing cause a banking crisis, pretty soon, I’d say. Christmas?
QE will put it off.
QE is borrowed money.
My suspicion is that the only effect the money printing will have is to guarantee that negative interest rates are imposed across the board. That’s the only alternative when your debt is so large that you can’t even pay the interest.
The government will continue with their bread-and-circuses policy until they can no longer find a way to pay the jobless to watch Netflix.
At this point something will snap (it doesn’t matter what), and in a few short weeks London will be Harare-on-Thames.
On the bright side, at least we won’t have to push around wheelbarrows of cash.
With digital payments, the £100,000,000 it will cost us to buy a loaf of bread takes up exactly the same space as the £1 we currently pay.
Hence why I am seriously considering getting into cryptocurrencies.
I did that. I mined around ten coins in the early days of bitcoin. They increased a little. I though this aint going anywhere so I sold them and bought two large pizza hut pizzas. I am possibly the only person to have spent £200k on pizza. I could have bought a pizza hut franchise or a house..
Ouch, that’s got to hurt.
I laugh about it now. But to own my own home…. sigh
I think you actually spent around £87,600 for those two pizzas at today’s prices. Still a lot for a takeaway!!
(one bitcoin = £8,760)
It would be very sensible to hold some crypto.
Hoard gold and food.
Add medicine, vitamins, building supplies, fuel.
As we went into lockdown all the building and construction firms went on a binge of stockpiling materials, one reason they were still in short supply months later.
Yes; gold, silver and food would be a very good idea indeed. Food for the short term, gold and silver to preserve your savings to the “other side” of the hyperinflation.
Considering the governments of the world seem to be intent of destroying all their currencies it does seem the time has come for opensource money. We don’t actually need their currencies, their banks, their financial system. It does seem for anyone who does not want to get railroaded into their digital enslavement system its the only real choice.
Regarding using cash, one ends up with gazillions of small coins – and the charity boxes seem to have disappeared. Moreover, it takes a while to select the appropriate coins from the depths of ones purse. To avoid these disadvantages and remain anonymous, it should be possible to create a kind of “Cash Card” that can be purchased and replenished with cash and used in the same way as a credit/debit card – or am I reinventing the wheel?
Bad idea; this exists already, but to avoid evil money-launderers, you can’t get one of these cards unless you prove your identity. So no anonymity is permitted.
We do have an alternative of a plastic card which is anonymous. It’s called cash; i.e. plastic banknotes.
For larger sums and the longer term, there is gold and silver. No other anonymity is available, which is of course why they are trying their utmost to get rid of cash.
“Please use contactless payments rather than cash where you can”, as it says on the sheeple’s tills.
People invest in cryptocurrencies – like the most well known,bitcoin – because they are the ultimate hedge against government inflated currencies like the £ and $. Governments cannot control cryptocurrencies, which is why they are hostile towards them.
Haha! That’s an excellent silver lining about the wheelbarrows of cash. We won’t have to count the stuff either!
Our future: A totalitarian state with all the convenience of shopping on Amazon. 🙂
The beeb were reporting about the Bank of England asking banks if they were ready for negative interest rates this past week.
Chris Christie confirms that he is not the sharpest cookie.
The Mask zealots themselves have spread the granny killer message, grasped and are convinced that the Mask doesn’t protect oneself from catching it.
So if he should have worn a mask, he’s either dumb, or the spreader who should have stayed at home or got his temperature taken, sorted.
If you are a ton overweight, you are very likely to get symptoms.
Restrict yourself, but you don’t have any right or case to demand the same from others.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54575279 for background.
Morning everyone. Feeling positive here in the midlands. it`s sunny and I talked a friend out of unthinking compliance last night. A good feeling!
Well done you!
Only another 69 million to go, but good on you.
One by one. It’s a start.
‘It’s the job as is never started that takes longest to finish’ (Ham Gamgee)
Well done!!
We will prevail – slow and steady wins the race.
From the comments on the teachers union article in the Telegraph:
“A circuit breaker is an incorrect term. When a circuit breaker operates it is because there is a fault. If you leave it for two weeks and switch it on again it will trip again, the fault is still there”.
