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Gyms Are Essential Services
A group of 100 gym owners from across Wales have got together to tell the Welsh Government that it is wrong and harmful to shut gyms during the so-called “fire break” lockdown. They told Lockdown Sceptics:
As of 18.00 Friday we enter a 17 day “fire break” period where all but non-essential businesses will close across the entire country.
As a collective, we strongly believe that gyms are an essential service, and scientific evidence shows that active participation in exercise through establishments such as gyms relieves the strain on the NHS through the promotion of physical and mental wellbeing. In forcing the closure of gyms, the Welsh Government will be harming a large proportion of the Welsh population and we cannot stand by and allow that to happen.
Just as the Liverpudlian gym community fought (and won) against gym closures in its city, we are now going to do the same for our country. However, we want to take it a step further in getting gyms officially recognised as an essential service by the Government, as they have in other countries across Europe.
– According to ukactive, there were 22 million gym visits in England between July 25th and September 13th and they resulted in just 78 confirmed Covid cases
– The number of cases per 100,000 gym visits in this period was 0.34It is widely accepted that suicide rates amongst gym-aged males increased during the first lockdown and subsequently. Although we are awaiting official Government data on this, some reports suggest a 40% increase, which if true is a national tragedy. Gyms are not only important for the physical wellbeing of their members but also their mental wellbeing which is just as important given the well-publicised (and significant) lack of funding in the NHS for mental health issues.
Finally, on top of the multiple billions in savings the fitness industry provides the NHS, gyms provide employment to tens of thousands of people.
The first lockdown put a great strain on gyms. When we were allowed to reopen, we each had to spend thousands on measures to make gyms “Covid safe”. The low transmission rates reported from gyms mentioned above are testament to the incredible job that gym owners have done.
It is no exaggeration to say that this further “fire-break” will put the Welsh gym industry in the most perilous position it has ever been in, threatening the employment of thousands of staff and self-employed personal trainers.
We are an industry that relies on our customers becoming members, and member confidence is at an all-time low as they are reluctant to join a gym when it may be forced to close at any point. We need certainty for ourselves and for our members, and being classed as an essential service will go a long way towards that.
Snap surveys across Welsh gyms have shown that gym members also fully support our request to remain open as an essential service and have given us their full backing.
We have a Welsh Assembly Member, Neil McEvoy, who is willing to fight alongside us and as a collective we directly represent tens of thousands of members.
Please consider supporting their campaign through their funding page.
Churches Are Essential Too
Church leaders have written to the Welsh Assembly seeking urgent review of the ‘firebreak’ lockdown measures introduced last night that will ban churches in Wales from opening for three Sundays. Christian Concern has the details.
The pre-action letter argues that blanket restrictions imposed on Welsh churches which began on Friday October 23rd at 6pm will be both unlawful and unnecessary.
Furthermore, the letter states that: “The forced closure of churches by the state is an extreme interference with Article 9 rights. Such a far-reaching and large-scale intervention may only be justified by the most compelling scientific evidence of a resulting benefit to public health.”
The church leaders, who work in some of the most deprived areas of Wales and are from a range of denominations, acknowledge the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic, but argue that the imposition of appropriate anti-pandemic measures should be a matter for church rather than secular authorities.
The group state that they are genuinely open to a constructive dialogue with the Welsh Assembly, but warn that if matters are not addressed urgently they will seek a judicial review of the ban.
Leaders of English churches have also signed the letter, concerned that the forced closure of churches in Wales would set a precedent that England would follow.
On October 19th, Wales’s First Minister, Mark Drakeford, announced, without any parliamentary debate or scrutiny, that Wales would enter a two-week ‘firebreak’ Covid lockdown.
He said the measures were needed to relieve pressure on the health service and slow the spread of the virus in the country.
As part of the measures, he announced church doors will close for public worship other than for funerals or wedding ceremonies for three Sundays, although wedding receptions will not be allowed.
The measures follow a similar blanket ban on church services from the UK Government during the first wave of the pandemic, which saw a series of claims brought to the High Court against the Government.
UK churches faced tough restrictions, which even involved closing for private prayer.
Courts repeatedly warned that the limitations imposed by the secular Government upon the ancient liberties of the Church were potentially unlawful.
In response, the Secretary of State amended the Regulations in July to lift the legally enforceable ‘lockdown’ on the places of worship, which rendered the claims obsolete.
Mr Justice Swift observed at the time that the claims against the Government decision to close churches “raises significant issues”.
In May, a French court ruled that the French Government’s closure of churches was unlawful and a “seriously and manifestly illegal infringement” of religious rights, and ordered the ban to be lifted.
Read more here.
Stop Press: The Critic has a piece by Revd Matthew Roberts on “Why we’re fighting the Welsh lockdown“.
The Sanity of Crowds
Christian minister and Lockdown Sceptics reader Jamie Franklin (who runs the Irreverend podcast) has penned a moving reflection on the many losses of lockdown and the miserable new normal.
I remember as a boy going to watch Spurs at the old White Hart Lane. The feeling of walking up the concrete steps and into the open, the atmosphere tangible, tens of thousands with me, anticipating, hoping, smiling, united. I remember the strange smell of cigarette smoke, the unknown, elaborate obscenities, the sudden silence of the crowd as a chance opened up, the sound of myriad upon myriad plastic seats flapping shut as the faithful arose, eyes focused, breath stopped… the eruption, the euphoria when the ball hit the back of the net. I jumped for joy.
I remember fireworks upon the River Thames at the Millennium. I remember travelling back to my grandparents’ house on the tube and strangers playing charades together.
I remember going to watch musicals and pantomimes with my family, lots of Andrew Lloyd Webber: Cats, Joseph, Whistle Down the Wind to name some.
I remember school assemblies and chapel, singing the hymns in a funny way, making up different words, laughing with my friends when the chaplain spoke of “coveting thy neighbour’s ass”.
I remember Christmas at my grandparents’ house, not being able to sleep Christmas Eve, waiting to go home for lunch and presents as I sat through church on the special morning.
I remember going to Greece with a close friend. Teenagers, we went with his mum who couldn’t control us. We stalked around the island with another couple of lads we met there. On the last night I accidentally got paralytic on Ouzo.
I remember going to Earl’s Court to see Metallica and Iron Maiden. Amazing.
I remember going to university for the first time, the uncertainty and enjoyment of meeting so many new people, the struggle to understand myself in this new environment.
I remember going to church by my own choice as an adult. I remember the feeling of joy as I sang God’s praises with a few hundred other people and really meant it…
I’m told that this is all over now. I’m told that none of it is safe. I’m told that the kindest thing to do is for us all to stay in our houses forever. In order for my children to be safe, they must never hug their grandparents. Old folks in hospital mustn’t see their kids before they die. I’m told by Tobias Ellwood MP that I will need to be vaccinated before I can return to normal life, and, even then, that I must carry a passport in order to go anywhere. I’m told by the Prime Minister that I will need to test myself for a virus every morning before I go outside. I’m told that I must allow the government to track my every movement and interaction.
Let’s hope they don’t make this stunted existence last too long. Worth reading in full.
New Study Claims Lockdowns Work
The Lancet has published a new study by Dr You Li and colleagues purporting to show that various non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have a significant impact on reducing infections. From the conclusion:
To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to assess the temporal association between changing the status of a range of NPIs and the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, as measured by R, for all countries for which data were available. On the basis of the empirical data from 131 countries, we found that individual NPIs, including school closure, workplace closure, public events bans, requirements to stay at home, and internal movement limits, were associated with reductions in R of 3–24% on day 28 after their introduction, compared with the day before their introduction. Reopening schools, lifting bans on public events, lifting bans on public gatherings of more than 10 people, lifting requirements to stay at home, and lifting internal movement limits were associated with increases in R of 11–25% on day 28 after the relaxation. The effects of introducing and lifting NPIs were not immediate; it took around one week following the introduction of an NPI to observe 60% of the maximum reduction in R and even longer (almost three weeks) following the relaxation of an NPI to observe 60% of the maximum increase in R.
Our analysis suggests that, in the context of a resurgence of SARS-CoV-2, a control strategy of banning public events and public gatherings of more than 10 people would be associated with a reduction in R of 6% on day seven, 13% on day 14, and 29% on day 28; if this strategy also included closing workplaces, the overall reduction in R would be 16% on day seven, 22% on day 14, and 38% on day 28. These findings provide additional evidence that can inform policy makers’ decisions on the timing of introducing and lifting different NPIs.
The study has numerous problems, many of which the authors themselves list in the discussion. They claim, for instance, that closing schools and banning public events have the largest impact on infection rates. But they acknowledge that these were usually the first interventions brought in and that the large impact may just reflect that earliness. In terms of increases in infection after lifting restrictions, they acknowledge that they don’t allow for increases in testing, yet the early summer (when most of the restrictions were being lifted) was when testing was being ramped up worldwide, so much of the increase must be attributed to that. They admit they don’t take the seasonality of the virus into account, and appear to defend this by citing a model that claims to show that temperature and humidity don’t make any difference to transmission, despite it now being clear that the virus faded in many places partly due to the onset of summer and is seeing a seasonal resurgence in the autumn. They also claim schools are major drivers of infection, citing one study about the high viral load in five year-olds, but ignoring all the studies that show closing schools made little or no difference.
They acknowledge that there were varying delays in the interventions having an effect, with a median of eight days to reach 60% of the effect, which seems a very long delay for an impact that should really be immediate (their methodology takes into account the lag between infection and reporting tests results). They argue this is likely to be a result of behavioural inertia, which they say is backed up by Google mobility data, but don’t go into detail. It’s hard to see how behavioural inertia could explain a delay in the impact of the closure of schools, which is by nature an immediate and universal behavioural change. Likewise, if public events are banned then they are banned. Why then the delay and variation?
Crucially, there is no sign they have considered how much of the decline in R would have happened anyway, due to natural epidemic decline (herd immunity). As often happens with these studies, one gets a sense that they are assuming their conclusion (that NPIs work) and thus don’t give proper consideration to the possibility that the reduction in R is unrelated to the interventions.
In some ways, though, this study is welcome to sceptics because it concedes that most interventions have no clear impact, and even for those that do the effect is very limited. If lockdowns don’t really prevent transmission, and vaccines likewise, then what argument is left against the strategy of protecting vulnerable people as best we can while otherwise getting back to normal? None that I can see.
Is Public Opinion Turning?
There’s an encouraging piece in the Daily Mail today suggesting public opinion is beginning to shift.
Dramatic evidence of a growing revolt against the coronavirus lockdowns emerged last night.
The public think the rules won’t work, they will break the law if necessary to see their loved ones and believe it is time to “get Britain back to normal”.
These are among the key findings from focus groups that suggest traditional opinion polls have failed to spot a decisive change in attitudes toward the pandemic.
One leading pollster believes Britain could be witnessing a repeat of what happened in the 2015 election and the EU referendum.
Opinion polls forecast Labour’s Ed Miliband would be prime minister and that Brexit would be rejected: focus groups indicated the opposite and were proved right each time.
Since the start of the pandemic most polls have suggested voters support lockdowns and, if anything, want the Government to impose even more stringent curbs.
Some have argued this is because furloughed workers have been able to stay at home on 80 per cent of their normal wages thanks to taxpayer funds.
Many Tory MPs opposed to Boris Johnson’s three-tier lockdown system claim their stance is backed by many of their constituents.
