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PR Blitz
With case numbers continuing to rise, the Government is pleading with the public to obey the new lockdown rules and reinforcing the message with a new advertising campaign. The Daily Mail has the story:
Boris Johnson last night begged families to stay at home as the Covid death toll hit a grim new record.
He said infections were rising at an alarming rate, despite the lockdown imposed at the start of the week.
And he warned the only way to prevent thousands more deaths was to follow the rules. “I know the last year has taken its toll,” the Prime Minister said. “But your compliance is now more vital than ever…”
With the virus apparently running rampant in London, an advertising blitz will run on TV, radio, newspapers and social media carrying shocking images of the severely ill in hospital…
The hard-hitting ad campaign was launched on TV last night, fronted by Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty. He said that while vaccines provided “clear hope for the future… for now we must all stay at home”.
Professor Whitty, who is the most trusted Government figure on Covid, said the rapid spread of the virus was putting “many people at risk of serious disease and is placing a lot of pressure on our NHS”.
Dramatic images will carry the stark message: “Coronavirus. If you go out, you can spread it. People will die.”
The intervention appears to be prompted by concerns about compliance, which is far below the level seen during the first lockdown in March last year:
No 10 fears that Mr Johnson’s stay-at-home order is being flouted, a suspicion backed up by figures from Transport for London.
Passenger levels on the Underground were running at 18% yesterday, compared with just 5% last April.
Bus use is at 30% of capacity, compared with around 18% in the first lockdown.
And traffic levels on main roads in the capital were at 76% of normal compared with 30-40% nine months ago.
Having declared a ‘major incident’, Sadiq Khan is calling for tighter restrictions:
The major incident declared by Mr Khan yesterday is a procedure previously invoked following the Grenfell Tower disaster and major terrorist attacks.
The Mayor called for the closure of places of worship and for face masks to be worn routinely outside the home. Downing Street sources said there were “no more new lockdown measures on the way”.
But the Mail understands that Health Secretary Matt Hancock and other ministers have been examining the case to extend the use of masks.
Worth reading in full.
The Telegraph meanwhile, offers some further detail on the mood inside the Government:
Ministers are increasingly concerned about compliance with the lockdown but believe there are few additional major options left to tighten the restrictions any further.
“There’s not a lot more that we can do,” said a Government source. “We’ve put in these very tough national restrictions. It is a lockdown for everyone all the time.” The source stressed that the focus now was on persuading the public to obey the current rules.
Heavier-handed enforcement remains a lever the Government could pull, however. Police forces are already stepping up their role, having said this week that they will take a stricter approach to the latest lockdown.
Government insiders pointed out that the blanket lockdown rules are simpler and should therefore be easier to police than the tiers system.
Whatever impact this will have on the situation in the hospitals, it has a nasty side-effect in overzealous enforcement of the rules, as the Telegraph reports:
People having snowball fights outside face £200 fines for breaching Covid lockdown rules, police have said, amid criticism of heavy-handedness by officers.
West Mercia Police said snowball fights were not a justifiable reason for people to leave their homes during lockdown.
They wrote on Twitter: “There have been two reports of snowballs being thrown last night between 11 and 11.30pm. This is obviously not a justifiable reason to be out of your house, this behaviour is likely to result in a £200 Fixed Penalty Notice for breaking the lockdown rules.”
The action came after police chiefs warned this week that they will take a tougher approach to the latest lockdown, including challenging and fining people outside their homes without a reasonable excuse.
On Friday, figures showed police have more than doubled the rate at which they are issuing Covid fines, with a record 7,396 in the first 20 days of December – the equivalent of more than 350 a day.
It came after two women were hit with £200 Covid fines after their countryside walk with cups of coffee was branded a picnic.
The women said they were surrounded by police, read their rights and fined after driving five miles to take a walk in the Derbyshire countryside. They were told the hot drinks they had brought along were not allowed because they were “classed as a picnic”.
Guidance for the latest lockdown says people can travel for exercise as long as it is in their “local area”. Derbyshire Police said driving for exercise was “not in the spirit” of lockdown.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: RT is reporting that West Mercia Police has rowed back on the criminalisation of snowball fights.
Stop Press 2: The Mirror has a grim story of police storming a house over a suspected lockdown breach on the strength of a tip-off from a member of the public. A neighbour reported the occupants for unauthorised household mixing, but it turned out the “strangers” seen entering the properly were paramedics bringing the family’s sick daughter back from hospital. See a video of the police entering the house here.
Unpacking Yesterday’s Frightening Number of Daily Covid Deaths
What follows is a guest post byWill Jones who has examined the data behind yesterday’s alarming number of reported deaths.
Much is being made of the “record high” of 1,325 deaths reported yesterday, with reports of a Government crackdown to try to bring the virus under control.
There’s no doubt that the virus is currently driving a worrying surge in hospital admissions in London and that deaths with Covid continue to rise. However, the high 1000+ totals of the last few days include the backlog of deaths from the Christmas period that are only just now being reported, making them artificially high. A look at the deaths by date of death shows that the seven day average was around 635 on January 1st, and though it seems set to rise to closer to 700 in the past week, it is still a long way short of 1,325.
The Prime Minister said yesterday that “infection rates across the entire country continue to soar at an alarming rate”. This isn’t the picture painted by the ZOE app however, where daily new cases in London have been falling for some days and also appear to be slowing across England. The researchers behind the app estimate “R” in both London and England to be 1.1 (and falling).
Alarmingly, despite Matt Hancock stating this week that he wanted to lift restrictions once the vulnerable are vaccinated in the spring, a Government source told the Telegraph: “If the vaccination programme rolls out really effectively and the vaccines behave as well as they’ve done in trials, then you start to see a real opportunity to start easing things off a bit over the summer and spring. But then you may need to have something reintroduced next winter and you think about things like mask wearing and social distancing to make sure that we don’t give the virus a chance to spread again.”
Is this another Government aspiration that will evaporate when push comes to shove and leave us with another long winter of over-cautious public health policy? Let’s hope not.
Stop Press: Professor Tim Spector confirms that both the ZOE App Data and the ONS survey suggest the surge is subsiding.
What’s Gone Wrong With Hospitals’ Oxygen Supply?
An experienced cryogenics engineer has got in touch with an explanation for the problems with oxygen supply that some hospitals are currently experiencing. He has a solution.
Your regular weekly update from our in-house senior doctor revealed yesterday that: “Problems have arisen with oxygen supply at some hospitals – this is not due to lack of oxygen per se, but an engineering problem with the pipe pressure. Non-invasive ventilation with CPAP which most patients require needs a lot of oxygen and the requirement is more than the pipework can supply in some places.”
Early in April last year I was puzzled by a report in the Independent of a mysterious “critical incident” in Watford General Hospital which was forced to close its A&E Department after its oxygen supply was cut off. A BBC documentary “Hospital“, which I saw during the Summer, showed an incident occurring at about the same time of critical oxygen supply problems. Pressures dropped below minimum levels at the Royal Free London hospital as April evening temperatures fell. The immediate response was to transfer patients from non-invasive CPAP therapy to lower-demand intubation ventilators. The NHS manager was shown later fast-tracking the procurement and installation of an extra healthcare cryogenic supply tank or bulk storage tank in only 10 days. This was a creditable achievement, but sadly too late to benefit some of the COVID-19 patients, including an elderly Jewish gentleman who might, or might not, have survived had he remained on CPAP. I learned intubation is reportedly well-known to be contra-indicated for older and frail patients.