Personally think that sums the idea up perfectly! Pointless.
Don’t look to parliament or politicians to sort this out
John Major, the then cream of the crop, shagged Edwina Curry
It tells me all I need to know about these cretins
Exactly.
(We must have all heard this one by now…)
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
-Albert Einstein
Sturgeon and Salmond were a couple in the 90s, hence her rise to the top of the SNP.
Not forgetting Jeremy and👫 Diane
Can u imagine diane sitting on jez’s face, ‘I can’t breathe’..
“The global population is roughly 7.8 billion people, if 10% have been infected that is 780 million cases. The global death toll currently attributed to Sars-Cov-2 infections is 1,061,539.
“That’s an infection fatality rate of roughly 0.14%. Right in line with seasonal flu and the predictions of many experts from around the world.”
Taken from Off Guardian.
The WHO confirmed recently that the global IFR is around 0.14% by stating the number of those infected (probably much higher) and the number of deaths (probably much lower in reality died FROM rather than WITH the virus).
Yet this BBC article states as fact that the IFR is around 0.5% – total nonsense.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54570373
Yes, I’m just reading the BBC News on my phone “Covid:how worried should we be? James Gallagher says he will “keep this really straight and simple…. He says overwhelming majority of people do recover blah blah but then that 1-3% of people who catch the virus will require hospital treatment.the IFR is 0.5% or one in every 200 people infected which is 5-25 times more deadly than seasonal flu, despite ongoing myths that Covid is just like flu.” Tbh if this is the first news people see on theIr phones this Saturday morning I think our battle is lost.
Those with Twitter should challenge him on Twitter. I have also complained about the article to the BBC as we all should.
Someone has mentioned it to him on Twitter already. I just complained about the article too.
thanks for suggestion- my first complaint to MSM ! Won’t be the last
About 10 or so years ago there was rioting in Belfast, in an estate that is predominant Loyalist (a group of society that are strongly proud of their British heritage as opposed to simply believing that the Union is a good thing) The rioting was about ex-parimilitaries who were still running crime rackets and the local residents were fighting back. Factions were fighting and the police were called in. The BBC in London reported the riots as “terrorist related” I showed it to all my friends in the office, mostly English guys, some Middle Eastern. I asked “What do you think this is about?” They all said: “IRA” Loyalists are the exact opposite of the IRA and in the past have links to collusion with the Army and the Police in killing Catholics. This is widely known in Northern Ireland as is the other way: Irish police helping the IRA – in fact sometimes there’s a mix of a whole load of things. The point is that just be leaving out “Loyalist” the narrative would continue to focus on “those bloody IRA supporters” So I’m in no way surprised the BBC are a shower as I’ve seen it all my… Read more »
And your Middle Eastern colleagues will surely have been familiar with this kind of reporting from the same outlets about factions in their respective home countries (as in tarring shiite iran and Lebanese Hezbollah with the same ‘fundamentalist islamist’ brush as Al Qaeda and Da’esh/ISIL, as if these all share the same goals, methods and policies… conveniently omitting the fact that the latter have been most ruthlessly assaulting the former, and vice versa). At least the C-word episode has demonstrated to many in the EU and US how rigorous reporting standards by the ‘independent media’ are just as much of a myth as the whole ‘pandemic’…
Collaborators believe anything and everything they are told.
Sceptics use their common sense and question things.
That’s atrocious, even by the corona porn new standards.
Exactly the same occurred to me (& prob anyone else paying attention) when the WHO said 10%. The ‘get out’ is that maybe only 5% have had it – in which case it’s not very infectious is it?! Can’t have it both ways. Also on Worldometers, which isn’t great but does an OK job of collating data, the proportion of currently infected people in the ‘serious or critical’ category is 1%. We know that the majority of ‘serious or critical’ survive (reasonable to assume that there are more serious than critical), and also that known ‘currently infected’ will only be a proportion of the actual number. Taking those two facts (I think it’s fair to say facts) into account, the IFR would be well below 0.5%, quite possibly in the 0.2% region. With the virus spreading more evenly across the population (as opposed to the early days with disproportionate Covid in healthcare settings), a better understanding of the numbers actually infected, better drug treatments and therapies, and a possible vaccine of at least some efficacy, I think 0.2% is a fair guess as to the eventual IFR, poss erring on the high side. That, along which which people are actually… Read more »
most people should be more worried about normal flu which doesn’t confine its fatality to the elderly frail and, without it being a bad flu season, is currently killing 10 times more than the covid.