The Daily Mail listened in to one of the focus groups, typical of several that have been conducted recently, and it echoed the MPs’ views.
Carried out last Friday, and comprising a cross-section of society, both Tory and Labour, in London, Birmingham and Liverpool, it appears to show voters have lost faith in lockdowns and are no longer prepared to obey all the rules.
They also think the second wave of the virus will be less dangerous, are increasingly worried about the damage to jobs and the economy.
Meanwhile many will refuse a coronavirus vaccine for fear of side effects and there is continuing fury over rule breakers such as the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Dominic Cummings.
The pollster who conducted these focus groups, James Johnson, has written up his findings for the paper.
Stop Press: Only one in 10 told to self-isolate remain at home for two weeks, according to SAGE document.
Lockdown Logic
We’re publishing today a piece by a philosopher who analyses the so-called logic of the lockdown zealots and finds it wanting. Here’s an excerpt.
What, then, is the status of SAGE’s (or the BBC’s, or the general public’s) conviction that a second COVID-19 wave is imminent or already under way? The belief that the NHS is under threat; the conviction that in the absence of further restrictions on personal liberties and economic activity, we risk hundreds of thousands of excess deaths? Clearly, it’s a blik: these are expressions of an unshakeable faith in the most pessimistic outcomes – one that is retained and allowed to govern argument, attitudes in social life, and decision-making, regardless of (almost) no matter what evidence to the contrary. The virus is out to get us; and any evidence that suggests otherwise just shows how cunning it is, and how cautious we need to be to protect ourselves against its malevolence. These articles of faith are ‘meaningful’ to those committed to them, in that they affect the way they live their lives; and they are retained regardless of all rational considerations that count against them.
Some may be inclined to the view that it is no real accident that belief in the ‘second wave’ (or, perhaps, second coming)’should resemble religious belief. They may suggest that it accords frighteningly well with certain other aspects of the phenomenon as we experience it: the cult of supposed experts – the scientifically-informed ‘priesthood’ controlling and interpreting the models, whose identities were kept secret for so long (as a guard, presumably, against some form of jealous magic that might undermine, them were their identities publicised). For me, that’s going a bit too far: my view is simply that these people can’t think straight.
Worth reading in full.
Maureen From Barnsley on Good Morning Britain
An 83 year-old woman from Barnsley has done more to rally support for the sceptics’ cause than six months of unrelenting toil on Lockdown Sceptics. But we love her. Here she is socking it to Dr Sarah Jarvis on Good Morning Britain.
Postcard From Albania
Lifestyle writer and Lockdown Sceptics reader Robert Jackman has sent us a postcard from Albania. Sounds like they’ve got the right idea.
There’s a depressing rule of thumb at the moment in Europe that it’s typically the countries on the other side of the Berlin Wall that are the freer ones these days. And a visit to Albania – once the last Communist dictatorship in Europe – proves no different.
Of course, Albania does have some coronavirus restrictions. Masks are compulsory in most indoor spaces (restaurants and bars excluded), but the take-up is far patchier than in Britain. The collective mentality seems to be that, whatever the law might say, masks remain a matter of personal choice.
In a short weekend break, I spot the occasional social distancing sign in a window but nothing more than that. There are no restrictions on how many people can enter a shop or sit on a bus. No martials policing the streets. No irritating one-way systems or taped-over seating.
I suspect there are several factors that contribute to the lack of suffocating restrictions we’ve become used to. As with most poorer countries in Europe, customer-facing businesses in Albania tend to be small and independent, often run directly by owners.
From serving customers to sweeping the floors at closing time, the average Alabanian coffee shop owner has enough to worry about without fussing about whether customers are wearing masks. They’re also much less likely to want to chase away custom. Nor do they receive orders from a nervous head office intent on minimising potential liability.
You get the sense that – even putting the virus aside – rules and regulations carry less weight here than they do in the more litigious and bureaucratic West. Cigarettes, for example, are available virtually everywhere and restaurants seem to have the automatic right to let customers smoke – even in a shopping mall. That lack of oversight might not always be a good thing, but I’d happily take it over armed-police shutting down gyms.
When chatting to a bar owner later, I find out there are some other rules in place. It’s just as well he mentions them, as I’d have never noticed otherwise. One of the new rules, he says, is that pubs and bars are banned from playing music after 8pm. Does he follow the rule I ask? Of course not, he laughs. In three months, he’s received the occasional ticking off from passing police officers, but even then probably only to cover their own backs. The idea that he could be fined or shut down seems alien to him.
Come midnight, the music is louder than when I arrived. At one point, I even hear the sweary refrains of Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing in the Name Of (‘F**k you I won’t do what you tell me!‘)”. I suspect it isn’t a deliberate act of defiance, but it’s music to the ears of a slightly tipsy lockdown sceptic.
So how is it all working out for Albania? Their daily coronavirus deaths are still in the single figures but have been steadily ticking away for months now. In typically Balkan style, they have effectively arrived at the Swedish model (well, plus masks) by default rather than design. If this is what ‘letting the virus rip’ looks like, we probably shouldn’t be too worried.
There is one final factor that I imagine contributes to the country’s aloofness in the face of the virus. As anyone who’s been to the Balkans knows, it’s common to see death notices printed on A4 paper and posted on special notice boards around town. While the aim is to let people know about upcoming funerals, seeing those black and white photos also reminds you that death is always out there. Perhaps it helps maintain perspective – and keep away the paralysing fear that has gripped so much of western Europe?
After all, I can’t help notice that, even in the grip of a pandemic, the wall of remembrance is hardly overcrowded. If Neil Ferguson was right, there would be paper blowing everywhere.
Round-Up
- “Are we really seeing a second wave?” – Dr Waqar Rashid in the Spectator points out there’s nothing unusual so far in terms of hospital admissions and deaths about the so-called second wave
- “Nicola Sturgeon warns Scotland her new FIVE Tier lockdown will see some pubs and businesses close permanently and could cost people their jobs – and warns her Government could run out of money unless Boris and Rishi Sunak hand over more Westminster cash” – Report in the Mail on Nic Sturge-On’s latest
viruseconomy destroying wheeze - “More proof Britain’s COVID-19 outbreak is slowing down? SAGE believes R rate has dropped slightly and ONS estimates 35,200 people in England got infected every day last week – meaning speed of growth has shrunk again” – The Mail mines the latest ONS survey data and finds further evidence of infection slowdown
- “Demonising of virus doctors who dare to tell the truth” – Kathy Gyngell in Conservative Woman on the plight of America’s Frontline Doctors and the severe censorship they have experienced
- “The slow media catch-up” – Michael Curzon in Bournbrook on how late much of the media are to the sceptic party
- “How the MEAN psychologists induced us to comply with coronavirus restrictions” – Psychologist Dr Gary Sidley on the insidious role played by Government psychologists in the Behavioural Information Team in deploying psychological techniques to induce compliance
- “Open Letter To the Irish Government” – A group of doctors in Ireland appeal to the Taoiseach to wake up to the folly of lockdowns with a good summary of the sceptical scientific case
- “Flu deaths fall as ONS says many who were vulnerable may have died in first Covid wave” – The Telegraph‘s Sarah Knapton on why flu deaths may be down, underlining once again the already short life expectancy of many Covid victims
- “Government fears working from home is hitting UK economy hard” – Turns out it’s not all so wonderful after all, from the Telegraph
- “Alberta to pilot COVID-19 testing at border that could shorten quarantine time” – Report from CBC on the introduction of airport testing in Canada
- “Mark Drakeford has declared war on the economy” – Matthew Lynn in the Spectator on the naked anti-free market agenda of the Welsh lockdown
- “If you’re pinning your hopes on a Covid vaccine, here’s a dose of realism” – David Salisbury in the Guardian delivers the truth that even a vaccine won’t allow a return to normal. But it’s the Guardian, so the conclusion is not ‘let’s learn from Sweden’ but ‘let’s lock down forever’
- “Reasons to believe COVID-19 pandemic will ease next spring, says health expert” – The Irish Times reports on the advice of Professor Devi Sridhar,
public healthsocial scientist at Edinburgh University, to a summer school that “if we can get to March” governments will have a chance of using a vaccine and rapid testing to “form a game plan with this virus” - “Why is coronavirus so deadly?” – Ridiculous piece of fear porn from James Gallagher on the BBC website, including the claim (from a seemingly uninformed immunologist) that “this is a new one, so we don’t think there’s much prior immunity there”. Eh?
- “Half a million Americans could die of Covid by end of February, study forecasts” – More doom-modelling from the University of Washington in the Guardian. That would make the “second wave” more than twice as big as the first, despite now widespread immunity. Maybe someone should tell New York, which is currently seeing no rise at all
- “Why I’m not surprised Gap is closing its UK stores” – The Telegraph‘s Fashion Editor says the store’s problems predate the pandemic. But even so… Gap?!?
- “A Nothingburger that Changed the World” – Good piece by Paul Collits for the Freedoms Project
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Wales themed today: “Fear Of A Welsh Planet” by Goldie Lookin Chain and “This Sullen Welsh Heart” by Manic Street Preachers.
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 an excellent piece about the ineffectiveness of masks by a Roger W. Koops, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry.
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 last week and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it. If you Googled it on Tuesday, the top hits were three smear pieces from the Guardian, including: “Herd immunity letter signed by fake experts including ‘Dr Johnny Bananas’.” (Freddie Sayers at UnHerd warned us about this hit job the day before it appeared.) On the bright side, Google UK has stopped shadow banning it, so the actual Declaration now tops the search results – and Toby’s Spectator piece about the attempt to suppress it is among the top hits – although discussion of it has been censored by Reddit. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job.)
You can find it here. Please sign it. Now over 600,000 signatures.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many JRs being brought against the Government and its ministers, we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
First, there’s the Simon Dolan case. You can see all the latest updates and contribute to that cause here.
Then there’s the Robin Tilbrook case. You can read about that and contribute here.
Then there’s John’s Campaign which is focused specifically on care homes. Find out more about that here.
There’s the GoodLawProject’s Judicial Review of the Government’s award of lucrative PPE contracts to various private companies. You can find out more about that here and contribute to the crowdfunder here.
The Night Time Industries Association has instructed lawyers to JR any further restrictions on restaurants, pubs and bars.
And last but not least there’s the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. You can read about that and make a donation here.
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…
This video about the Asch Conformity Experiment shows how easily people can be induced to go along with a group rather than trusting the evidence they can see with their own eyes, especially when the group is unanimous. Sometimes it is because they become convinced the group must be right because it sees or knows something they don’t. Sometimes it is because they don’t want to stand out or rock the boat. But the more people stand up against the consensus, the more others are willing to look again and decide for themselves. Highly recommended (and only four minutes long).
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
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While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in.
But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him.
Courtesy of Mr Dylan, having got the first post I’ll use it as a handle for a couple of technical questions:
I’ve read on here and heard elsewhere (Dr Yeadon I think) that the current PCR tests can pick up the protein spikes on all coronaviruses. Does anyone know if this correct?? Are many of these +ves actually merely picking up colds?
Also, might it be possible that a previously infected individual who now has T-cell immunity can get ‘reinfected’* when coming into contact with the virus again, but that it never actually appears as an infection – rather the immune system recognises and zaps it before it can do anything? Maybe that (part) accounts for the number of +ve tests we are now seeing.
*When I say ‘reinfection’, I mean the virus enters the body and maybe even starts to replicate, but doesn’t get anywhere (because the T-cells or whatever quickly get it).