I am familiar with cryogenic systems technology and practice, having worked in and consulted for the marine Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) sector worldwide and its professional advisory bodies since the late 1970s. Bulk gases are stored in liquid form as, for example, oxygen gas occupies 800 times the volume of the same amount of liquid. But the liquid has to receive heat so that it “boils-off” back into gas. The problem with simple bulk liquid storage gas supply installations is not so much the pipework pressure limitations, but the air-liquid heat exchanger capacity which generates the supply pressure by “boiling-off” the extremely cold liquid oxygen. LNG boils at -161.5oC at atmospheric pressure, not much warmer than the boiling point of liquid oxygen used in hospital cryogenic supply tanks which is -183oC. The liquid is fed into vertical finned tube heat exchangers which draw heat from the surrounding air to “boil-off” the liquid gas. The flow of the liquid from tank to exchanger is automatically controlled to maintain supply pressure to the outlet which feeds the hospital piping system. During cold, moist conditions, the exchanger tubes become coated with frost which insulates the tube rack. With high demand, the increasing ice coating insulates too much of the exchanger surface area and prevents further uptake of heat from the air. Where “boil-off” fails to meet demand, pressure falls to hospital consumers, usually a combination positive pressure non-invasive (CPAP) therapy, nasal cannulas or invasive intubation ventilators. This is leading to triage during emergencies. If oxygen supply cannot be restored, higher consumers have to be shut off in favour of lower consumers and heavy cylinders of compressed medical oxygen, which have to be frequently replaced are substituted.
The short- to medium-term solution is surprisingly simple and well-known to marine engineers responsible for practical LNG operations. In periods of high gas demand or high need to boil-off cryogenic liquid, hard ice coat build-up from the exchanger tubes can be melted by playing a relatively low volume of fresh water (e.g. from a hospital fire hose) onto the heat exchanger. Continuing to spray water will significantly increase boil-off gas capacity as water has 4,000 times the heat capacity for a given volume than air. This technique was also known to the US healthcare sector. In May 2020 Health Facilities Management Magazine suggested that water or steam be used. In the UK, the Independent reports that “although incidents have been widely reported as NHS trust bosses were told… not to try to push oxygen systems beyond their limits” as “unapproved procedures may cause permanent damage”. The only alternative advice given apparently was to provide compressed oxygen as backup in heavy cylinders.
Having tried to put forward the solution on several occasions with the local NHS in Wales and in the MSM without response or acknowledgement, I am dismayed to hear yet again nothing seems to have been learned and oxygen capacity remains a serious bottleneck. It was reported that the unused Nightingales have, in London at least, been cannibalised for their temporary units. It should have been obvious to those responsible that January, with its near-freezing temperatures, was likely to be much more problematic than a warm Spring. But we have become well aware of the procedure-driven and budget-driven limitations within the NHS.
Exponential Rise in Key Workers
One key difference with this lockdown, as compared with the first, appears to be the number of primary school children who are still going to school. The Guardian has the story:
Primary schools in England have reported a big increase in the number of pupils attending during the latest lockdown, leading to warnings it may increase the spread of COVID-19 and prolong the need for school closures.
A survey of school leaders and classroom teachers revealed a sharp turnaround in the numbers of children attending school this week compared with those who attended in March 2020 during the first national lockdown.
The survey by the Teacher Tapp app found that one in six primary schools in England reported that 30% or more of their normal roll was attending in person this week, far more than in the first week of the March lockdown.
Nationally the figures would equate to more than 2,500 primary schools in England with a third or more of their pupils in their classrooms. More than 300 of those schools said at least half of all their pupils attended in person.
The figures are the first evidence that parents have been sending their children to school in increasing numbers. Headteachers have complained about their schools “rammed” with pupils and of parents making implausible claims of being eligible “critical workers”.
One headteacher reported that a parent whose job was a dog-walker claimed to qualify as a key worker because many of the dogs’ owners were NHS staff.
Rebecca Allen, a Professor of Education at the University of Brighton and Chief Analyst at Teacher Tapp, said: “The much higher number of children attending primary schools each day during this lockdown will make it more difficult to reduce the rate of transmission.
“This, in turn, may mean that schools will need to stay closed for longer, thus delaying the speed with which we can get other children back to school.”
Worth reading in full.
This is at least partly because the rules on which children are allowed back into the classroom are more permissive than they were in March. The BBC has more.
Heads are calling for limits to the number of pupils in school during lockdown in England, with attendance rates surging to 50% in some places.
The two head teachers’ unions, NAHT and ASCL, say the high numbers attending could hamper the fight against the virus.
The Department for Education has widened the categories of vulnerable and key worker pupils who can attend.
The widened categories not only include vulnerable pupils and children of workers in critical occupations but also those who cannot access remote learning either because they do not have devices or space to study.
Children of parents working on the Brexit arrangements are also included.
Teachers have described streets around schools being packed with parents dropping off their children and almost all staff having to come in and work despite the lockdown.
Heads say they fear schools could be overwhelmed by children who do not have access to lap tops [sic] to learn remotely.
One Lockdown Sceptics reader has a child who is now going back to school. She wrote in to share her experience of school closures in her area:
Our daughter is of primary school age and during the first lockdown we kept her at home at the same time as me and my partner both attempting to work full time from home, this being largely unsuccessful for all of us.
In anticipation of the closures this time, we sought “critical worker” status from my partner’s employer and were lucky enough to have this granted. When the inevitable closures were announced on the Monday, we were ready and waiting to apply for a place for our daughter, which we duly did on the Tuesday. The school was closed to all pupils on the Tuesday whilst they organised the staff and awaited the critical worker place applications from parents.
On the Tuesday evening we received a couple of successive emails, the first notifying us that the place for our daughter was confirmed, the second outlining the plans for school opening for critical worker places from Wednesday and beyond. In that email the school outlined class numbers for each year group and the total number of places allocated. We were somewhat surprised to see that places in school (it’s not clear whether these include those classed as vulnerable, I have assumed that they are) amounted to over 50% of the normal capacity of the school (166/315), with our daughter’s year group being the largest class – a total of 28 children out of a possible 45.
I have no reason to believe that our daughter’s school would be much different from others in our area, which is situated in a fairly affluent part of South Manchester. A quick ask around local friends and colleagues reveal that other schools do appear to be around the same sort of levels. This is also in contrast to the first lockdown, where I believe there were around 10 out of 45 in our daughter’s year in attendance.
That being the case, one has to ask oneself, are any of the perceived benefits of school closures actually likely with this volume of children in schools (although as a lockdown sceptic I remain unconvinced of the benefits regardless)? Almost all of the teaching staff will still be coming into school, albeit in a shift type pattern, as will the staff of the onsite wraparound care facility.
I fear that all that has really been achieved by the closure of primary schools is the further disadvantaging of a large proportion of children across the country.