if 10% have been infected If. Ryan said in answer to the question This is a question to Dr Ryan. Last week Dr Ryan announced – it was last Monday – that 10% of the world’s population might be infected by the COVID so the first question would be how do you get to that figure. With so many people infected do you suppose the fatality rate is much lower than we thought before and similar to the flu fatality rates?So the question is, can we still say that COVID is more worrying than the flu? the following I made my remarks, I believe, at an executive board meeting with our member states where what I was actually trying to communicate was that the vast majority of human beings on this planet remain susceptible to the virus. I believe what I said was that many studies had demonstrated that 10% or less of people had been infected although that was very variable with some slum areas, high-risk populations like health workers being much higher.So I was using that 90/10 as an illustration of the fact that most people in the world were susceptible. In fact in many countries that seroprevalence… Read more »
Important information and very much worth posting.
Hypothetically if 5% of the global pop have had the virus then the IFR is roughly half what the BBC quoted.
Would be good to know, right?!
Bear in mind we’ve been given steadily decreasing IFR estimations for most of the year, starting at 8% (although that was heavily caveated with an acknowledgement that that was prob more like a case fatality rate), down to 4.2 (WHO I think), then 2, then 1, now 0.5.
I would categorise those estimations as being accepted at the times they were given by the mainstream scientific community.
They’re partly dropping for the factors I previously mentioned, but surely also because they were also predictions to suit a political agenda.
Remember when Trump predicted less than 1% (or something along those lines) and was absolutely pilloried for it?
It would indeed. But the notion of a single global IFR doesn’t really make much sense. We already know that the IFR is hugely dependent on age. Since the age structure of the global population is quite different from that of the UK, say, we would expect a different IFR globally. For example, we have twice the proportion in the 65 and over age bracket.
Completely agree, but just as a comparison to other communicable diseases (for which I assume there’s an established universal IFR?) it might help to put it in some context.
Further to your point, the western perception of the disease as such a serious threat must in no small part be due to the proportion of our population that has higher vulnerability.
But the western response will surely cause serious harm in younger populations across the world that are never going to suffer much from the disease itself.
It’s perverse really.
Come on…..
We don’t have any idea what the IFR is.
There is no definition of ‘infection’ or ‘case’
This is what we do know, for sure:
‘In August 2020, there were 34,750 deaths registered in England, 2,060 deaths fewer than the five-year average (2015 to 2019) for August; in Wales, there were 2,379 deaths registered, 116 deaths fewer the five-year average for August.
The leading cause of death in August 2020 was dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in England (accounting for 10.9% of all deaths) and ischaemic heart disease in Wales (11.0% of all deaths); both leading causes of death were the same in July 2020.
The coronavirus (COVID-19) did not feature in the top ten leading causes of death in August 2020, in England or Wales. In England, COVID-19 was the 24th most common cause of death’
Further update in a week.
Talk then….
Don’t watch, listen or read anything from the BBC. None of it is good for the mind.
There was a poster yesterday who questioned some of the LS wisdom in claiming that rising cases weren’t being linked to a rise in Covid hospitalisations and deaths, when the graphs do clearly show a rise in hospitalisations and deaths. He was met with some hostility, which disappointed me as he was putting a reasonable question forth in a polite fashion, and if we are to claim the moral and intellectual high ground it is not enough to scrutinise the oppostion – we must all be willing to scrutinise ourselves. Anyhow, that’s beside the point. Yesterday’s poster ended his post by saying that he was ardently against the lockdown, even though he acknowledges that Covid is a very real and potentially dangerous illness. As a libertarian, that was my position back in March. I knew there’d be the usual band of crusties and oddballs out to claim it was all an elaborate ruse, and I was keen to distance myself from them. Yes, the lockdown is wrong, but Covid is still a reality and we need to address it honestly to mitigate its impact on public health. But that was then, this is now. Over 43,000 people have now died… Read more »
“The virus’s existence has never been proven because it has never been isolated. ” –>
From the CDC page updated May 5, 2020: SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was isolated in the laboratory and is available for research by the scientific and medical community.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/grows-virus-cell-culture.html
Well, that’s interesting. There are a lot of people on our side insisting that Covid has never been isolated, enough of them that I had come to accept it as true without questioning. See the Illusory Truth Effect. If that claim is so easily disproven, we risk embarrassing or discrediting ourselves quite severely.