As an aside, I fail entirely to understand how we can calculate an IFR without having defined an infection – I don’t know if there is any such definition, but I haven’t seen one.
Mike Yeadon is quite clear that the the T-cells are the first line of defence against infection and in his inteview with James Delingpole explains it in a clear and logical manner. He also explains that T-cells are far less specific and will attack viruses which are only a partial match, hence the fact that even though CV-19 was novel, it was sufficiently like other Corona viruses for the process to work. It is only in the case of a massive infection that they become overwhelmed and then anti-bodies are generated to combat it. The difference between the two is that T-cells replicate at a far faster rate than antibodies, hence the need for longer hospitalisation for the seriously infected who need additional support whilst the antibodies build up to the required level. Sadly, sometimes the process fails and the patient dies.
This process is true for all viral infections.
Thanks Pancho – I’m actually listening to Delingpole-Yeadon now. It’s astonishing – and telling, I think – how hard it is for non-specialists like me to pick up even the basics of what is going on in the immune response. It’s as if we are not supposed to know.
As the good doctor says, SAGE must know about the T-cell process, yet why do they spout nonsense about 94% of us still waiting to be infected?
The study of pathology is not seeking to understand health any more than current ‘climatologists’ seek to understand climate. The framing of pathogenesis operates a negative set. Biologists can and do uncover a more symbiotic realm of Communication and synergy, but the new wine does not fit into the old wine bottle of fear and leverage – except as can be marketised and weaponised to serve the established funding channels and agencies. That ‘immunity’ or simply ‘health’ or life is equipped and able to meet challenges has an extension into our conscious acceptance of responsibility. The wish to evade responsibility and ‘get away with it’ for as long as possible is part of fear of life and healing as loss of right to persist in an ‘abnormal’ or unnatural pattern of behaviour, taken as if it is life, freedom or control, and imposed upon the body, and the body corporate (world), through the mutually aligning of negative self definition and masking narrative identity. Why do they lie? Because they have been doing so with impunity for so long that they belive theirs is the right to tell you what you are to think and do. And for the most part… Read more »
Look up Dr Tom Cowan’s recent vid talk. (If you are interested). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N4hqmPaLe4 I appreciate everyone’s willingness on behalf of a truly human future as distinct from systemic subjection to bio-tech control. After a science 101 and a breakdown of studies that do not show substance for their claims, he offers a short simple overview of the body’s defences or detoxification strategies. He puts T-cells as the third line of defence. If you are only concerned with a compromised or undermined health, then you might be forgiven for thinking they are the first. There are known treatments for ‘massive infection’ that are effectively walled out and not used. High dose Intravenous Vit C being but one of them. Listening to Yeadon (Good man) retelling the virus story last night made me aware that homeopathy is denied as an option because it cant be accounted for – which is not altogether true, but exactly HOW a packet of non-living genetic code fragments has a capacity to ‘hijack’ a living cell, reproduce itself and mutate so as to evade antibodies – is frankly, a fairy story – albeit with tragic consequences. That new toxic exposures initiate new challenges to adaptive survival drives… Read more »
TJN, I am not a medical person, but having watched a lot of experts on YT, primarily Sucharit Bhakdi, a micro biologist, who explains things very well, I say yes to your first 2 points:
A PCR tests will pick up DNA of every, or most, Corona viruses.
It also picks up dead cells and DNA/RNA which is till hanging around in our body. So, yes, after our T cells have killed any virus, the rubbish is around and will be picked up by a PCR test.
A PCR tests will pick up DNA of every, or most, Corona viruses.
If that’s true, it’s surely massive – all those thousands of students imprisoned because there’s a cold going around the campus. Whole sections of UK society effectively locked down to save them from a common cold.
Really?? Even with my cynicism and contempt for the perpetrators of this shitshow I struggle to come to terms with that.
Are common colds being presented to the public and politicians as covid-19 cases? It’s an astonishing question to have to ask, yet I really don’t know where we stand on this.
Don’t forget, they cycle the test excessively so it almost inevitably picks up some viral remnants.
Of course, that’s another problem – although in terms of perception and presentation there’s a big difference between covid-19 remnants and ordinary common coronavirus cold fragments.
There are many problems with the PCR test and the wider approach of mass testing healthy people, but the test picking up other coronaviruses isn’t one of them. It doesn’t.
Ok, thanks for being specific on that. I’d be surprised if it did, as it would be effectively useless – but the contrary has been stated, which left me wondering.
PCR 101: First you have to know the DNA code of the part of the virus DNA you want to detect and use a primer of complimentary DNA that will lock onto the virus part. This is then amplified through multiple thermal cycles using an enzyme called polymerase. Then detected at the end of the process. It does not distinguish “live” or intact virus from parts of the virus, but provided the primer is unique to the virus, it will only detect the presence of that virus alone. Primers are chosen to detect sequences unique to the virus of interest.
Of course if the virus has stopped replicating, there won’t be a lot of DNA around to amplify, so amplification will not be detected as easily (needs more cycles and hence noise) because the starting level is so low. If virus is replicating there may be 1000, 10000, 100000 times as much and detection is more reliable.
So we need to know what primer the PCR is aimed at, and which coronaviruses carry that primer?
That should be defined somewhere, so we can answer the question about whether the current tests are detecting common colds?
Sorry to ask such basic questions, but it’s very hard to get to firm ground here (and indeed for any data produced by official sources).
I would suppose the current covid PCR tests are all aimed at the same primer, but that may well be very naive of me …
According to Guy153 who knows whereof he writes (he can come by and correct me if I’m wrong) the test targets specific RNA fragnments most of which are found only in SARS-2 except for one which is also found in SARS 1 which you are unlikely to have. Not in other coronaviruses, yet – how much do they exchange DNA?
That was my understanding of it, until recently when I started reading on here that the test picks up fragments of all coronaviruses. Hence my question.
Maybe we need a technical section on the forums pages, or perhaps the ‘medicine’ one will do, and I should put up this (and other questions I have) there. I don’t know how well frequented those forums are.
When they found various code fragments in 4 Wuhanese patient’s lung fluid, they recognised patterns also in other coronvirus (I don’t know if they looked for part matches with other viruses). They took these parts as pieces of Humpty Dumpty and used existing coronvirus sequences to fill in the gaps and defined this computer stitched composite as Sars-cov2 – then without any real science to assume so, declared covid-19 to be the disease caused by sars-cov2. So while the PCR can discover even a tiny or molecular sample of a target IF the test is sensitively and rigorously undertaken (the result of which has NOTHING to do with diagnosis or contagion), it will only find what it is primed to detect. However because almost all of you HAVE emotionally invested in the reaction to a covid19 nightmare, the settling to ‘normal’ with statistical data and its various shenanigans can keep you IN the Virus, instead of looking to see what it is all based on. If global media lockstep Inc had not blitzkrieged the ‘discovery’ as a WHO telling us we were naked – defenceless – and doomed to lose our loved ones – perhaps by infecting them with deadly… Read more »
Yes. The CDC have published a standard set of primers – which are chains of nucleosides designed to lock onto parts of the SARS-COV2 (and only that) genome. You will see on the link that some are general and some are FDA approved for the purposes of testing for infection. Don’t apologise for basic questions. Scientists should, as a matter of duty, be able to explain matters clearly. If they can’t then they fail in that duty. It’s not my field btw, but the approval process for a diagnostic test is rigorous. They won’t be detecting rhinovirus (most common cold) or the other four endemic coronaviruses (two of which give 1/6 colds).They would fail to gain approval for such use if they did.
One other nice point – the FDA have actually approved a three-in-one PCR test to detect SARS-COV2, influenza A and influenza B. So yes, with the right primer mix, one COULD detect all five coronaviruses.
Thanks – as per my reply to Jon G above.
Scientists should, as a matter of duty, be able to explain matters clearly.
Yes, and in my experience good scientists always can explain complicated matters clearly – it’s a byproduct of clarity of thought.
Trouble is, not much on covid-19 seems to be clear – the product of deliberate obfuscation I think.
I have a technical background, but not in biology/medicine, and when it comes to reading covid research I find it very hard to get to any reliable bedrock.
Yes but also the true or precise provenance of the original from which the primer sequences are selected is unclear and I would claim unreproducible. (Different versions of the RT-PCR test use different primers or short code sequences supposed to be unique to the original ‘novel’ virus). Some commentary on this lack of clarity is given by Dr Tom Cowen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N4hqmPaLe4 So without an actual whole virus, identified and cultured, so as to sequence its genetic makeup – we could be reading the goats entrails – or rather the re-consitution of fragments found in a Wuhan patient’s vial matters via computer assisted program (weaving with selected coronaviral genomes for continuity) – is NOT a proven discovery of a whole virus. Nor was it ever claimed to be proven as cause of any disease (legal foresight there), and so what we are priming with and seeking for – even with all the known issues of artefacts and false positives – is … WHO knows what. I understand that in ancient times only a priest could read the goat’s entrails. The ability to define and declare disease vectors, along with diagnostic and testing parameters and mutate thee at will – sounds more… Read more »
Your thinking is lovely, Binra. Expansive and wise.
Yesterday, I replied to the comment about a builder who allegedly received mixed responses to 15 tests carried out on himself:
…: if the government are confident that the tests are accurate, they could destroy the “false positive” argument by sending 100 samples from a single individual to each of their labs and publishing the results.
Does anyone know if anything like this basic level of quality check has been carried out?
A good idea, and to me very logical one.
Presumably they’ve already carried out such quality checks …
Not sure where the results can be found though.
Surely, those youngsters quarantined abroad for weeks while getting repeat positives would answer that question.
Presumably they were just picking up viral debris, after a true +ve at the start.
I read David’s comment as presuming the builder was actually -ve, although he still got a range of results.
As people are receiving positive test results for tests they’ve not even had, it’s a moot point….
Mahyar Live From Anti-Lockdown March
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXVg7YBsAgE
Guess who’s first?
TJN?
Bronze again
The Irish third?
BMJ RR answering global bureaucrats in DC (Bollyky and Kickbusch): Re: Preparing democracies for pandemicsRe: Preparing democracies for pandemics Thomas J Bollyky, Ilona Kickbusch. 371:doi 10.1136/bmj.m4088 Dear Editor I find the basis of this article [1] disturbing. The authors assume a common ground of what is information and what is “disinformation” – disinformation is a problematic concept since if it was simply untrue it would be false information instead perhaps of information which is disapproved of in certain quarters. The foundations of liberal democracy lie in public accountability and open discussions of policy, whereas what we have here is an appeal to authority: there are apparently superior beings to whom democracies should defer. Are they government or corporate bureaucracies (or perhaps non-profit foundations), and where do they gain legitimacy? If we arrive at the point where corporate entities censor what people may read and write we have a problem. In the end being able to ask even the most difficult questions is not only an essential component of freedom but also of safety. Thomas Bollyky and Ilona Kickbusch cite the article by Wilson and Wisongye ‘Social media and vaccine hesitancy’ [2], but we have reached the point where the most reasoned contributions posing important… Read more »
It could be proposed that the covid psyop is a necessary redefining and reiteration of a controlled narrative amidst a world in which a consciousness is growing as to a lack of substance – not just with regard the the vaccine and pharmaceutical model, but across the spectrum of a corporately invested scientific model – which includes awareness of fundamental and systemic corruptions.
Too big to fail means – everyone and everything else has to ‘fail’ to support the ‘model’.