The Headteacher has since followed up the emails of Tuesday evening with an email requesting parents to all “examine our social conscience” and revisit whether we all really need the critical worker places applied for. From this I can safely assume from this that the Head is no lockdown sceptic herself.
Stop Press: A headteacher in Hull is urging parents not to abuse critical worker places, telling them to only send their children to school if they “absolutely have to“.
Stop Press 2: MailOnline is reporting that some pupils are being asked to do their own Covid tests.
Answer From A Legal Eagle
Yesterday we had a question for the legal eagles: If basic care is to be curtailed to promote vaccination programmes, can I sue the GP practice if my elderly mum doesn’t get the care she needs and then goes on to be hospitalised unnecessarily?
Today, a response:
I very much doubt it. Professional negligence law has two ready-made defences for the practice:
1) Compliance with law/health authority directives – The practice would say it was doing what its contractual partner (and the Government) told it to, and what it was therefore obliged to do.
2) “Reasonable foreseeability” – A successful claim would need to argue that it was reasonable for the practice to foresee that the absent care would be more critical than the vaccine. In the current uncertain environment – impossible, I fear.
Postcard From Luxembourg
One Lockdown Sceptics reader is lucky enough to live in Luxembourg were COVID-19 restrictions are being relaxed. He wanted to share his thoughts so he has written us a postcard:
The day before England woke up to its third lockdown, Luxembourg announced that it was actually going to relax its own restrictions. Yes, here in Luxembourg the shops will all be opened, the children back at school following a slightly extended Christmas holiday and we will even be able to go to the cinema and the swimming pool.
Perhaps there has been a slight whiff of Schadenfreude as the Luxembourgish authorities clamped down on arrivals from the island with the now famous mutant variant following Matt Hancock’s frantic ringing of the alarm bell. After all, this is the same little country that was among the first to be kicked out of Grant Shapps’s travel corridors with COVID-19 cases persistently in excess of 20 per 100,000. Do you remember that frightening threshold that forced so many holidaymakers to flee the pestilence and return to the UK before it pulled up the drawbridges? Maybe you have forgotten about it being so busy clearing streets of bodies now that cases exceed 1,000 in so many British towns. Or perhaps not.
While all of Europe sneered at Trump when he suggested that the more you test, the more cases you find, it was not long before the Luxembourg Government was saying something similar. Boris might have talked about moonshots, but Luxembourg really did roll out real mass testing early on. I don’t know how many invitations I have received for members of my household to be tested. It is possibly in double figures now. Of course, the sad consequence was that it was always up there near the top in terms of COVID-19 cases detected and much to its consternation, rather than receiving a pat on its back, other countries simply slapped restrictions on travel to and from Luxembourg. This eventually led to the wonderful controversy of the pugnacious Luxembourg Foreign Minister refusing to be tested before entering Germany for an EU summit in Berlin and declaring that the imposition of mandatory tests before crossing the border was “pure harassment”.
Despite this brilliant rollout of mass testing throughout the Summer, the action that we were all told was meant to stop COVID-19 in its tracks, Luxembourg has seen far more people reportedly dying of Covid since October than it did during the Spring – more than three times the number and with a youthful average age of 85. This meant that restrictions were progressively ratcheted up again until we had a curfew beginning at 9pm, non-essential shops shutting, masks, restaurants closed… you know the drill. But now the cases are dropping, the hospital beds are emptying, and the health service emergency level has been downgraded.
Worth reading in full.
We Need Scepticism More Than Ever
Sociology Professor Frank Furedi has written a long read for Spiked-Online defending the important role of scepticism at a time when it is increasingly considered a threat.
Look at the way so-called lockdown sceptics are now talked about. They are accused of “having blood on their hands”, and of holding “deadly beliefs”. They are to be ostracised, censored and humiliated. In this vein, one Guardian columnist even demanded that a specific scientist, who has criticised the lockdown consensus, be denied access to the media to voice his views. And little wonder. Scepticism is now routinely portrayed as dangerous, something to be quashed lest we all suffer.
It is not just criticism of lockdown restrictions that is under fire. Criticism of other aspects of the establishment’s outlook is also treated in much the same way, that is, as dangerous or threatening. Indeed, it is the attempt by our cultural, political and educational elites to demonise criticism that has contributed to the broader demonisation of scepticism itself. Think of the whiff of sulphur that hangs around those called Eurosceptic or climate-sceptical. They are not presented as mere holders of dissenting opinions; they are presented as morally inferior, and potentially dangerous…
Take the hysterical criticism levelled at the authors of the lockdown-questioning Great Barrington Declaration, and lockdown-sceptical individuals, such as Sunetra Gupta, a Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford. They have been personally and professionally maligned, and, more troubling still, their critics want them removed from the public sphere. This has all the characteristics of a modern high-tech witch-hunt.
Sceptics, he writes, are routinely accused of a wicked heresy.
Today’s sceptics are not accused of obscenity or moral corruption. No, they are accused of “denialism”. That is their evil deed. By categorising scepticism as denialism, one is attributing malign intent to the exercise of scepticism. The sceptic is therefore not questioning or interrogating an establishment position; rather, he or she is denying the truth of the establishment position. Such is the quasi-religious force of this strategy that the Guardian, which largely cleaves to establishment positions, updated its style guide in 2019, meaning that climate sceptics were from then on to be referred to as climate-science deniers. Unsurprisingly, this same rhetorical strategy has been applied to those sceptical of lockdown policies, with accusations of “Covid denialism” now routine on social media and in the press…
They have transformed the act of denying the Holocaust into a generic evil, a free-floating blasphemy, which can be attributed to all manner of sceptical positions. As one commentator puts it: “Denial is pernicious and can have dire impacts. Climate-change denial leads to lack of action that would preserve a healthy planet. Mask denial leads to increased spread of and mortality from the Covid virus.”
Yet if society is to develop, Furedi concludes, it needs scepticism.
A sceptical attitude is especially important right now. During this perilous moment, when humanity is confronted by a deadly threat like Covid, there is a temptation to close down debate and limit freedom of speech. In such circumstances, dissenting views can easily be caricatured as a threat to people’s health. To some it even seems that debate itself is a luxury we can no longer afford. Yet it is precisely during an emergency, like the pandemic, that debate and free speech become indispensable. They are the means by which we harness the creativity and the wisdom of the public to deal with the crisis in which we now find ourselves.
The 19th-century biologist Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote that “scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the unpardonable sin”. Now, more than ever, this is a statement worth heeding. Our future freedom may well depend on it.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Douglas Murray has made a similar argument in a piece for UnHerd called “Don’t censor the lockdown sceptics“.
The Iceberg Cometh
We’re publishing an original piece by Lockdown Sceptics regular Guy de la Bédoyère today about our seeming inability to come to terms with our own mortality, something that’s become starkly apparent during this crisis. Here is an extract:
Life is a little like being on the Titanic, but one without lifeboats and in a perpetual state of sinking. We do everything individually and collectively we can to maximize our chances of surviving for as long as possible by metaphorically clambering towards the stern, the last part to sink beneath the waves. And why wouldn’t we? But sink beneath the waves we will.