I’ve been trying to point out that this claim is untrue for months now. I think that claiming the virus doesn’t exist is incredibly dangerous for our credibility. Even if it were true that the virus hasn’t been isolated (which as jojo points out, it isn’t) it would _still_ be very dangerous for our credibility. And it’s also irrelevant to the argument.
Iirc, guy153 posted electron microscope pics of it months back, as matt occasionally points out here.
A lot of things are blithely asserted down here (and even above the line) which don’t stand up to examination. This is normal – these are complicated matters with highly motivated people discussing them.
Don’t rely on a fact asserted here, no matter how frequently, without checking it yourself, wherever possible. There are some commenters here whose assertions I have come to take quite seriously because they’ve proved pretty reliable (matt, guy153 and a few others), but even for them I’d check if possible before relying on it (though I didn’t for guy153’s pictures, for instance, because I don’t regard that as particularly in doubt).
Free discussion is the only defence against this problem, as you imply, and dissenters are beneficial here in this regard. djaustin, mayo and Richard Pinch often point out inconvenient facts here (and often suffer heavy down-voting in response), which can be very annoying, but is nevertheless vital.
Thanks. I come here precisely BECAUSE I am skeptical. and always want to see all sides of an argument But ultimately I am a scientist driven to understand the epidemic. Science will out in the end and cares not for what we want to believe (sadly). I don’t worry about down-voting, I’m no politician 😉
Thanks Jojo, Matt, Mark and Djaustin for your replies. Like the rest of you, I’m interested in knowing the truth rather than ignoring it for the furtherance of my agenda, and I’m glad you’ve helped steer me away from dangerous misinformation (actual misinformation in this case, not whatever Facebook and Google call misinformation).
It is correct to say the virus has been proved to exist and it can be harmful to our cause if we deny something which proves to be true. However, has there been conclusive evidence given regarding other aspects of the virus. A critical question is how coronavirus spreads. The justification given for the draconian restrictions is that coronavirus is highly infectious and if rules were not in place, coronavirus would spread. As per the link, I put in a FOI request to ask for evidence the government has on how coronavirus spreads and they were unable to answer this question. As per the recommendation of NHS England, I contacted Public Health England and I have yet to receive a reply. If coronavirus was so infectious as to justify draconian laws and there was clear evidence of this, surely the government should have no problem in providing evidence of this. The government should provide clear evidence to justify laws. For instance, drink driving laws can be justified on the basis there is clear evidence alcohol can impair senses when driving. Imagine if the government made it illegal to drive after taking a drink when there was no evidence the drink… Read more »
Even here in Sweden hospitalisations have gone up over the last month, but NOT (as yet anyway) the number of deaths…
If the number of hospitalizatons for anything goes up at this time of year, then all that has to happen is for the positive test rate to stay the same -and hey presto you have more Covid hispitalizations.
Manipualting Statistics for Beginners Chapter 3
It’s impossible to know whether or not covid hospitalisations and deaths have really increased significantly (and you’d expect some increase in the autumn/winter anyway) because we are not being told whether the supposed admissions and deaths with a positive test are actually people with or being treated for covid symptoms, or just happen to have tested positive while being treated for a broken leg or heart attack.
Hospitalized for Anything +Positive Test =
Covid Hospitalization
The term ‘hospitalisation’ needs to be unpicked! A person who presents at A/E and is discharged within 24 hrs is not counted as an admission. Even if they stay overnight on a ‘short stay Ward’ as long as they’re out within 24 hrs. People present at A/E with any number of lesser complaints and are discharged as quickly as possible to keep bed occupancy on wards as low as possible, this is standard practice. My guess is that currently those presenting at A/E with respiratory symptoms + anxiety over Covid may be being described as ‘hospitalisations’ which means virtually nothing.