The choice of the term ‘vaccine hesitancy’ is itself propaganda – as is the death stats use of the term ‘vaccine preventable diseases’. I have it that UK and US and perhaps other developed nations have iatrogenic disease as our third leading cause of death. But you don’t easily find such information.
Hang in there guys
Things are changing. People are no longer listening to the government(s)
Even pro lockdown people are ignoring it
I speak to loads of people privately and they tell they are breaking lockdown. Seeing friends and family
Stay strong guys please
We will. I’m out there.
Me too. I’m through with this s##t and so is my family!
I know of so many examples of people ignoring it
I do see that the tide is turning. However I think that many covidians have always been hypocrites – seeing their own friends & family but always ready to point the finger at others. Even our own politicians who’ve invented these ridiculous “rules” don’t even stick to them.
Great post
Well said. Its pretty much one rule for me, another one for thee….
Even before 4th July, people started breaking the rules
Friends arranging to meet at the supermarket car
Bumping “into” each other in the park
At the start in March, people accepted (and believed) the rules the government set.
Now they don’t. It has not helped the government that they have kept changing the rules!
A lot of people have been writing to their MPs as well.
Most people are sensible with lockdown breaking rules.
The government needs to trust them and us.
While we still need to protect the vulnerable it’s wonderful that people are starting to wake up
Sadly not my experience, just had a bad one and I’m the one accused of being mad because I simply can’t understand why all my friends and family are following the rules. It’s very lonely.
Must be very hard for you. Make the best of this group to save your sanity!
Moomin, you are not alone. I watch everyone around me complying with rotten, destructive and mad laws and wonder what on earth is motivating them.
Hear, hear!!!
Anyone in Tier 3 who thinks it’s just for 28 days is in for a shock. Until March earliest. Ditto the 17 day for break for Wales.
Things are getting REALLY stupid now!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/24/uk-could-be-urged-to-keep-windows-open-in-effort-to-curb-covid-19-poor-ventilation
“But while the report stresses the importance of ventilation, it says other factors must also be considered such as “thermal comfort”, exposure to pollution and energy use.”
So you can maybe stop short of freezing to death.
Has anyone told Greta? The effect on CO2 emissions would be enormous.
😂😂😂😂😂. Annnd don’t forget to wear your masks
Nice – do they mention anywhere the research from Yale that showed lower temperatures negatively impact the ability of the immune system to fight off viral infection?
Or maybe that’s the point of the advice?
Yep… That’s the point of the “advice”! THEY are going for the “Great Rest”!
Gates looks so…….natural
Not enough medals
When there’s a job to be done, just do it well.
Is that gates old school uniform it looks like the SS mindset of eugenics is still with Bill the ripper
Not that it matters to me but I heard something on BBC R4 some months back about open windows being helpful to viruses as humidity actually stops the spread – and opening the window dehumidifies the room . My kids’ school opens windows and doors throughout the day , which will be interesting in January.
It used to be called “catching a chill.”
I thought elderly people died of fuel poverty and cold in quite large numbers every winter?!
Indeed that is probably the plan, when this Government came in it said it would have a final solution to the problem of elderly people’s care costs, it is just that nobody thought it would be that kind of ‘final solution’!
It’s not just the elderly. There’s just too many of us, ask Bill Gates.
Indeed…
I thought it was the advent of vaccines, better hygiene, medicines, etc, that Gates is pushing for that’s been the driving factor in population growth, especially in developing countries. Or am I missing something??
Yes… you’re missing something!
Sanitation, nutrition and morale show as the features that reduced the diseases that mostly focused on the poor. Not vaccines.
It is not hard to find the data on such diseases and the curves being almost flat before the vaccination was introduced.Dissolving Illusions by Dr Suzanne Humphries goes into a lot of detail.
Yes, Gates has been consistent for many years with his loathing for the general populace and sometimes I can almost agree with him.
I get the impression that anyone over 50 is on the shortlist.
The old, the not so old and of course the frail. Bill will spread his net as wide as possible.
Yes… They will just let the younger slaves alive because these are the ones already formatted to accept (in some cases demand) smartphones and apps and robots. and “free” stuff!
They are also the ones more prone to build the machines and write code for the next phase… and feel accomplished by this! After all they “think” they are working to build a “BETTER and GREENER and SUSTAINABLE FUTURE”!
Old and obsolete uman animals are just going to the recycling factory…
And if by 2030 the number of slave heads is still above 4 billion, more “pandemics” will be deployed!
Good ventilation has been obvious from the start and applies to any virus or respiratory problem.
Try that though in our 6 rebuilt high schools. Greenery/ fuel economy paramount so only 2 sides have windows, not opposite so no through draft. No wonder the kids started keeling over when the sun came out.
Our local housing association has an award winning eco office building. In the summer people sit under large umbrellas and with fans on as the roof lights heat the room up, in the winter they all have portable heaters.
Most public buildings are far too hot. I can’t believe that many people heat their bedrooms, including at night, and sleep with the windows closed. I’ve been known to close mine (in Northumberland) if snow is actually coming inside!
This is actually a sensible suggestion and what most older people, particularly in the countryside, know anyway. Diseases spread between housed cattle if their buildings are not properly ventilated and people are no different.
People no different from housed cattle?
Right on!
Then turn the heat down.
In a public building? There’s normally some little Hitler in charge of the thermostat. It’s often behind locked doors!
As long as it’s not freezing I open the back door in the house if I’ve visitors and car windows if I’m in a friend’s car. I’m vulnerable and as a child, my Mum said fresh air was a protection against germs and I follow her advice.I have no wish to go crazy not seeing people or going anywhere.
Ventilating a house is vital to keep mould at bay and air moving around but…nothing kills the poor, ill or vulnerable elderly off quicker than cold temperature. Maybe that’s the point. People won’t use heat energy if it’s going to be wasted out through the window. Then they’ll really get ill. Two birds with one stone – increased deaths, decrease in energy use and carbon emissions! See where this is going?!
In Germany it is common knowledge to air your accommodation several times a day for up to 10 minutes.
We have a very different heating system, with usually individually controlled radiators, so just turn the radiator down while you open the window in that room. It is called Stosslueften.
The room does not cool down noticeably and the fresh air is wonderful.
Yes, and lueften the Bettwaesche. Hang it out the window to air and let the sun kill any germs and generally freshen things up.I do this every day weather permitting. Of course this is easier if you sleep under a Daunendecke and not a tucked-in blanket wrap.
Air-dry your laundry outdoors if at all possible.
BTW, Has Greta said anything about the huge energy waste of electric clothes dryers . . . ?
“The Coroner, a medical man of precise habits and unimaginative aspect, arrived punctually, and looking peevishly round at the crowded assembly, directed all the windows to be opened, thus letting in a stream of drizzling fog upon the heads of the unfortunates on that side of the room. This caused a commotion and some expressions of disapproval, checked sternly by the Coroner, who said that with the influenza about again an unventilated room was a death-trap..”
Dorothy L Sayers, Whose Body, 1923
So we are caught between the Scylla of Covid 19 and the Charybdis of climate change.
And possibly the BLM of Damocles if government failure to subsidise central heating is deemed racist by the BBC.
Anyone needing info about climate change (as false a this pandemic) can look here for a summary of the arguments and issues plus many links
https://www.beautyandthebeastlytruth.com/
I have always believed in climate change, but not man-made climate change. I would like someone to show at what point this planet’s climate stopped changing? All for conservation and efficient use of finite resources though – that’s just common sense.
In any event, as most wine amateurs will know, wine grapes were cultivated as far north as Norway in medieval times – that hasn’t been possible for a long while as things have cooled off since, but it’s obviously quite unlikely that the warming of the 1st millenium AD was man-made…
A very fair point, but what on earth has that to do with the lockdown?
Same movers and shakers.
That’s a fair point as well.
The man-made bit of both works a guilt and fear leverage on the minds of the people. Environmentalism is trained to self-hate the human virus.The AGW has the same fundamental objectives as are being tolled out as progressive and repeated lockdowns – to recondition people to guilt for existence, to be paid for by sacrifices by which to ‘save’ the system, but which can never be paid off.
I agree with you.
Don’t forget the cancel culture!
The April 1st spoof news story is going to be hard to spot next year.
It will make no difference whatsoever
Actually we should have done that in the first place, open windows and fresh air (even the polluted air of an inenr city) are better for your health than stfufiness and dust. We shouldn’t have locked down, at all, should have just opened the f***ing windows. As several of us were saying back in March.
You can offset pollution to some degree with vit B and C – I have seen studies that support this.
You may NEED to have respiratory ‘disease’ to detox.
Vit D is very active in immune support. T-cells are not even activated if D levels are too low.
Go figure, your ‘health care’ system pharms you for sickness. OR thse facts would not just be published and ignored but part of a collective education.
Protecting the fear does not do more than mask and suppress the symptoms. This can be great as a temporary intervention in which to centre or regroup.
There were reports last month of kids shivering in classrooms with windows and doors wide open. That will be fun in January – not!
Reconditioning our physical is possible. I have an encyclopedia from the 50s with photos of scarcely clad Swiss boys getting fresh air and sun outside in the snow – they carried their desks outside.
Just read Dr Simon Clarke’s article ‘What lockdown sceptics get wrong’ in the Spectator. It’s terrible! Apparently there is no serious debate about herd immunity as ‘no precedent for natural infections providing lasting herd immunity’
That’s because when they talk about immunity what they think it means is eradication. The zero Covid fantasy permeates their thinking.
Just the fact that there have been numerous viral pandemics and we weren’t wiped out as a species centuries ago.
Especially the pandemics that are thought to have killed 50% of the total human population.
Which is why crying wolf over the equivalent of a bad dose of flu is so dangerous.
But every time they do it they get richer and gain always ore control. Why not have it ALL?
Humans 2 million years, virus every 10 years or so = 200,000 Terrible Global Pandemics.
Yes indeed.
When Europeans first went to the Americas, the plagues of infections they brought wiped out most of the locals. However, immunity developed, and the native populations stopped dying in numbers from Yellow Jack, smallpox etc.
The author is either ignorant, a charlatan or a knave. Perhaps all three..
Such plague preceded the Europeans.
Read Lies my Teacher told me by James W. Loewen
It isn’t about that but includes that fact as well as a lot more of a nuanced history. Also an fun and good read in my opinion.
You may have seen my comments on that article. I expressed scepticism about that proposition, since I’m old enough to remember getting measles. Here’s what I think was going on back then. Measles is highly infectious (R0 around 15, say 5 times Covid) and recovery confers lifetime immunity . Between say 1900 and 1960 the number of cases was in decline, probably due to improved living conditions, clear water, sanitation and so on. The serious statistical study of measles started very early: I found a paper dated 1906. By 1960 it was well-known that the disease was largely a disease of children; that it ran in roughly two-year cycles; the number of cases varied from 100,000 to 500,000 a year, with a pretty stable case fatality rate of 1 in 2,000. There was a high rate of serious non-fatal injuries: brain damage, blindness and deafness for example. This is characteristic of, and described in the scientific literature as, the behaviour of an endemic infection in which the majority of the population is immune, but there is a steady influx of susceptible individuals (births). What happens is that when the number of susceptible individuals reaches the “epidemic threshold” there is an… Read more »
“ There was a high rate of serious non-fatal injuries: brain damage, blindness and deafness for example.”
But they don’t go around calling it “long-Measles”.