From a cultural and social point of view that is what we are all about. Human ingenuity is so powerful a force and the drive to improve our survival rates is such an integral part of what we are that they define our whole existence. The NHS is a manifestation of that aspiration because it has made healthcare available to all in this country. It is a defining aspect of our civilization. It is a force for fundamental good and an expression of compassion. But it comes at a price, and not just a financial one.
Unfortunately, what we seem ever more unable to reconcile is our enthusiasm to prolong life with the knowledge that it must end. By doing everything we can to extend life within what is possible for human beings we necessarily fill that 85-105 year-old group with ever more people who have underlying health conditions. That is the contract we have made in our society. The state provides that service, we support that service, we pay for that service, and we expect that service.
Worth reading in full.
Round-up
- “British Public ‘have been coerced to stop seeing the people they love‘” – Watch Charles Walker MP defend his vote against Lockdown 3 on Channel 4 News
- “The totalitarian hell of lockdown” – “Debate, dissent and independent thought are not allowed in Covid Britain” writes Emily Hill in Spiked Online
- “Moderna Covid vaccine approved for use in Britain” – Another vaccine has been approve for use, reports the Times, with delivery expected in the Spring
- “Less than a third of people self-isolate fully during a pandemic” – Home Care Insight reports on the low rates of full self-isolation
- “Boris Johnson was the last man standing over Covid schools closures” – It took the combined forces of Matt Hancock, Michael Gove and Chris Whitty to force Boris into a third lockdown, according to the Times
- “GP surgeries offered £1,000 to cancel second dose Covid jab appointments in roll-out chaos” – The payments to cover workload of postponing hundreds of patients and booking new ones in their place, says the Telegraph. Only in the NHS
- “Children’s mental health referrals hit record high as lockdowns and school closures bite” – The Telegraph reports on an inevitable impact of the lockdown which could last for years
- “Police Told Freedom of Speech Campaigner Toby Young to Take Death Threat Seriously” – James Delingpole in Breitbart, on the growing hostility towards lockdown sceptics
- “Jonathan Van Tam went for a curry on same day Boris Johnson told Londoners to avoid restaurants” – MailOnline reports that the Deputy Chief Medical Officer failed to follow Government health advice in March last year
- “Message to the Prime Minister about Ivermectin” – Dr Tess Lawrie, Director of the Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy in Bath, asks Boris to take heed of the latest research into a well-known medicine that will save lives in the battle against COVID-19
- “Covid is a clear and present danger to the Bank of England’s independence” – Philip Aldrick in the Times on why the bank just might be out of a job
- “Denmark developing digital COVID-19 ‘vaccine passport’” – Denmark is getting its vaccine passport ready, reports Reuters, so that citizens can travel to countries that require them for entry
- “Lockdown supporters must be ready for the same medicine every winter” – Robert Taylor sounds a warning in the Telegraph
- “How the rise of digital technology facilitated lockdown” – Philosopher Mark Sinclair in the Critic, warning against the slippery slope of technological thinking
- “Whichever way you look at it, the new travel rules are bonkers” – Ross Clark in the Telegraph says everyday life has become a trap seemingly designed to allow public authorities to impose as many Fixed Penalty Notices as they can
- A brave citizen journalist filmed four coppers sitting in a cafe having a cup of coffee and asked them why they were breaking the rules
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Four Today: “I’ve Had Enough” by The Who, “Cry Wolf” by Aha, “Can’t Give Up Now” by Mary Mary and “It’s All Going to Pot” by Willie Nelson.
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 as well as post comments below the line, 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 so you can share it. To do that, click on the headline of a particular story and a link symbol will appear on the right-hand side of the headline. Click on the link and the URL of your page will switch to the URL of that particular story. You can then copy that URL and either email it to your friends or post it on social media. Please do share the stories.
Social Media Accounts
You can follow Lockdown Sceptics on our social media accounts which are updated throughout the day. To follow us on Facebook, click here; to follow us on Twitter, click here; to follow us on Instagram, click here; to follow us on Parler, click here; and to follow us on MeWe, click here.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, from the New York Post, we bring you a human rights attorney and the curious case of her cultural identity:
A prominent human rights attorney apparently posed as a Latina woman for years.
Despite claiming Puerto Rican and Colombian heritage for over a decade, Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan is actually a white woman from Georgia, according to a report by the non-profit news outlet Prism.
She serves as Senior Counsel at the Latino Justice Puerto Rican Legal Defence and Education Fund.
Records obtained by the site say Bannan’s family arrived in the United States from Ireland, Italy and Russia.
On Monday, Bannan, 43, clarified that she’s white in response to the report.
“I am racially white, and have always said that. However my cultural identity was formed as a result of my family, both chosen and chosen for me, and that has always been Latinx,” the attorney wrote.
“My identity is my most authentic expression of who I am and how I pay honour to the people who have formed me since I was a child.”
Bannan also sent an email to Prism saying she’s previously identified as white, that her “biological origins are Italian, atheist Jewish/Sephardic, some unknown (adopted grandfather) and who knows what else.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: For another story from across the pond, we turn to #Disrupttexts and their ongoing campaign to build an inclusive and equitable arts curriculum. Meghan Cox Gurdon has more in the Wall Street Journal.
A sustained effort is under way to deny children access to literature. Under the slogan #DisruptTexts, critical-theory ideologues, schoolteachers and Twitter agitators are purging and propagandizing against classic texts, everything from Homer to F. Scott Fitzgerald to Dr. Seuss.
Their ethos holds that children shouldn’t have to read stories written in anything other than the present-day vernacular, especially those “in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm”, as young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman writes in School Library Journal. No author is valuable enough to spare, Ms. Venkatraman instructs: “Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic excellence outweighs hateful rhetoric.”
The subtle complexities of literature are being reduced to the crude clanking of “intersectional” power struggles. Thus Seattle English teacher Evin Shinn tweeted in 2018 that he’d “rather die” than teach “The Scarlet Letter”, unless Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel is used to “fight against misogyny and slut-shaming”.
Outsiders got a glimpse of the intensity of the #DisruptTexts campaign recently when self-described “antiracist teacher” Lorena Germán complained that many classics were written more than 70 years ago: “Think of US society before then and the values that shaped this nation afterwards. That is what is in those books…”
The demands for censorship appear to be getting results: “Be like Odysseus and embrace the long haul to liberation (and then take the Odyssey out of your curriculum because it’s trash),” tweeted Shea Martin in June, to which Heather Levine, an English teacher at Lawrence High School, Massachusetts, replied, “Hahaha. Very proud to say we got the Odyssey removed from the curriculum this year!”
Worth reading in full.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a one-stop shop down here for people who want to obtain a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card – because wearing a mask causes them “severe distress”, for instance. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and the Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. And 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. Another reader has created an Android app which displays “I am exempt from wearing a face mask” on your phone. Only 99p.
If you’re a shop owner and you want to let your customers know you will not be insisting on face masks or asking them what their reasons for exemption are, you can download a friendly sign to stick in your window here.
And here’s an excellent piece about the ineffectiveness of masks by a Roger W. Koops, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry. See also the Swiss Doctor’s thorough review of the scientific evidence here and Prof Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson’s Spectator article about the Danish mask study here.