If Covid was as dangerous as advertised, then they wouldn’t have to manipulate the figures so egregiously as they have obviouly done.
That alone tells you a great deal.
Perfectly reasonable and rationale arguments. But I would countenance against the “can’t be isolated”. There are some lovely pictures here -viruses are large enough to image by electron microspcopy. After imaging the next step is to look at the genetic make up of the virus, and that has been done too. This virus has been shown to infect other animals, is similar to (but less deadly than) the other coronaviruses SARS-COV1 and MERS. It is a real infectious agent that causes a different disease to influenza and other respiratory pathogens.
No, Ben, you’re correctly questioning a lot of other people’s rationality, that’s all.
The latest irrational move is of course to point to rising hospitalizations and deaths, without understanding or admitting that that always happens in the autumn anyway.
Any one of us could have seen that one coming months ago, but still the zealots are
getting away with it.
IDS is probably just speaking out because he’s scared of getting lynched like the rest of them. This is the man who cheered when they got the Universal Credit stuff through (because it was him that worked on it)
This act has caused lots of misery – especially amongst us who have been forced to have our businesses shut down. Thanks to him, you can now wait up to 6 weeks to start getting a whopping £80 a week.
I personally think this is a bargain. I’ve paid over £400,000 in direct taxes on what I have earned in the last 10 years, to get £80 a week back when I really needed it is an insult.
Go and do one Ian, you disgusting little toad.
The tories have been kicking the sick and disabled for ten years. Labour started it, but the tories accelerated and weaponized it. Now everyone is getting a kicking. Due to social distancing etc the sick and disabled are now being left alone and not subjected to face to face Atos/Capita/etc trickery. Though most of the sick and disabled still struggle to get PIP even by phone interviews.
Finally we are mostly all now in the shit together. When the dominoes finally fall.. by this time next year a third of the country will be unemployed.
i may have this wrong but i seem to remember that IDS resigned from the government because his idea of Universal Credit, which doesn’t seem a bad one, was so messed around and altered and degraded before being introduced.
Caligula Cocaine Gideon Osborne.
agree. IDS studied the problems in depth and I was very impressed at the time with his commitment and sincerity in terms of improving the system for all. Other people messed it up and he got the blame.
As the paranoia mounts, Covidites can be spotted by their wild, bloodshot, wide-open darting eyeballs and their sudden, jerky distancing movements.
The fleck and spume of their dribbling is fortunately hidden to our eyes by their masks.
When their blood oxygen falls to danger level due to the self-inhaling of their own carbon dioxide emissions unconsciousness and blessed insanity cannot be far off.
Cancer patients die at the rate of 451 a day, 75.2 per 100,000 (2017 figures), with the treatment, diagnosis, care NOT being given in 2020 my estimate would probably be 650 a day.
MP’s to get a £3,300 pay rise.
https://www.change.org/p/ipsa-stop-mp-pay-rise-in-april-2021
A F.A.R.T strategy should be adopted.
Fight fire with Fire
Attack
Repudiate
Tactical
(:
Black middle-aged ladies masked in small cars. Discuss.
Come on.. discuss. Find your Inner Starkey. We all have that Inner Starkey in us, even Zuby.
A subset of all people of all colours ,ages and gender masked in all private cars. May be higher than the mean , may be lower . What difference does it make?
I don’t know but if they’re driving and they wear glasses, they’re bloody dangerous.
anybody, regardless of race or ethnic origins masked in cars=completely nuts (or very scared and brainwashed) nuts and dangerous!
No the only people I have seen masked driving cars are white and 20 something.
Not many here but mainly middle aged to elderly and predominantly male. Strange differences.
“why, he asks, has more not been done to promote effective treatments, such as rolling out pre-emptive antiviral should as part of protecting high-risk groups?”