Standard medical practice is to give the measles vaccine once 1 year old, not at birth. This reflects confidence that the existing mix of natural and vaccine induced immunity gives enough herd immunity to make even an extremely contagious disease (R0 around 15 as vs 2 to 3 for flu or covid) unlikely to hit someone in a year of posible exposure time. Measles, from what I can tell, is actually a much more serious disease than covid as well as much more transmisible, and we never locked down for it.
“It is true, of course, that young children as a group did not have herd immunity. They formed a distinct “compartment” with a different dynamic. But it’s at best a verbal trick, and at worst simply wrong, to say that herd immunity was not achieved for measles.” Not sure what you mean by this. Perhaps it hinges on how you define “young children.” I too had measles, chicken pox, and mumps, along with virtually all of the other children in my school. We were grades 1 to 4 in one school room, so, ages 6 to 10. My mother was German and I have no idea whether she had had these childhood diseases. If not one would think that she and other grown-ups who had not had the diseases would be vulnerable when the children caught them. But I think there were a few children who did NOT catch the diseases. When I myself lived in Germany as an adult in the seventies I had a boyfriend who did get mumps, and of course mumps is very dangerous for adult males. I was very surprised that he had not had it as a child. But back in those days we… Read more »
Because we still have polio and smallpox rampant in the UK….
Without a vaccinaction programme, we would presumably have periodic outbreaks of polio and smallpox in the same way as we used to do for measles, as Richard describes above.
The difference with CV19 seems to be that the newborns and young can be infected and recover without grave detrimental effect. So herd immunity can be achieved in the long term without the help of vaccination.
Our transitional problem, which to an extent decreases with each death of an infirm infectee, is the low immunity in the infirm cohort.
Their immunity is low to every infectious disease, full stop.
Not so. I don’t think I’m likely to get measles again, even after 67 years. Or whooping cough. Or mumps. Or scarlet fever.
Smallpox was eliminated in the UK by a highly coercive vaccination programme, and ultimately eradicated, as far as we know, throughout the world. Polio similarly was eliminated in the the UK in the 1980s. Before polio vaccination, the UK did show the characteristic two or three year cycle between about 2,000 to 7,000 cases a year.
We had the polio vaccines (first the jab, and later the oral) in the fifities, but no vaccines for measles-pox-mumps. We all knew a few people who had had polio and had a withered limb. My cousin had it and consequently has a withered arm.
Polio is a far more serious disease than covid-19. In large part because it strikes the young and turns them into cripples.
These are not true statements.
Smallpox was increased by vaccinations, but disappeared worldwide or so diminished as to no longer merit diagnosis, regardless whether vaccine programs were run or not. Polio was very similar in some respects to covid as an umbrella diagnosis that covered heavy metal toxic damage – firstly for herbicides in the sugar cane industry – with the big ‘wave’ associated primarily with DDT – which is not banned in the ‘third’ world. The changing of diagnostic parameters assigned what had been coined polio to other medical definitions.
You may be invested in your beliefs but if you research honestly you will be disturbed, but in time better off with a more truly aligned appreciation of what really makes us ill. No one will see what they are unwilling to accept. I am not seeking to deny your right to your beliefs.
There is every precedent for natural infections giving lasting immunity, maybe those zealots could try the weak argument the covid might be different from almost every preceding disease (one or two viruses can do multiple infections, or worse one second time), but when they start saying that lasting immunity is a rarity they haven’t a leg left to stand upon. Colds and flu infect people time and again only because they have mutated to a substantially different new strain second time round, but covid is proving itself very stable, almost no mutation since 2019 despite having infected >10% of the world.
Is there proof of that?
The four other endemic coronaviruses typically reinfect about once every two years. Lifelong immunity to any pathogen is not a given and some viruses are never cleared, for example Chickenpox, HIV. Different viruses evade immunity in many different ways. Severity of infection may, however, wane with passing years of exposure.
HIV is now recognised to not cause AIDS. There is deep controversy as to whether such a retrovirus exists, quite apart from whether it is ‘a’ cause of AIDS. Again asymptomatic (healthy) people triggering PCR positives are ‘infected’ (by voodoo?).
However AIDS is an umbrella term for a dysfunctional and weak immune function – such that diseases that normally don’t have any severer clinical significance for the 99% can be fatal.
Researching the AIDS controversy would offer a lot of perspective on current events. There is a lot online but ‘Fear of the Invisible’ By Janine Roberts is a good read.
The pathogenic assignment to notional entities is one narrative approach to a set of symptoms. But once in the mind as official or ‘settled science’, the testing can generate ‘hidden or latent infections threatening to wipe us all out – and thus generating otherwise unimaginable funding and control under a War set against evils. Not a few HIV test positives committed suicide on being told they had an incurable and fatal disease which deadly drugs could delay but they had to act Now!
The Media version of history is not usually challenging the established channels of wealth and power
Once the Virus has been set as the new Ideal – every kind of opinion can bask in its glory.
I have seen studies where different variants are classified. However, I also see a virus that tells us in advance what it is going to do….
It was absolutely dreadful. If the DT continues to print such rubbish, I’ll be cancelling my subscription – which I only took out so I could follow Toby’s links!
The focus on pathology discards actual immunity and substitutes it ongoing and repeated ‘boosting’ as the meaning for immunity. Likewise with a collective adaptation. They ignore health as irrelevant – and something to bring INTO the parameters of medical oversight – often from Day 1 in many countries with vaccinations. (Vacca = cow). But also with the shift from clinical cionditions to risk factors uncovered by blood tests and biomarkers, that trigger medications that in many bring on toxic effects called ‘side effects’ when recognised but treated with further medications for the most part as development of disease, aging and a body that is inadequate, weak and full of faulty genes. The fear that you are weak and unsupported feed you to the fear that doesn’t rest through and heal in a good or cleansed heart, but freaks out and runs for the magic pills – that MUST be powerful because they have all these ‘side’ effects. If you are on such a regimen it may be wise to educate and find support in weaning from them. I am not suggesting anything but a process of re-education – led by you and guided by such advisors and support as you… Read more »
So the Lancet will publish a pro-lockdown study from Dr You Li but not an anti-mask study from Denmark. Really! Of course, if we all crawl under our respective beds and never come out again then no viruses will ever get spread. My God do people need to wake up. The article from Dr Franklin was especially moving in describing all we used to love about life. We are left with an impoverished existence. Rise up folks.
The Lancet lost all credibility when it published that bogus anti-HCQ article a few months ago then had to retract it. It has obviously been bought off so it’s no surprise that they won’t touch the Danish article. MW
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/498061-the-lancet-blasts-trump-says-voters-should-not-reelect-him
“The Lancet blasts Trump, says voters should not reelect him
The Lancet, a prestigious medical journal, on Friday ripped President Trump’s “inconsistent and incoherent national response” to the coronavirus pandemic, saying in an unsigned editorial that voters should ensure he does not get a second term.
“Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics,” wrote the peer-reviewed journal founded in 1823. ”
I think this tells us a lot.
Bought-off doesn’t begin to cover it, does it? Shocking. MW
““Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics,” wrote the peer-reviewed journal founded in 1823. ”’
Erm, and hey, what about medical journals not getting involved in partisan politics . . .
Gosh, none of the Lancet editors noticed this own-penalty?
Post today on my university email list:
As soon as Biden becomes president his first action will be to mandate masks nationally.” This and similar drivel from graduates of our most prestigious uni. I doubt that one of these highly educated proselytizers has read a single actual study of mask effectivenes.
Got challenged about my maskless status for the first time in months this morning (in fact, only the second time since all this madness started). Also in my local Iceland store 🙁
Was allowed to continue shopping when I advised that I was exempt.
Hyde Park at noon.
Begging to be ‘permitted’ to open your gym is not going to help at all in the long term. We need to restore our freedom – not join in with our oppression by engaging in campaigns to modify the list of so called essential services.
And the idea of people exercising in masks must not be normalised. That cannot be safe, particularly when the air conditioning in gyms is functioning at very low capacity.
I take your point but it’s good that 100 gym owners have united. If they weren’t in contact with each other and had just defied the rule by opening up then the authorities would’ve picked them off one by one until they all closed. I hope they all stick and fight together.
If the effing spineless grovelling Welsh supermarkets refused to implement Dripfeed’s insane rules, what the ffff. could he do about it? Close them all down? Have armed guards over the kettles 24/7?
Cups of tea matter
Black coffee matters
Blocked aisLes Matter
Food rationing is a cause of rioting ?
Good to see them united, now they need to be forceful together. 100 of them together in open defiance, rather than mere futile attempts to work through a legal system utterly biased against them, can win.
Point taken, but the Liverpool gym rebellion was still an incredibly brave action, at a time when almost everyone seems on board with the madness.
Dripfeed is insane. Clearly.
Criminally insane.
Attenborough voice: “But for some turtles, the journey will end only in disaster…rather than heading towards the open sea some turtles inexplicably go further inland, their slow, agonising progress taking them towards their final date: starvation and dessication.”
Attenborough voice: ‘here we see the devastation of the Arctic caused by climate change brought on by carbon emissions, particularly from air travel. We wanted to film more, but my private jet was due to leave.’
Same league as Sturgeon
Found on the BBC of all places! https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201014-totalitarian-world-in-chains-artificial-intelligence Welcome to The Great Reset. This is year 1 of 10. Do you think DecadeOfHealth is going to be good for us? Or good for them? Total enslavement or death? When death is likely to be the easier or better option… Ironically we are not in the front line for the ongoing cull, at least not yet. The poor countries have to bear the brunt of death. And yes it has already begun. These things take time hence why ten years. If this is the first year have you any idea what things will be like after ten? Of course we are already undergoing our own cull, the elderly, suicides, cancer, heart disease, etc. All tended to by the useful idiots who think that feeding others to the crocodile will save them. It won’t. Only the top 1% of society will get out of this, in fact are driving this. Our enemy is very clever. Yes even Boris! They are extremely determined. They have tried this before (MERS, SARS, etc.) and each time they have failed they have learned from their mistakes. They are relentless. The oncoming cull, for that is what… Read more »
Holocaust 2020.
Probably more like 2021, as the various vaccines (all backed by BMGF) will then be ready and they are very clearly intended to be the main culling tool.
Cant seem to find that article at that link. Has it been removed?
Works fine for me.
The link works – just cant seem to find an article containing that text.
It doesn’t. Those are ON’s thoughts on the subject.
So, if the idea of this is depopulation, why not just ‘let the virus rip’? After all, it is doing as Nature intends and taking out the non productive and reproductive members of society who, in a modern capitalist economy, are the least productive and useful.
Why all this hysteria and cost when the virus could be left to get on with the job on its own?
That’s where the conspiracy theories fall down.
I’ve thought about that and it may be as simple as Boris et al do not want to appear too callous. All the political class will want their gravy train to continue.
Can they possibly appear any more callous than to date?
If we just ‘let the virus rip’ and got on with our lives we would not even notice it. This is not the deadly virus it is made out to be. It is the hysteria and lockdown that is doing the killing not the virus.
This is primarily about total control of the population. The depopulation is an inevitable side effect.
Agreed mostly, but they really do want to depopulate and massively at that, so full control is essential. The reality is that the globalists no longer need the great masses to sustain them and they want the planet for themselves as a clean green game reserve.