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 in October and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it ever since. If you googled it a week after launch, 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 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 three quarters of a million signatures.
Update: The authors of the GBD have expanded the FAQs to deal with some of the arguments and smears that have been made against their proposal. Worth reading in full.
Update 2: Many of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration are involved with new UK anti-lockdown campaign Recovery. Find out more and join here.
Update 3: You can watch Sunetra Gupta set out the case for “Focused Protection” here and Jay Bhattacharya make it here.
Update 4: The three GBD authors plus Prof Carl Heneghan of CEBM have launched a new website collateralglobal.org, “a global repository for research into the collateral effects of the COVID-19 lockdown measures”. Follow Collateral Global on Twitter here. Sign up to the newsletter here.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many legal cases being brought against the Government and its ministers we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
The Simon Dolan case has now reached the end of the road. But the cause has been taken up by PCR Claims. Check out their website here.
The current lead case is the Robin Tilbrook case which challenges whether the Lockdown Regulations are constitutional. 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 and Runnymede Trust’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.
And last but not least there was the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. A High Court judge refused permission for the FSU’s judicial review on December 9th and the FSU has decided not to appeal the decision because Ofcom has conceded most of the points it was making. Check here for details.
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.)
And Finally…
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
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Guess I’ve got to say something important.
They say that life’s a carousel
Spinning fast, you’ve got to ride it well
The world is full of kings and queens
Who blind your eyes and steal your dreams
And they’ll tell you black is really white
The moon is just the sun at night
And when you walk in golden halls
You get to keep the gold that falls
Ronnie James Dio knew about Governments.
Brazil Says NO! https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/svg/1f6ab.svg To ‘Great Reset’ / Hugo Talks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qwQSPkIqa0
This has probably been reported already, but the s.w.org website appears to have been blocked…
The video is still on YT (for now)…
FREEDOM !!!!The Capitol Was STORMED! – Everything You Need To Know
AwakenWithJP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH9XWNz0GW4
Parler executive speaks out following Google app store ban, threats from Apple
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNIxatQ0fKU
Brazil Says NO! https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/svg/1f6ab.svg To ‘Great Reset’ / Hugo Talks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qwQSPkIqa0
My submission to the UK Joint Committee on Human Rights: “The rule of law and all human rights in the UK were effectively rescinded on 23rd March 2020. This brief submission is therefore not an appeal for restitution, but a testimony to the irreparable damage that has been inflicted upon this nation. Our proud tradition of civil liberties, established incrementally over 800 years since Magna Carta, has been desecrated in less than one year. We have utterly betrayed all our ancestors who fought so bravely and bitterly against forces inimical to these principles. The UK is now an authoritarian state. Those with more than a passing interest in history will be all too familiar with the bestial and sadistic excesses that all such systems of governance have inflicted upon their citizenry. Our collective indolence, apathy and ignorance over many decades has reached its apotheosis. Complete subservience to the state, however petty or absurd might its orders be, is considered to be a virtue. The abandonment of the principles of individual liberty and responsibility will not be without consequence. We face years, if not decades, of interminable torment as a result of our catastrophic errors of judgement. All those who believe… Read more »
Congratulations on your fervent eloquence. I hope it nay penetrate at least one of their concrete skulls.
Human rights? What are they?A committee to safeguard them? What a laugh.
I know, I wanted to mock this committee for being completely superfluous but it was pointless to do so. They will already know this. Somebody in the Civil Service will skim read it and then click delete.
It was still worth doing. Pity you weren’t an illegal immigrant tweeting from a lilo in the middle of the English Channel.
On the upside, a lilo in the Channel is one of the few places the ‘national lockdown’ does not apply.
From SI 2021 No 8 The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 3) and (All Tiers) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021…
“Every area of England, apart from the territorial waters adjacent to England and the airspace above England and those territorial waters, is within the Tier 4 area.”
So get yourself on a boat in Bournemouth and it’s party-time because lockdown doesn’t apply.
Does this mean the elite are having parties in the sky and on the seas?
Very well researched Mr Taxpayer
Magnificent comrade. I have copied it and will send it to many including my 6 grandkids.
It’s their future that is being destroyed, not ours, so the urgency to provide them with some real coordinates is paramount. Lose them to the cult and we are finished.
Well said!!!! If we don’t fight back now, the kiddies will never forgive us.
Add Richard’s submission, or succinct parts thereof, to leaflets, pamphlets and stickers. Distribute them while you are ‘exercising’ in places where you are not known.
Brilliantly written!
The Capitol Was STORMED! – Everything You Need To Know
AwakenWithJP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH9XWNz0GW4
His best that I have seen. Just when will our media look at things sanely?
2 more things before I go for some sleep. From the first story above:
Curfews coming, folks.
Arseholes!
Night all. 🙂
Parler executive speaks out following Google app store ban, threats from Apple
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNIxatQ0fKU
I just uninstalled all my Apple apps. Don’t trust them.
the Police Scotland story is – well, disgraceful doesn’t cover it, I am afraid. Some newspapers refer to two women and a man being charged. Others refer to there being two adults and two children in the house. It seems that it was the seriously ill girl – likely a teenager – who were charged. The teenage girl was charged after having had a seizure.
This is totally indefensible and if the police continue to behave in this way I don’t see how compliance with any request they make can be defended.
I am not an anarchist. We need law and order. However, law and order in a liberal democracy is a two way thing.
Except that we are no longer living in a liberal democracy, in which case there is only one way. The state tells us what to do, and if we don’t comply it sends its hired thugs to force us to comply. This is the natural order of things in an authoritarian system.
In that case it is our moral duty not to comply.
Yes, resistance is now vital and is not optional.
In that case, prepare to defend yourselves with whatever means you have available. Throwing a snowball or having a seizure is henceforth a criminal offence.
A meagre selection of hardware tools is about the best I can muster. That and my humanity.
Hardware tools is what Sozhenitsyn referred to in his quote, “How we burned in the camps . . “
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
Also going for a walk five miles from home and a trip to Macdonalds
Drive Thru only @ MacyDs I’m afraid.
Cowardly corporate cowards on par with Thiesen in Hitlers Germany.
When I was young I had Grand Mal seizures while asleep.
Whoever said any part of Britain now bears the slightest resemblance to a liberal democracy?
If the German Democratic Republic is the model, then we do. GBDR
We should change our name to the Democratic People’s Republic of Britain
The United Kingdom of England and bit of Ireland doesn’t really work does it ?
No it doesn’t and doesn’t really reflect where we are now sadly.
The snitches should hang their heads in shame. These things will come out in time
They’d better bloody beware! What goes around, COMES around!
I hate my neighbours horrid ignorant people a nurse and a screw also one kids a nurse they have never obeyed lock down shit good on them. I would never call the pigs.
The snitchers should be made aware of what happened to their counterparts in France after WW2 and Germany after reunification.
Hint: it wasn’t pretty.
At least the female French collaborators in WW2 got a hair cut. That’s more than we can.
Some people will do ANYTHING to get their hair cut in times like these /s
Whether they liked the style or not is open to question.
They deserve to die Stasi pigs
Change the ethnicity of this family to anything other than Caucasian and it would have lit the cold dark sky with MSM outrage. As it is…. (fill in the silence)
Grit teeth.Vow never to surrender. Carry on.