What an embarrassing statement for one clearly uninformed. Did he not pause to think that if effective antiviral treatments were available, SAGE and every other sane person would be recommending them? Sadly there are no prophylactic treatments at this stage. Only two treatments have shown positive results at all, remdesivir has a mild effect if you have it and dexamethasone will help you not die of the consequences. This is not influenza and there is no tamiflu, relenza or a vaccine. Finding such a treatment is my day job.
Your bedwetting or 77th brigade/Dominic misfits nonsense is too transparent here. Try the Mail or Telegraph. Though even there you are increasingly outnumbered.
Just point me to the antiviral please. Lopinavir, which blocks the same protein in HIV was just shown to be completely and utterly of no use.
Comments from subcribers of the Telegraph and the Mail online comments do seem to be about 80% sceptic.
Except for the occasional article that gets love-bombed for some reason. Pet peeves like young people enjoying their lives or an unpopular celeb with some corona connection.
Unless the members of SAGE have beneficial interests in vaccine manufacturers and/or new, expensive treatments instead of off patent pennies cost/unit medication.
How many members of SAGE have received funding from the BMGF/GAVI?
How many members of SAGE are thinking about future funding opportunities for research and how does this bias affect their decision making?
As to your claim of no prophylactic treatments, bullshit. Vitamins C, D and zinc are known to be beneficial as is HcQ in the early stages of diagnosis (and at appropriate doses). The tests carried out on the latter deliberately used dangerously high doses and at the end of infection – a scenario its supporters have never advocated.
I note you state that finding a treatment is your day job – i.e., you have a vested interest in a vaccine. Enough said.
Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread
https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-422X-2-69
The concentration tested in that study in vitro (10 uM) is at least 10-30x the highest levels seen for a normal clincal dose. Yes CQ and HCQ will inhibit replication, but not at levels that are safe for humans. The paper tests no clinical hypotheses. If it worked at 0.1 uM (100x lower levels) as one would look for in a new antiviral, we would have a possible medicine.
The sad fact is that a new virus came along, there were no antivirals that that targetted this virus, most likely a mistake based on SARS-COV1 going away, and we were caught with our pharmacology pants down. Scrambling around to see if anything worked at all was the next best option. Remdesivir has a modest effect st best and is IV.
A real beggar….and another 160+ viruses out there with similar lethality.
Good luck!
Great post. CHQ to be taken with Zinc – that is the way it works especially as most people are zinc deficient therefore the supplementation. Two high profile trails used excessively high levels of HCQ and omitted the Zinc – they then said HCQ does not work.
That’s illogical in two different ways. Firstly, “treatment” is not the same as “vaccine”. Secondly, the “you would say that wouldn’t you” argument is a fallacy. C.S.Lewis called it Bulverism
There will be no vaccine. Treatment is the only realistic option. As for C.S. Lewis, he was a theologian – i.e. pedlar of fairytales.
He was a professor of medieval and renaissance literature. Also a highly successful novelist and, yes, a
popular writer in Christianity, with a deep understanding of human nature.
For fairy tales I would refer you to Sage, the BBC, and HM Fascist Junta.
Vaccines are not treatments and I do not work on them. The concentrations necessary for any antiviral activity of HCQ are not achievable in normal treatment doses. The in vitro levels tested are at least an order of magnitude higher than those used in the RECOVERY trial. If it was that obvious, we would have clinical trial evidence already.
https://swprs.org/the-importance-of-covid-prophylaxis/
While the treatments may be nothing more than a placebo medically, they are much more effective socially and economically. He may be stumbling but his drift is correct
As far as I’m aware antivirals aren’t particularly effective against flu either…
https://swprs.org/the-importance-of-covid-prophylaxis/
‘Optimise the immune system’, the thing that protects us on a daily basis from the onslaught of bacteria, viruses and other pathogens. There is no magic pill for that. Start with optimising vitamin D levels (supplements this time of year as the sun is too low in the sky to make vitamin D on the skin), increase oxygen to cells (improve breathing – breathing techniques), zinc, selenium, vitamin A. Wholefood diet including good quality fats, cut out processed foods, hydrogenated fats and fizzy drinks, drink quality water, sleep better, reduce stress levels.