It was all written down on the Georgia Guidestones back in 1980 and this is what the Great Reset is really all about. Nearly all of us will have no place in this clean green world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=360hDfzC03c
I do actually agree with what your saying. They do wish to kill us off. While I describe it as a side effect I do think its an intentional side effect and they are responsible for the death they are causing but just that primarily they need to maintain control. As long as they have control they can continue to pretend to save us while implementing policies that will certainly kill us.
We are on the same wavelength. It’s a big step to accept that those at the very top regard us as highly undesirable and eminently disposable. However, it’s a vital step, that has to be taken, if we are to have any chance of surviving the Covid scam. Those vaccinated for Covid-19 will be dead people still walking, at least for a brief while.
If this virus came out a few decades ago before widespread PCR testing was available we’d never have noticed it, just seen a minor excess death count (minor because most excesd deaths are from lockdown not covid) which would be written off as “winter-flu-arriving-late”.
Because they already know that the genocidal results of the restrictions will kill more than the virus?
As savedtodeath says, this virus is too pathetic to do much widespread harm. But thats a good feature, as mentioned in the article Ebola could kill 90pc but would leave the planet uninhabitable for the elite.
But are there enough of the elite to sustain themselves? Too many are childless, and frankly couldn’t change a lightbulb on their own if they had to.
They might well get their vision, then wish they hadn’t.
That’s why the Roman elite used to adopt healthy children.
The Romans had a lot of slaves …..
Rather than falling down I think the conspiracy theories are becoming less like theories everyday.
The fact that countries all over the world are using the same virus repression measures that look a lot like the sort of actions an occupying force would take,should be the clincher.
Yep. We’ll fight the bollox a lot more effectively if we acknowledge the worldwide attempts to reduce our numbers, destroy small/medium businesses, and implement 2030.
A virus is far too indiscriminate and unreliable. Vaccines can be tailored for the end user, as is already being tried out for the flu vaccine.
If ‘they’ really want to control population, why not just instigate a mass sterilisation programme in developing countries? It would be expensive – massive bribes to dictators and large grants to those undergoing the procedure – but in the long run would be cheaper than their current destruction of the global economy.
You haven’t been keeping up with the Alt-News. Bill Gates has already done this in India, to the extent that there is alleged to be an arrest warrant out for him in some areas.
Huge numbers of people are alleged to have been made sterile by his vaccination programme.
Well done to the Indians now for Soros Clinton’s Blair etc
Also rather ironically, 496,000 left with some form of paralysis as a result of one of Bill’s polio vaccine campaigns in India. Bill was just practicing then, but Covid-19 will be the real opportunity for him.
HPV vaccine?
If they ‘let the virus rip’ (pure propaganda of course) it wouldn’t actually kill many people would it? That’s the whole point. This has never been about a virus.
We ‘conspiracy theorists’ are looking at the cover it gives for total control: cashless society, mandatory vaccines, constant testing, collapse of the NHS, immunity passports, total surveillance, UBI and the whole works.
Some people believe that Bill Gates meant what he said when he cackled, ‘You’ll notice the next one’ in an interview i.e. a much worse and really deadly virus could be released at any time. What do you think Fauci et al’s documented ‘Gain of Function’ research on weaponising viruses is for?
Failing that, dodgy vaccines, suicides, lack of health care, extreme poverty and disease, widespread despair, lack of opportunity/enthusiasm to form relationships etc will result in the desired controlled cull. There’s no big hurry, ‘they’ can just sit back in their gilded palaces and enjoy the show. MW
The theory the purpose of lockdowns is population control makes sense because when you look into it the effects of lockdown. Since March the NHS has been shut down to non covid patients which results in people dying due to lack of medical care.
An effective method of population control is to discourage people having children. There are numerous ways lockdowns does this. If you don’t live with your partner, you may not be able to meet them in your home due to lockdown restrictions such as you can’t have anyone from outside your household in your home. The venues where people meet new partners such as pubs, nightclubs, concerts, festivals and gyms are forced to close or operate under restrictions. Lockdown prevents people forming and maintaining relationships which means people who would otherwise have children won’t do so.
If couples live together, lockdowns discourage them from having children. If people loose their livelihoods either through loosing jobs or their businesses going bust, they will not want children. A dystopian world where everyone wears masks, the economy has collapsed and there are petty, stupid and pointless regulations is not a world people want to bring children into.
A deadly virus against which they themselves can be efficiently vaccinated in advance would be their wet dream I assume… but you’d have to test that out thoroughly in real-life situations before going ahead with the big one, wouldn’t you?
Hard to say how this could be being planned but Gates did say to camera what he said. Maybe he has a twisted sense of humour! A lot of people seem to believe that another, more serious, virus is in the pipeline but I’m not sure. As I said above, they can achieve population reduction without going that far and the current Cult of Covid is keeping most of the world’s populations passive and accepting of the ever-increasing tyranny. MW
The virus clearly isn’t capable of depopulation, however, whether a deliberate conspiracy or a sickening cockup, lockdowns certainly do a pretty effective job of culling people.
“Why all this hysteria and cost when the virus could be left to get on with the job on its own?
That’s where the conspiracy theories fall down.”
No, they don’t (I’ll ignore the use of the detestable distraction “conspiracy theory” for now).
The disease isn’t enough to cull enough. The true goal is to get everyone in a panic so that they ACCEPT the draconian measures that make up the Great Reset. The plandemic is a pretext and also, remember, an exercise.
Please do watch Reiner Fuehlmann’s video. it is very clear. Should be linked on the right at the LD site homepage.
Because ‘the reaction’ is the killer – not the ‘virus’.
If I shared this, I’d just get – “Oh that sounds good – what’s your problem with it?”
The people you’d share it with are keen to commit suicide, or watch millions die of starvation are they? I bet not.
“If a malevolent group or government suddenly gained world-dominating power through technology, and there was nothing to stand in its way, it could lead to an extended period of abject suffering and subjugation. A 2017 report on existential risks from the Global Priorities Project, in conjunction with FHI and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, warned that “a long future under a particularly brutal global totalitarian state could arguably be worse than complete extinction”.”
China. Worldwide Social credit system. Big Tech monitoring everyone, censoring and destroying dissent.
I can see it happening all too easily. It’s already started, with certain people deciding what can and what can’t be questioned, discussed, or seen.
This riff on planned depopulation via virus/sterilising vaccine is totally loony.
Even before the pill arrived in the early 1960s people were campaigning for population reduction as a response to poverty and the subjugation of women, but then it was a pro contraception movement. I remember something called the International Planned Parenthood Foundation, and ‘family planning’ was the PC phrase for contraception.
It has slowly become clear over the last 50 years that availability of contraception is fervently desired by women, and population naturally stabilises or even falls when it is both available and women get the opportunity for education and satisfactory health care for themselves and their children. This outlandish nonsense only makes the sceptic case look ridiculous.
There’s a serious problem, Sylvie. On the one hand the outlandish ideas do sound absurd and for a great many people, as you say, make the sceptic case look ridiculous…on the other hand it’s true that there has for a long time been plans to radically reduce the global population. It’s fully documented and embedded within the global warming scam.
It’s a tight schedule because they want it down to one billion by 2030. ‘They’ of course are not monolithic and so different global players have different details to their plans.
Wasn’t she Kellogg’s mentor?
He was a serious nutjob!
I think Kellogg was her mentor or at least funded her.
But, there is a big difference between voluntary control of one’s own reproduction and forced contro by the state. Surely that is pretty obvious? Whatever happened to the hidden hand, where everyone’s individual decisions lead to the most efficient use of resources?
Oh, I guess that doesn’t apply to fertility (snark).
It’s free market for economic decisions but centralized state for fertility decisions . . . Hmmm …
https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/22-unemployed-for-every-job-in-the-west-of-ireland-39662129.html
Confirms that the West of Ireland has been worst hit by the impact of lockdown measures relative to the rest of the country, primarily due to relying more on tourism/hospitality for employment.
In other news, the Irish Independent is reporting that the first vaccine will be available in Ireland before Christmas (paywall article so I haven’t linked to it). I won’t be in the queue to get it.
Someone suggested all the pro Lockdowners, particularly all civil servants and government bodies should be injected first. I agree.
I’m a civil servant. Please don’t lump me in with the lockdown zealots. I’m as fed up with this crap as the rest of you.
And me!
And me!
Nice to know that not all civil servants “are just following orders”
Civil servants, like other people ,should be given a choice over vaccination. Lockdown zealots should be given first dibs on the vaccine, after all, “if it saves one life”.
Don’t think you’ll have to give them first dibs, they’ll be queuing up around the block with their sleeves rolled up (and their masks on of course!)
Mike Yeadon says as there is a recovery rate of 99.9 % there is no need for a vaccine, also the very people who it is intended to protect – the elderly – do not respond well to flu vaccines. Also it is designed to only limit symptoms, it does not prevent infection.
Of course it doesn’t, makes sir Patrick very rich though!!!
I’m usually pro-vaccine (anti-lockdown, anti-restrictions, but know that for viruses worth worrying about, of which covid is not one, vaccines work), but I actually hope the covid vaccine has bad side effects immediately visible. Anything enough to get it withdrawn. It will serve the fools in government right for pursuing an insane course of waiting for a vaccine when a herd immunity strategy could have been more efective and less harmful.
I don’t think this is about a vaccine. The short-term goal is the “health passport”
All narrative leverages cover for regulatory stricture. Once the law and its enforcement is established – along with a mindcapture of support, any number of parameters can be set to degrade and diminish the capacity or consciousness of any potential opposition.
There was a very adverse reaction to the Swine flu vaccine. I don’t see that much happened as a result to stop the same scams being perpetuated over and again.
Is there anyone more patronising than Dr Sarah Jarvis who is inflicted upon us with her “mummy knows best” rictus grin every flaming day on Jeremy Vine?
The simple answer is …. no. Always have a sick bag at the ready.
Sick bag may help with the mess but the off button is the cure.
I can’t stand any of the tv doctors and I think Dr Scary Jarvis is a twerp. As I don’t have a t v licence the only time I’m exposed to her drivel is in the dentist’s waiting room. A rare occurrence, thankfully.
That was my first thought. The presenters too – trying to baby people who have a far firmer grasp on what’s going on than them.
The presenter said – “Now let us hear from a scientist”. I imagine my shock when Jarvis appeared.
Agree. Have just watched that clip and been shouting at the video at how patronising both she and the presenters were towards the couple. Let them stay inside with full masks and hasmat suits on if they want, but, as Maureen and her husband say, let people get on with their lives. So what if the NHS hospitals become full – why can’t GP’s treat people at home like they used to???? Would be safer than going into hospital.
Yes Dr Sarah Jarvis and also the two presenters were doing their best to make Maureen and her husband look stupid. I can only say that it backfired. Jarvis shaking her head and telling Maureen’s husband that he’s never lived through an epidemic like this!! Yes he has!!The only difference this time is the media propaganda forced down our throats, scaremongering with their exaggerated figures of ‘case’s deaths and wild predictions. When told by the slimey Jarvis that it was all to do with keeping the NHS from being overwhelmed, I wish Maureen had chance to repeat what she said in her first interview on the street, which was….there won’t be any money to pay for an NHS if we keep these silly measure.
I loved the bit when the husband contradicted the presenters when they asked about the character of his wife, and I must admit his reply brought a tear to my eye.
Who??
What can we do?
I’m as frustrated and angry as anyone over the continued restrictions, but I feel powerless to do anything about it. I have written to my (Phillip Davies) MP twice, but he’s one of the rebels anyway, so I’m pushing at an open door.