Resistance is vital, compliance should be punished.
Vaccine dissidents are to be hunted down by 77th Brigade. One 77th reservist worked for – surprise, surprise – Twitter. https://freewestmedia.com/2020/12/05/british-military-declares-war-on-vaccine-opponents/?fbclid=IwAR3G7_lNPEUX4vS3qAQMZjr3Mj3Ln6T53khcDaBtHIN84A9GP3oJ2sh7JCY
I’m up for it, will be like going to war against the brownies,
We get to eat the enemy? Count me in.
Unless you want to become a ‘medical emergency’ (if you know what I mean) don’t you even dare think about going out in the fresh air today
Just off for my weekly five mile.
I’ve already been with the dog for half an hour and we’re now off for our usual two hour romp. We’ll be going out again a couple more times later in the day and we haven’t deviated from our fresh air schedule all the way through the fake pandemic. I’m 75 next month and have never worn a mask, never socially distanced, never taken a vaccine since 1964, never clapped the woeful NHS and never will.
Go you 🙂 I wish my partner’s kids (16/19 respectively, iPhone gen and hopelessly brainwashed) had even an ounce the stamina you did
It’a as much about being an awkward old git, as anything else, though of course the dog has a very big say in what we do.
I’ve also not deviated from my going out in the fresh air and getting plenty of exercise since this charade started. I’m certainly not going to make myself unhealthy, unfit and dependant on the NHS by lounging about in a chair indoors. I also don’t wear a mask, refused the flu vaccine when I worked for the NHS and certainly won’t be clapping for them.
Keep up the good work.
Good on yer!
I am aiming to cycle 15 miles. FIGHT ME BORIS!
I’m going stir-crazy from being in-doors. I’m going out shortly. Hopefully all the coronaphobes have been terrified into complete submission, and ain’t going out at all. I’ll have the streets to myself.
Don’t worry about it, local shopping precinct car park is jammed full as is Sainsbury’s.
This time last March April they would have been like Xmas day.
It’s an ill wind, as they say:
“…councils are urging people to remain vigilant against a new coronavirus-related scam which sees criminals calling or texting to offer a vaccination at a cost.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55598918
Criminals offering a vaxx for mere money, when the Notional Hell Service can offer you one that may cost you your life!? Tut tut.
Adding daylight robbery to injury!
I have noticed that every time the Telegraph, Guardian, Sky News or any other mainstream media outlet puts out a video on Youtube regarding Covid or Lockdown the number of dislikes vastly outnumbers the number of likes by a multiple of at least two.
This may be a good indicator of public mood as Youtube is a bit like Facebook. It is more mainstream than other platforms such as Bitchute, and likes/dislikes are anonymous, at least to other users.
Latest Daily Mail YT video – featuring Genghis of London – has 939 dislikes to 69 likes.
Great comments too
Another cunt who needs killing
Exactly. The Sadiq Khan video posted on The Sun’s channel has 1000 thumbs up to 4,500 thumbs down.
It’s little pieces of data like that that put the official government polls suggesting overwhelming support for lockdown into doubt.
The government lies about nearly everything else, so why would the polls be an exception?
Yes, I’ve noticed that, too! Excellent! And the comments are totally disparaging as well.
My MP Lee Anderson a labour cunt traitor to the tories for money sent an email out before latest lock down to reply yes or no and said his vote was because 80% voted lock everybody I know voted NO and the cunt blocked me on facetwat for asking pertinent questions. Hope he knocks on my door..
More about the dreadful case of the women fined for taking a walk with a hot drink. Not only evil, but crazy as walking helps keep people healthy and sane. And when was a drink a picnic? I hate this police state we are living in.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-55594244
Now I wonder why no comments are allowed…?
It’s the BBC, only Bill Gates is allowed to post comments.
I am not aware of any evidence that Sars-Cov2 spreads outdoors? is there any? everything I have read suggests it spreads in intensive indoor settings. It does also seem to depend on where you live we go wandering about in the boondocks of North Devon for hours with our flask and our sandwiches see a few people now and again stop and have a chat, rarely ever see a police officer. All this nonsense about being outside seems a measure of the increasing frustration of the powers that be that they cannot control this virus any more than they can control the tide, the wind or the rain. It is as if Canute got so cross that he could not stop the tide that he locked down all his people until the tide obeyed him. Also, I note that these ladies were not actually fined they were issued with a fixed penalty notice which is not a fine. I feel the Police and the authorities are misrepresenting what a Fixed Penalty Notice actually is. As far as I can see it is when a Police Officer thinks you may have committed and offence they make you an offer of a… Read more »
I think the lady actually said she only accepted the FPN because she was so taken back at all the Plod being there just for her and her friend and their two cups of tea.
I believe outdoor transmission is very rare indeed so they should encourage people to get out in the fresh air. That fact made me sceptical of lockdowns from the start for as a child every common cold made me seriously ill. My parents were encouraged to take me outdoors as much as possible by the doctors treating as outdoors was safe for me they said. Derbyshire Police were over the top during the first lockdown too.
My mum trained as a nurse in London during WW2, if I ever got a sniffle she chucked me in the garden for the sunshine and fresh air.
Sunshine and fresh air is good for coping with lung/throat infections. It seems like all previous thinking and proven treatments have been thrown out of the window. Truth is we are looking at mass insanity.
Or more likely, mass genocide.
Isn’t the whole point of being outdoors is for our physical and mental health as well as try to get as much Vitamin D which is problematic during this time of the year?
This has long convinced me that this was never about health. If this was genuinely about health, the NHS posters would have been all about healthy eating, exercising, getting as much Vitamin D as possible, taking care of mental health as well as resurrecting those “catch in, bin it, kill it” adverts.
Instead the government is perpetuating a large scale Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy to this country and for this they should pay for the lives they’ve destroyed.
100%. Not a single utterance about improving one’s immune system in over 9 months.
Completely agree, the immune system is your best defence
Vitamin D works against flu, so it will work against the rebranded flu, also known as Covid-19.
Indeed. The government have got to keep the panic up, they are so deep in the sewage
But plenty of policies guaranteed to weaken immune systems!
Exactly. Most odd.
Whatever happened to common sense and “prevention is better than the cure”?
All seconded Bart – I’ve asked my MP why the government hasn’t advised everyone to take cheap, non-prescription Vits. C & D and Zinc supplements which have long been known to improve immunity, and are particularly recommended as prophylactic treatments against Covid [ref: On the Treatment of Covid-19 – Swiss Policy Research (swprs.org)]. Answer comes there none …. tumbleweed.
The problem is that they make no money for big-pharma.
The Chief Constable of Derbyshire police clearly has a slate loose and he should be relieved of command forthwith.
Might be time for another mass tresspass on the Peak District, that might just blow the police’s head.
It’s dangerous to go walking in the fresh air, but even more dangerous to sit in your house without opening all the windows to let in the fresh air, even if the temperature is below zero.
And you are much more likely to spread the bug in the open Deebyshire countryside than down your own narrow street of small terraced houses.