The Government did extremely well to ensure that our immune systems were negatively affected with the initial lockdown to stay indoors, fining people for daring to spend time in the sun in their own front gardens, parents with small children told that they could not sit in parks, cancelling summer holidays to sunny Europe, stop gyms from operating, etc.
Natural anti-virals: liposomal vitamin C (absorbs better), Quercetin, Resveratrol
Agreed! Never eat anything with a barcode.
I’m adding zinc to my next vitamin order for belt and braces.
What became of vitamin C? The Chinese had some success with high intravenous doses and AFAICR the Yanks were also using it at one stage.
Never happen here obviously, vitamins are the devil’s spawn, unlike statins of course.
Fuck off 77 cunt
You do realise that the average mortality age for this common cold coronavirus is pretty much the same as life expectancy…….everywhere…….?
Trilateral. Club of Rome. Are perhaps the aim of where Klaus Schwab wants to mingle.
What does he have on world leaders though? How is it the are cohesively joined to him in this collapsing of civilisation?
Surely must be more than money or blackmailed via video tapes of acts. What is the mechanism that is unifying them?
Quite. Conspiracy cults always split and denounce each other. People trying to use an existing situation to pursue their own aims and shaft the other lot is, of course, not conspiracy but strategy!
Splitters. (Python’s Life of Brian).
The claim that the responses to the coronavirus are based on science is false. The responses to the coronavirus are pseudoscience. All of them.
Even people who have not been paying close attention should have realised this when Patrick Valance yesterday told us that computer modelling are the data the government is looking at. The outcomes of computer models are no more data than Thursday is purple.
What modelling? Still ICL?
It was yesterday” Coronavirus update. Here’s the charts he used: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/927327/20201016_press_conference_slides.pdf
Here’s a video of the briefing. Valance starts at 11.22
https://youtu.be/CDrARcYiHwk
Only Sweden is following the science.
And even that is debatable where SD is concerned.
I was only referring to this country, not the entire world. But on the global scale, Belarus seems to be doing rather well. belarus coronavirus death
Critical review of PCR:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/covid-19-testing-pcr-a-critical-appraisal/
Matt Hancock is wrong about herd immunity Confusion about the Covid-19 science is hampering debate — and costing lives BY SUNETRA GUPTA https://unherd.com/2020/10/matt-hancock-is-wrong-about-herd-immunity/ * * * * * * * * * * * * MP Chris Green, The First UK politician to resign from government over the crisis – 16th Oct 2020 INTERVIEW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eBSwspojh4 * * * * * * * * * * * * From Daily Telegraph Letters Although I am able go to shops and restaurants, I miss being able to talk to shop attendants and waiters, and having a laugh. I am hard of hearing, so cannot make out what people are saying while they are wearing a mask. I feel isolated and lonely, as I cannot speak to anyone. Godalming, Surrey * * * * * * * * * * * * My wife and I live in Essex and so from today cannot receive visitors from another household. My daughter and her family, whom we haven’t seen since February, were coming for Sunday lunch tomorrow. That has now been cancelled. This daughter lives in Suffolk. Another lives in Hertfordshire and a son in Cambridge. None are allowed to visit us for the… Read more »
That second letter says all you need to know about the sheer unadulterated lunacy currently sweeping this country.
I just posted this on yesterdays but here it is again. What a load of horseshit. This fool who wrote this is on twitter. https://twitter.com/JamesTGallagher This picture is pure fear porn. “It is estimated that 1% to 3% of people who catch the virus require hospital treatment. But it is more deadly than flu”-Bollocks “The number of people that die after catching the virus, known as the infection fatality rate, is about 0.5%. Or one death in every 200 people infected.” Bollocks “That is five to 25 times more deadly than a seasonal flu infection, despite ongoing myths that Covid is just like flu.” TOTAL BOLLOCKS! “Influenza kills between 0.02% and 0.1% of people who are infected.”-A bit like covids What the fuck! “We are not at the same level we were at the peak, when 3,000 people were being admitted to hospital with Covid each day. It is currently below 1,000.” Like a few hundred? “The worry is rising cases could eventually overwhelm the NHS. If that happens then more people will die, from Covid and other causes, because there won’t be enough beds and doctors to go round.” ONE FOR THE KIDDIES “Most people have not been infected… Read more »
The picture was used again this morning by the BBC, over a headline saying, “How worried should we be?”