Is there an anti-lockdown movement that is actively promoting our cause, persuading the public to rebel and getting in the face of our politicians and so-called journalists?
Lockdown Sceptics has been an oasis of sanity, but I’m looking for an organisation with a more pro-active agenda.
Any suggestions?
Join your local Keep Britain Free group. Im in the Sussex one and we have an activity planned for next Saturday, walking through Eastbourne centre unmasked with music it was done in Berlin recently. The last activity went well too handing out leaflets and chatting to shoppers in a big group
Try to persuade family, friends, neighbours and colleagues
Go maskless
Boycott anywhere that is overzealous in enforcing the nonsense, and tell them why you are doing it
Push back and question nonsense rules from schools, work, or whatever organisations you are involved with
Post information and comments on social media
Sign petitions
Crowdfund good causes
Attend demos
Support political parties and other groups that are sceptical (SDP, Heritage, Reclaim, UKIP, KBF)
Stay sane and healthy
Use cash ! Only cash !
Boycott places that don’t accept cash (if possible).
In Ludlow there is a bakery and cake shop that only accepts cash and refuses card payments
I love it when a whingeing coronaphobe with a card walks in to this kind of shop and gets told his only way to pay is with those wonderful notes and coins he fears so much. Have seen it several times, even more fun when the shop normally takes both shitty card and civilised cash, but today the card machine has failed.
Boycott them full stop, never mind if possible. If they won’t take cash and you’ve no choice but to use them, force exact change in to their hand and walk out with your rightfully purchased goods. Coins and notes are legal tender.
I’m with you on this one. Really need to find a way of actively taking power and control back to the people.
I regularly thank my local MP for her stance voting against the worst from this government, and on occasion have had personal response from her, including a phone call one night just before the last election.
I know Esther is on the same side as me.
Make posters ,stickers ,there’s some templates in the forum under posters /tee shirts . As someone said find a local group ,think there’s also contacts for different areas in the forum or just get a couple of mates to work with i’m sure you can come up with ideas .Good luck
Save Our Rights UK does some good pro-active work.
StandupX has regular local meetings in some areas, though their agenda can be mixed.
There tends to be anti-lockdown rallies every weekend.
There was a large one in central london yesterday.
Another big one is planned on the 28th Nov.
Check out:
‘save our rights’
‘www.Standupx.info’
‘stopnewnormal’
FFS the Guardian offices need to be burned to the ground! The vaccine will be next to useless, so we’ll have to stay locked up forever guys. There’s literally no alternative, so don’t argue. Have a great Saturday!
Other than that, however, I do feel strangely positive today. Some fight back in Wales, the focus groups reflecting my experience when speaking to most people, and even the murmurings of govt scientists about herd immunity in London “despite” only 13% antibodies.
Although Sturgeon sounds as psychotic as ever, unfortunately.
They will shortly be bankrupt so no need for the petrol and matches just yet
I’m sure Bill Gates can find some spare change for them after all their good work
Gates is rich, but he is not a state. He has no authority, only influence. He has no power, he cannot raise an army.
I’m not a fan of Gates, but this obsession you have with him deflects attention away from the people who are truly in control. Sovereign governments.
Agreed, shit as his operating systems are even windows 10 and the GWX.exe virus haven’t done as much harm to the world as government intrusion against liberties.
Gates is a part of a much larger network of influence but his organisation is in a PPP with facets of the British Government – as with BBC as with so much else. Gates is used as a person of influence or key opinion leader and so becomes a personal focus for faceless networks of fronted organisations. Melinda seems like his handler? The overall effect is in the disproportionate distribution of wealth being used as a similarly overwhelming leverage or corruption. If Mark Carney can openly state that business not complying in Green New deal with go bankrupt (lose access to credit), then lockstepped corporates may be under threats or privy to sweeteners that are protected by non disclosure ‘agreements’. ‘Why buy tank divisions, weapons and fighter aircraft, when you can buy congressmen? Where IS authority in our times? Is it in our politicians, their handlers? The lobbies that they are representing? The World banking system – open and hidden? The ability to choke back life support is a means of control. Who is upstream? And what or who can you not openly challenge without losing reputation and career. Is there power IN the world? or is it all fear… Read more »
Not just the Welsh.
Happy thought!
The vaccines will do what they are intended to do. That’s the problem which is hurtling towards us.
“The vaccines will do what they are intended to do.”
And what is that Rowan, in your opinion? (Serious question).
Establish medical dependency for sickness management at ever tighter controls. Degrade immunity while fight the war against ‘whatever’. Degrade consciousness, and continue the experimental hacking of the human (and other) genetic coding for innovative advances that can be weaponised and marketised. Degrade ability to procreate. The use of stealth can let fear work what the weapons do not need to actually effect. Covid is such an example. Using our minds against us such that we effectively destroy ourselves, and set up the imperatives for protection and control. Vaccines keep virus fear fed and funded, while seeming to protect. But consider the actual ‘threat’ of covid (from the perspective of anyone who has researched outside the BBC & Guardian et al), and the stated admissions that the new cov vaccines are not expected to stop infection but only minimise or mitigate symptoms (?). If you are not hypnotised you will not follow the directives. Yet if you are they will seem to make sense. Vaccines offer a trojan means to insert materials or agents that would otherwise not gain access, and this is necessarily true of incidental contaminants, and innately true of toxic adjuvants, preservatives, and possibly unexpected or unintended consequences.… Read more »
This is more right than most will realise, the intended condition to call the vacine a success is “prevents cold like symptoms in majority of those given it”, nothing about stopping transmission, nothing about reducing chance of serious symptoms (not common enough for a medical trial to reliably find enough in the control group to say a vacine has stopped them), nothing about reducing hospitalisations. The vaccine, if it meets the required conditions, will simply prevent mild symptoms in people who don’t need protecting. This vaccine isn’t a cure because covid has long been not a medical problem but a societal one the cure is to stop fearing the slly cough and seize back individual rights.
I think Wales is going to be a bit of a game changer. Johnson might regret trying to delegate responsibility for this mess to a bunch of glorified parish councillors.
You actually think Johnson is any better than than those “glorified parish councillors”? Johnson is totally responsible for the huge hole in which all of the UK now finds itself.
No, I actually think Johnson is more culpable, because of his academic background he should understand the importance of liberal governance and the common law. And I believe he is trying to escape responsibility by delegating lockdown rulings to the Principality and regions.
Johnson is Prime Minister. He is 100% culpable.
Johnson is a idiot joke chancer a liar utterly unfit for office and must be removed ASAP
I see him more as a crisis actor who has been long groomed for his role in the script.
https://www.getborisout.com
Dead link. Trouble is half the anti-Boris campaigns and votes of no-confidence are from the lockdown zealots’ side. Much as we all hate this government, we have to hate the ultra-zealots even more. I support anyone who is against this government AND intends to replace them with a herd immunity and civil lberties respecting administration.
I can’t believe that a young woman television interviews is asking a man in his 80s whether he finds his wife ‘difficult to bring under control’. Where are we; Gilead?!
His emotional, loyal reply made me quite tearful and I love their no nonsense, Yorkshire faces. The Yorkshire face arranges itself in a certain way because the muscles that display extreme reactions are never used. Have no doubt, though; those two people are very, very angry!
Love the look on the presenters face though when he had the temerity to call her out on it.
Yes, They don’t like it up em” do they?
My dad was told off by a bus driver for sitting next to my mum, his reply.
‘I have been sleeping in the same bed as this woman for over 50 years, I think I’ll know if she is sick! Nobody tells me where to sit, now drive the bus!’
I swear if anyone tried to separate us theyd be trouble. 😠
Fantastic.
(Had it been me, the F-word might have made an appearance too.).
They are so bloody patronising, and that Jarvis.. aaargh!
Jarvis is a condescending bitch. So disrespectful to a proud and honest member of the public.
Virtue signalling parodies itself.
The tone of how the presenters introduce and then conduct that interview is infuriating. The presenters happy smiles and jovial mood, like this is a funny, amusing puff piece. Christ I despise them all. Well done to Maureen and her husband for portraying how people actually feel.
Yes. Just imagine how they would have treated someone like Rosa Parks 70 years ago.
I find it quite impossible to bring my wife under control. 🙂
But it’s so fun trying! I mean my wife btw!
“Take my wife …”.
Yes, as my teenage granddaughters would say: Inappropriate!
Interesting to compare Belgium and US. They are both mass testing like mad. Today on BBC 80000 new cases in the US got the headlines. But what about Belgium? Today 18000 cases. With a population of 11 million and US 30 times more population the Belgian figures would be equivalent to more than half million cases in the US today. It is clear that the seasonal wave in Europe is much worse than in the US. Belgium had a much stricter spring lockdown than UK. After that the usual mask mandate and in the new wave, the phoney ridiculous almost puritanical restrictions of bars, restaurant and curfews but not an April type of lockdown. The test and track system has of course collapsed. Even with a low estimate that the true infections are 5 times more than detected cases,85000 infected today. That is almost 1 % of the population infected in one day. MSM will shout about a raging infection and the government must act. To do what? Everything they have tried so far has dismally failed in all aspects incl.masks. Why? Because this is a new respiratory virus which by definition cannot be controlled. Start propping up your hospitals,… Read more »
I don’t think it is clear. How many cycles are being used? How are those to be tested being selected? How are the procedures being used to perform these tests being regulated and how is the accuracy of the labs being monitored?
Yes,of course an overestimation but there are true cases and they have 14times more C-19 in their ICUs than Sweden. There is an increase in true cases but the mass testing distort the picture and increase hysteria.
Exactly. I think Yeadon has explained it best. The pandemic in London is virtually over already.
No just in London.
The strangest think about it all is Cornwall has had over 2 million visitors since this started and it has the lowest cases and deaths . Not only that but people have come from every part of Britain and abroad so how do we account for it ? .One theory could be that the south west in fact had it first and then it spread to the south east.Maybe a flight from spain to newquay or a plane into exeter airport . The other option is there is only one main hospital in Truro and if it don’t for some reason get in there then it doesn’t really spread ,it would be interesting to find out if any patients were decanted from there to care homes . I believe it could be combination of the two as i know many people in the south west of cornwall and they all claim to have had bad flu in November ,December time .I’m surprised more medical people haven’t looked into it .
Same In Suffolk. It may be there was a different virus with identical symptoms doing the rounds prior to covid but Mr Occam may have something to say about that.
Spain and I think other countries claim to have identified Covid in sewage samples, in one case March 2019 but of course they may have been false positives. Nevertheless something that could be investgated but probably won’t be
The tests are meaningless, no matter the number of cycles used.
Our media have been very schtum about Belgium all along. At the heart of the EU, being led by a female PM (back in the Spring), early and strict lockdown – and yet had the worst death rate in the world, until overtaken by Peru. Didn’t fit the narrative!
And since October 1st we are led by a new government headed by the enttled son of one of the most long-serving ministers in several previous governments (De Croo), and a Minister of Health and Social Services (Mr Vandenbroucke) who was recycled from the refuse of former 90s-era governments. The MSM always praised him as being ‘highly intelligent’ because he studied at Cambridge and Oxford (economy/social sciences). As chairman of the socialist democrats back when the party was racked by corruption scandals in the early 90s (mainly payments by the Italian arms manufacturer Agusta in return for being awarded a large contract for the sale of helicopters to the Belgian state); Vandenbroucke’s main claim to fame is that he allegedly discovered this dirty money in a special safe at party HQ and set fire to it, as he ‘didn’t know what else to do’… the subsequent discussion in the press centered mainly on the issue that burning money is illegal under criminal law, and whether or not he should face trial for that (no mention of criminal stupidity, which in my opinion is far worse for someone who was set to become minister of FA…) ! So now he’s back,… Read more »
How patronising was that Sarah Jarvis?! So rude. What a poisonous, wooden faced witch she is. Mr and Mrs Eames should have been given more air time, and more respect during that interview.