I’ve yet to see any plod in my town. One weary-looking PCSO walks around but she’s been a mainstay of the area for a number of years. The park is always packed these days. I take a snack and a hot drink on my walks sometimes, totally uninterrupted by state officialdom. Most of of the fear-mongering crap is pure propaganda designed to terrorise. Don’t feel intimidated, but don’t draw attention to yourself. Be sensible. Keep your wits about you. Live as freely as you can. Get your fresh air and exercise – even bloody prisoners have this right! Don’t be pulled down into their dark timeline.
I live quite near Derby Police Station. I often see or hear police vehicles in the area but rarely see any officers on foot, except in the summer when their duties sometimes require them to take a pleasant stroll in the sunshine.
It is vital that those two women refuse to pay and challenge this filth. The Derbyshire filth have form (as we know) for this sort of thing.
And then they wonder why people despise them!
I am going to walk my dogs out to Foremarke reservoir this morning, I might take an empty coffee cup for the craic!?!?
Refuse to pay anything along these lines. Case would be laughed out of court even in these strange times. As has been said before Derbyshire police are on a different level to most and the Chief Constable is clearly not up to the job. Time for an unceremonious sacking.
As a Derby resident, I know Foremark Reservoir well; a nice place not too far out of the city in which to take a walk. I see from the BBC News website that “new national guidelines” have been issued to the police, so perhaps the police federation have quickly realised the stupidity of their actions
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-55594244
Coronavirus. If you go out, you can spread scepticism. People will live.
It’s a brave decision to front an advertising campaign with a withered husk like whitty
They’ve got plenty to rehash
The was an anti heroin drugs poster campaign featuring a callow youth slumped on the pavement against a brick wall.
The sponsors were sort of delighted that the posters kept being removed thinking they were being used for private contemplation.
Eventually they discovered that teenage girls were adorning their bedrooms with them because they thought he looked sexy.
Remember “Zammo” from Grange Hill. He was an icon, an inspiration to millions!
Irvine Welsh. We live among the Trainspotting Generation in Scotland. Trainspotting hit people in late teens now those impressionable young people with 20 years of hard drugs behind them – bodies failing to death.
A bit after my time, it was flippin ‘eck Tucker and Trish for my generation.
When I was 11-ish, 12-ish, I sometimes lay awake in fear at night because of the twin prospects of death in a nuclear holocaust or death from AIDS. Lots of children’s novels inculcated the first view, then the government made a powerful play for my terror with that polystyrene iceberg.
I know the BBC are renowned for their repeats but this is going over the top
The silence of the lambs
Every Thursday 8pm until the end of time
I find it interesting that cheap anti-parasitic drugs are KNOWN to be effective in treating Cv19. Malaria and parasitic worming treatments that have in fact been around for decades yet Governments take no notice when informed of their effectiveness in fact bizarrely move to ban them. Ivermectin is the latest – banned in South Africa. Didnt Fauci want to ban or even ban Chloroquine in America?
How can you ban it? It got rid of my children’s Barbados sand worms (worms in the feet – very itchy)
An example of the fabricated reality.
Medicine is not about human kinds all out push to continually care and save life.
Quite large implications in that last sentence.
Vaccines are about profit without liability and of course depopulation.
They got so much blood on their hands already that more won’t cause them to lose a wink of sleep.
Government / big pharma not interested in out-of-patent remedies …. minimal profit.
HCQ was removed from over-the-counter availability in France in FEBRUARY.
It was reinstated in the US soon AFTER the vaccine(s) was (were) approved.
I’m guessing that the story about the relatively simple solution to the Oxygen supply issues omits the salient fact that the hospitals don’t own the Oxygen tanks and infrastructure. The hospital management naturally wouldn’t feel it appropriate to spray water on equipment owned by a third party supplier. The real culprits will be whoever drafted the Oxygen supply contract for failing to ensure that the suppliers were obliged to respond immediately when demand exceeded the notional capacity of the installation had been exceeded.
If people are dying, you go out with your watering can and water the outside of the machine if that’s what it takes. Let the owner of the machine sue later if they want that publicity.
At least, that’s what you do if you’re sane and you actually give a shit.
I think I saw that episode of the Simpsons, the one where Homer Simpson thnks it would be a good idea to splash some water on the oxygen equipment, trips the plant and kills everyone in the ICU…
Sounds like a cracker.
Tighter restrictions. Time to shoot lockdown breakers? The ultimate sanction. I wouldn’t be surprised if that option is being discussed.
Hey, Cassandra, have you had an attack of optimism or something?
Nice to see you back, NN!
Yes, we’ve had to grasp a very nasty nettle. The Johnson government, working under oligarchic direction, is waging a vicious war on the British people. No Russians required, as you say.
Those junior public officials, your neighbours and perhaps your soon to be ex-friends are part of the vast army of collaborators, who mostly rather unwittingly have become an existential threat both to themselves and everyone else.
My eighty year old brother, rang on Thursday night and rather excitedly told me that he had been given a time for his Covid vaccination. He has mild dementia and so had totally forgotten my views on this vexing topic. I suggested he should reconsider vaccination and briefly listed the cons, there being no pros. He said nothing and I could almost feel his disappointment as the phone then went dead. His wife is an avid vaccinator and there’s not much more I can do. My brother is like a lamb to the slaughter and he now sees me as the enemy, most perplexing.
First thing they think of now is’can we get away with it’.
Even Hitler had to back off with his eugenics programme when people protested against the killing of people with mild physical deformities but who were ‘proper Germans’.
In 2021 that wouldn’t work -too many namby pampys . However the stocks or ducking stool might be ok.
Keira Starmer would be complaining shooting people doesn’t go far enough.
And the deaths by shooting would be accounted on the Covid side to increase the numbers.
I wish to declare a Major Incident in London:
“Sadiq Khan has lost the plot.“
As ever in this virus hoo-haa it is difficult to get a clear picture of the data, looking at the London hospital situation there are lots of predictions of shortfalls and %s but I found it hard no get precise figures on actual capacity compared to population. As best I could come up with there is one Londoner in a hospital ICU bed for every 5000 people, plenty on this site are better at data than me, so please feel free to correct me. However, if that is correct then it is no wonder people in London do not feel the need to quiver in terrot and obey all these rules. If you live in an area of London with 5000 people and you hear that old Mr Jones up the road is in an ICU bed but the other 4999 people in your area are perfectly OK you would not be inclined to bat an eyelid and feel that life should carry on as normal. If you work in the local hospital and Mr Jones is in a queue for treatment then you are under pressure and declare a crisis. The crisis seems to be that the NHS has… Read more »
A friend’s husband has been suffering most of last year with gastrointestinal issues and swallowing problems. The GP eventually and very reluctantly referred him in July and was seen in September where was further referred for endoscopy, which was scheduled for early November. The endoscopy was then cancelled and no new date offered. Early in the new year he became very unwell and couldn’t swallow at all. The GP sent him direct to hospital where he was tested for Covid, which was negative and he was then admitted.
The next day he was found Covid positive and was immediately transferred to another hospital, which has told the family that nothing further would be done for him. There has been no investigation of his original complaint and now he is just another sixty something DNR, waiting his turn to die of “Covid-19″.
That’s just horrible.