I dunno BBC, you tell us exactly just how “worried” we should be!
Personally, I’m well past the time to give a fuck.
The bug never worried me.
The Fascist Junta always did.
So does Josef Stalin Dripfeed, here in Wales.
Set thou an ungodly man to rule over them, and let Satan stand at his right hand.
I put this up towards the end of yesterday’s thread, so not many of you may have seen it. John Humphrys breaking cover: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8849165/JOHN-HUMPHRYS-public-rising-against-response-Covids-second-wave.html
“Whiteley’s Garden Centre in Mirfield is using a Videcon system to control customers behaviour at the main entrance to the store.”
Contact Details01924 495944
Whiteleys Garden Centre
Far Common Road
Mirfield
West Yorkshire
WF14 0DQ
How about getting in contact with them to “give them some support”
I just phoned and could not speak to a real person. I’ll try later.
wow, what were you going to say to them?
Get this. I live just outside London. The two London boroughs nearest to my area are the least “infected” with coroni, are now in “high” Tier 2. We’re still “medium” with only 30 odd infections per 100,000. However our council leader has taken it upon himself to tell us we should all do the “right thing” and put ourselves VOLUNTARILY into Tier 2, for “the greater good,” you see, and “you would if you loved your family!” What an absolute load dog pile! There are far too many walking around town in full PPE, terrorised, and he says that based on absolutely NO scientific data whatsoever. The lunatics have truly taken over the asylum.
He needs to research the health effects of mask-induced oxygen starvation.
He is advocating medical intervention. Without qualification.
So he is advocating permanent damage to the young:
https://www.sott.net/article/442455-German-Neurologist-Warns-Against-Wearing-Facemasks-Oxygen-Deprivation-Causes-Permanent-Neurological-Damage
It’s criminal lunacy, then. Escaped from Broadmoor?
Canadian politician leaks new COVID lockdown plan and ‘Great Reset’ dictatorship – Australia is part of it
https://cairnsnews.org/2020/10/16/canadian-politician-leaks-new-covid-lockdown-plan-and-great-reset-dictatorship-australia-is-part-of-it/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
James Corbett’s latest video on the Great Reset, points out that Klaus Scwab is not really a big player (see Basics comment). I have not watched all of the video yet as it is very long, James has been wading through all of the details on WEF website (Poor him).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeMsaN6xjAQ&t=1407s
That salmon looks delicious – but for those readers looking for a budget priced Vitamin D alternative, I recommend Kedgeree, which, coincidentally, I have just made and eaten. Eggs, rice, butter, cream, haddock, plus turmeric and chili flakes to stave off the cold in this miserable weather. I believe if you chop and fry an onion in the early stages that will cover the Quercetin as well.
How about a sidebar for readers Covid-beating recipes!
Coconut oil supposedly has antiviral properties Anyway I think it tastes good and being highly saturated works well for high temperature cooking. I fry some cashew nuts, multicoloured peppers and chillies and garlic with a few prawns and a tin of crab (or in spring a whole dressed crab from the fish van) with a small amount of basmati rice to avoid spiking my blood glucose. Or I use it to make a prawn or chicken curry with numerous spices.
Mostly I eat meat, poultry, game and fish with a wide range of vegetables including a lot of seasonal stuff. Usually I don’t catch much. In February I cut my thumb badly when I broke a wine glass. In the past it would probably have needed stitches and certainly antibiotics or at least ointment. As it was by June you couldn’t see which thumb was damaged. So I must be doing something right. A lot of fit healthy old folks round here, I’ll have what they’re having.
I can’t rememember ever seeing a speech for a newly elected NZ Prime Minister broadcast here.
What is so special about this one? A nod to the the NZ Covid strategy perhaps?
There was Build Back Better message in her speech I believe (I didn’t listen, just caught Sky News presenter mention it afterwards)
That mentally ill woman is one of Bliar’s babes.
Fucking bitch
Still trying to get refund for holiday booked for April. Havent got response yet. Will take it up with Fair Trading,but that may not bode well.