I am not a violent person, but I wanted to slap that doctor for her condescension. The epitome of a Karen, she is. And she was lying about the severity of the disease, to boot.
No from a Karen who is sceptic with knobs on. Just stop this meme ( imported from the US where Karen is the soccer mom) to here to denigrate usually white working class woman as an insult. Dear middle class Emily! See tedious is it not?
It’s not working class women that it is denigrating; it’s rich and/or upper middle class women.
And I don’t care about names being expanded into memes – I’ve lived with being linked to close-minded ‘Auntie Em’ all my life. Water off a duck’s back.
Absolutely, what a patronising cow,
I am a fair bit younger than Mr Eames (71) but I remember the Asian flu of the mid and late 1950’s and the Hong
kong flu of 1968 plus Measles,Diphtheria and Typhoid outbreaks and as Mr Eames said: this virus will end the same as the previous ones and the ones that will come in the future with herd immunity.
How dare this patronising woman along with her many cohorts speak down to people like that.
The “you’d have to be 101 to remember something like this…” was just a bare faced lie. I’m glad he called her out on it.
Do you think the covid cultists believe their own spin?
I wonder if they have to act it out as IF they really believed it, because otherwise their face would break and the masking fall away.
Scott Gottlieb,the former FDA director is one of the worst in Project Fear. Now the “golden” article has been published behind Fauci/CDC Director’s enthusiasm for masks and solution to the pandemic. This is not a published RCT trial but a modelling based upon assumptions. I think we have heard of such models before.
https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1319794731505848321
“When people wear masks, it reduces likelihood of spreading Covid if they’re an asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic carrier. A new Nature study finds if 85% of Americans wore masks, we would save 95,000 people. Greater adherence to masking will reduce spread.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1132-9
The published article is the typical modelling and observational study. I haven’t read it but I think this twitter thread from someone in the know taking down the article,is enough.
https://twitter.com/WesPegden/status/1319845424170237952
‘Mask up our seniors’ (one of the comments). Not this senior, pal!! MW
Masks in general settings don’t limit the transmission of influenza and neither does hand washing. Why are we now supposed to believe that these same measures will work for the flu like Covid-19.
The link below takes you to a scientific policy review in the CDC journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases from May 2020. The abstract says it all, but scrolling down to the “Discussion” section is also worthwhile. Note also that the review is based on the results of 14 randomised control trials. I’m still surprised that this document has not been taken down, so I have saved a copy.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
That Lancet study… I thought R, modelled as it is, automatically increases as each section of society reopens regardless of what’s actually happening in the real world, because it’s programmed into the model. So how is that proof?
A lot of scientists I’ve heard talking about the R number say it’s a completely useless measurement. That’s why governments are obsessed with it.
Computer models again. Correlation is not causation.
The similarities of how models are used to create fear with covid and climate change are not accidental.
By the way the latest junk modelling ‘explains’ how the genetic make up explains why populations in different countries have reacted to SARS2. The more neathanderthal genes the worse the reaction, supposed to explain why far eastern nations have generally done better, because they have hardly any of these genes. Load of crap of course.
Studying the relationship between genetics and Covid has nothing to do with “modelling”, at least, not the sort under discussion here. The paper The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neanderthalssays
Oh – along with compromised or dysfunctional immune system, severe co morbidities, and being over 80.
Genetic control is the basis of the 4th
reichIndustrial revolution.Why do you think they used the R rate and not deaths? One is a mathematical construct and the other is a measurable fact (although the atrribution of the death to Covid is not).
Lack of exercise is the biggest public health problem. The coronavirus is insignificant in comparison. The decision to close gyms is just another example of the irrational, irresponsible, incompetent approach to policy-making that has been adopted since March. It simply is not credible that policy-makers and their scientific and medical advisors are this incompetent. Since March they have consistently adopted measures to allegedly combat a virus that they must know are more harmful than the virus ever could be.
The numbers of fat or even obese nurses seems to be increasing on a higher exponential curve than the Covid ever did. Quite how they have the nerve to lecture anyone on healthy living is beyond me.
http://www.cureality.com/blog/post/2008/12/19/flat-tummy-or-why-your-dietitian-is-fat.html
Yes. Doctors such as Tim Noakes, Gary Fettke, Shawn Baker and Ken Berry who prescribe healthy diets (ie the opposite of government prescribed ones) to their patients end up facing lengthy court cases for daring to go against establishment dogma.
The likes of the WHO go on about hippocratic oaths forbidding them from pursuing herd immunity, that is nonesense. However hippocratic oaths definitely have something to say about docotrs needing to take good care of their own health before they can preach to others, obese medics are a violation of the oath.
So Tedros, a biologist, took the Hippocratic Oath? I doubt it! When I get a mo’ I’ll look up how many of that shower are doctors. SAGE has got very few ‘proper’ doctors on it. MW
Sorry, that picture on the home page. Surely people aren’t exercising in a gym wearing a gimp mask. Insane x 100. Personal trainers must know it’s dangerous.
There was a recent trend in wearing Bane masks for oxygen deprivation training. A bit like altitude training. Short bursts to increase blood flow.
Most people thought it was bad bro science.
Anaerobic rather than aerobic, yes ? I’ve heard of that re muscle groups, not the entire breathing system though
Our daughter who is struggling, having been put into Stalagluft 3 from today, says she’s keeping away from news and information because it’s so depressing. She has a tough job working in housing and she seems to be getting more demoralised and demotivated by the day, mostly working from home. Apparently food banks in Sheffield are closing because they can’t operate under the restrictions. God help them. A couple of months ago she said she didn’t want to live in an echo chamber but that’s exactly where she is, unfortunately (FB, Instagram and MSM – it emerged she does watch the TV a bit). When we spoke to her last night, the first thing she told us was ‘so-and-so has got coronavirus’. When we challenged her, she admitted that it meant that they had got a positive test with no symptoms. None of our grandson’s friends are available to play with him over half term because their parents are keeping them away from other children – they are in the same class, ffs. We urged her to keep herself informed. She doesn’t believe it can be about money and control: ‘how can they be making money out of this?’ (yikes!)… Read more »
Suggestion, rather than the reset talk about the personal protection kit, and who is making money out of that. If she can absorb that then the next step up would be vaccinations and who makes money out of that.
When we learn, new stuff has to have a connection to existing stuff, a physical connection in the nervous system, represented by factual or emotional connection to pre-existing world view.
I wouldn’t bother discussing PPE profits either, I’d just focus on the harmlessness of the virus and how Sweden have done so well, plus point her towards some of Sunetra Gupta’s articles about what an idiot Hancock has been. Independently of educating her about the virus situation, make sure she is aware of the horrors the Chinese government is perpetrating against the Uighurs, and their social credit system, and absue of HongKong. Then at a later time she won’t be so suprised when you point to the risk that if we don’t properly defy coronapanic measures that Chinese system could be installed over here, even if accidentally*.
*why let her discount you as a conspiracy theorist when you can point to the same key facts and remedial individual actions by pointing out chaos and cockups as a cause
Honestly, we’ve done all that and she’s reasonably politically astute. She doesn’t think we’re conspiracy theorists either. It’s just that she wants to put her fingers in her ears and go ‘la-la-la’ until it all goes away. We’re just trying to get her to be a bit more clear-sighted about what’s at stake. She has a son and a step-daughter after all. MW
Thanks, Rosie. In fact we explained in some detail how the money is being made including PPE vaccines, testing, fire-sale of businesses,etc. The problem is that whenever we talk to her, she gets stronger and seems to get it but then she retreats to her echo-chamber and next time we talk it’s like starting from scratch. We’ll keep trying! MW
Why is Doomer-in-chief Ferguson being given air time again?
Has he been waving his magic juju stick at somebody?
Has he come on to say that his models are projections based on a number of estimates and assumptions and should therefore be treated with extreme caution when forming the basis of harmful social policy? No didn’t think so.
Sponsorship requirement probably.
Reportedly saying it will all become clearer in two weeks time. Where have I heard that before.
It’s because ‘two weeks’ is close enough to appear attainable but long enough away for you to forget the predication. It’s one of the oldest political tricks in the book. If you need to make it slighly more urgent you use ‘ten days’ instead.
Ferguson, Witty and vallance need to be barred from practicing and Johnson and Hancock need throwing out of office
Mouth of Sauron?
Report from Khanistan during Stage 2 (or something). Out to dinner at Ivy, Tower Bridge last night. Just as busy as last time with single-household tables containing strange single-household personnel. Masks on movement (except the JL two). However – all along the riverside were a whole series of ad hoc ‘parties’ & drinking picnics with twenty-somethings – mostly maskless sticking two fingers up to the mad Mufti and his plodforce, none of whom were in attendance. The young have just nudged up a notch in my estimation.
The young are having the best times of their life stolen from them by our government.
Only if they obey it. As always.
Excellent news. I have not been to the Emirate of London for some time, since my club announced masks would now have to be worn throughout the premises. They don’t even allow newpapers in the club library now, as they could, apparently, spread the dreaded Covids. I’m tempted next time I’m up to just hang out with some youngsters (though at nearly 50 that might result in me appearing a bit like Joe Biden).
I’m told by Lieutenant-Colonel Tobias Ellwood of the 77th Brigade (the propaganda arm of the British Army that is waging psychological warfare against the British people) that I will need to be vaccinated before I can return to normal life
Fixed it for him.
Originally The Vaccine was supposedly going to be the end of this but actually I suspect it will be the beginning of something else worse.
Anybody who uses any establishment that implements anti-social distancing or masking rules is implicitly validating those rules (even if you say you are exempt from masks) and helping to cement them in place, whether that place be a cafe or gym or public transport or whatever.
How do you get food?
Refuse to wear a mask or shop on line
I refuse to wear a mask, but calchas said “even if you say you are exempt from masks”.
Shopping online doesn’t feel like the ideal solution if my concern is for local independent businesses. When the distancing or mask diktats are lifted, there’ll hardly be any point if online shopping is the only remaining option and all the restaurants/clubs/pubs have gone under.
LOL good point – I was thinking more optional venues, pubs and restaurants, the hairdressers etc.
Online shopping plays straight into their hands – especially as you can’t use cash.
Best to go maskless in defiance – while there’s somewhere to go!
100% agree. Never go out any more!
Agree for the simple reason that the only way out of this madness is total economic collapse. So I’ve reduced my consumption to the bear minimum – not a problem given how horrible it is to a restaurant, pub or shop.
If everyone did the same, the whole thing would end quite quickly.
I was in Liverpool the other day, walking along the Mersey, and I spotted a small card attached to a lifebuoy by the water’s edge.
The message on it was simple:
“Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will
find. Knock, and it will be opened for you.
For everyone who asks receives. He who seeks
finds. To him who knocks it will be opened.”
Whether you’re religious, spiritual or not, I hope that this can be a message of hope and determination for all of you.
As my little daughter has started saying recently:
“When there’s a will, there’s a way.”