Send the details to Simon Dolan.
THERE WILL BE A RECKONING. The NHS trial at Nuremberg 2. I shall clap when the ringleaders are led out for execution.
Sadist Khan. Genghis with all the nice bits left out.
Even though he was a butcher, Genghis Khan was intelligent, capable, and innovative – you sully him by linking him to that worm Sadiq Khan.
Sorry, Genghis.
Welcome back NorthumbrianNomad
A-women to that. (See JP’s broadcast, linked earlier).
Head teachers apoplectic over parents desperate to send their kids to school, the public clearly not terrified enough by the “mutant strain”
Police acting like jumped up little fascists, harassing the thousands of us who aren’t heeding the warning to “stay at home”
Deadly silence filling the evening air instead of applause for the NHS
The government in a tailspin because they can see with their own eyes that the game is up – hence the ratcheting up of emotive propaganda to try and desperately buy our compliance. Chris Whitty is shitting himself – he knows his plan has failed
Ignore the polls, ignore the masks, ignore the Facebook shrieking. Everything I’ve mentioned above tells you that your average Joe is done with this scam. We are reaching herd immunity from Project Fear, people just want to live. The government know it, the public know it, only a matter of time before the whole thing lurches off a cliff, taking down the fascist oppressors with it.
‘The school is rammed with pupils’ is a very odd complaint from a headmaster.
Probably hates the “little bastards”.
Yes, that phrase really struck home.
Shops full of shoppers are equally dreadful…
Watch the Yes minister episode ‘The compassionate society’
It sums up the public sectors attitude to the general public
Well known public sector behaviour:
Teachers hate pupils and parents.
GPs hate patients.
GP receptionists reallly hate patients.
Police hate public.
Planners hate house occupiers
It’s almost as if they’re trying to tell us something.
Even our elected representatives hate us.
Memo to the public sector and government: the feeling is mutual.
And don’t even start me on those malicious people in libraries going around messing up all those carefully ordered books …
And we would have got away with it if it wasn’t for you pesky kids!!
‘Hoisted on their own petard’ as far as I can see with my rough and ready maths the dodgy testing programme has now told about 3 million people that have had Covid but are perfectly OK. The have carried out about 56 million PCR tests so a lot of people despite having some symptoms will have been told they are -ve for SARS-Cov2. How can you expect all those people who have been through this dodgy testing programme and are currently perfectly healthy, to be afraid of the virus?
I don’t I think they are afraid of the virus. I think they’re afraid of Fear, in a never-ending spiral that culminates when they disappear up their own backsides.
Yer lets burn these bastards down! They are losing their grip.
Exactly, I can just feel the dam creaking now, just a few more bouncing bombs needed to breach it.
Yes, i thought this point was approaching a couple of days ago when the propaganda became positively shrill – and thus off-putting to a lot of normal decent people who had been more-or-less obeying until now. The doctor blaming ordinary people for having ‘blood on their hands’ may turn out to have been the psychological turning point, though there is still a long way to go.
That was the Dr (Professor Hugh Montgomery) who formed a medical supplies company called Panthair Ltd, in January 2020- ‘medical supplies’ include PPE.
Can you say screaming hypocrisy.
Has Dr Hugh been on a trip to the Caribbean with Bill Gates and a few pals.
Well said. Don’t forget that more redundancies and bankruptcies are in the pipeline and I suspect that’s waking more people up. Especially if their jobs, businesses and savings are on the line.
As soon as the lockdown rubbish starts hitting people in the pocket they wake up, as I always thought they would.
Have you figured it out yet? The penny dropped?
Repeat after me….
THIS DEVASTATION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH A VIRUS!
Repeat allowed till you wake up.
I crossed the Rubicon several weeks ago. Very dark moment. But it’s so obvious now, especially with recent fear campaign ramping and Capitol Hill stunts.
It never has been about the virus. It is all about money and power.
We should get people to write it on the board ala Bart Simpson in those opening credits.
Should be written 100,000 times.
He reminds me of Goebbels right to the very end urging Germans to rally to the fatherland, promising final victory with the Red Army at the gates of Berlin.
The only thing worth fighting for was stalling the Russians in the hope of being conquered by the Western Allies first.
Goebbels and his wife poisoned their six children and then themselves.
Has Shitty any children? If do, I’d advise them to get out fast.
Excellent. Also, Shitty is my favourite handle for Witless
Has a sad little man like Shitty even got any friends? I doubt it. Family seems even more unlikely.
Show as many adverts of elderly people taking their last breaths as you want. Old and sick people have been dying of respiratory illnesses since time immemorial – it’s very sad, but this is life and it’s no different today.
No, I can not pass on a virus if I am showing no symptoms of sickness. I will not be kowtowing to any policies restricting my life and freedoms based on this pseudoscientific nonsense. Beg all you want Whitty – I won’t listen. Your reputation is in the gutter.
When I first started teaching Research Methods to doctoral students, Whitty was in nappies!!!
He probably still is.
Face nappies yes
Both ends.
Couldn’t have put it better myself!
Or COPD, asthma, pneumonia, seasonal flu/cold or lung/throat trouble brought on by mask wearing. Covid-19 is the only disease we have now!
will the FearPorn ads be ‘inclusive’, showing, like any given advert these days, an enormous over-representation of non-whites (in this case, suffering)?
Watching any very elderly person die is not nice, whatever they are dying of. Both my parents died in hospital and were treated with dignity. But its a horrible process to watch. I’m very sceptical of this TV fear porn.
The way to beat the dictatorship is humour
‘Did you hear the one about a bat who walks into a bar?
No?
Anyway this bat walks into a bar and says
Landlord, landlord, a pint of your finest real ale and a scotch egg please
The landlord places the pint and the scotch egg on the bar and the bat pays him
The bat drinks the pint down in one and then exits the pub leaving the uneaten scotch egg on the bar’
Waddaya mean that’s not funny
The same Scotch egg having already done duty for a fortnight.
I used to drink in a pub which had an ancient crumpet nailed to a beam. Was it left over from the Black Death?
Give it a rinse, good to go.
As a sign of solidarity I’d ask the barfluidgenderfluidspeciesbeing to leave it wrapped in its plastic (it should be the cheapest possible scotch egg for pub cost reasons), and I’d leave it there untouched. Every little helps.
Everyone could go into the bar and ask for a pint and THE scotch egg.
A horse walks into a bar, the landlord says”Why the long face”
A bit of green tarmac walks into a bar, the landlord says “I’m not serving you mate” the tarmac says “Why not”
The landlord says, “Your a cyclepath”
A bear walks into a bar and says “Lanldord, I would like……………Two pints of larger and apacket of crisps please”
the landlord says
“What’s up with the dramatic pause?”
Thanks you, I am here all week!
Do you do bar mitzvahs?
no
https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1347582146819596290
I can’t find the original CDC document.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2020-12/slides-12-19/05-COVID-CLARK.pdf
Gone down the memory hole?
It would seem that the suggestion Mike Hearn made in his article on this site: The Flu Hypothesis (Jan 6th), where he says: The likely Government response to this will be to get angry. When stupid people do stupid things and the stupid things lead to bad or ineffective outcomes, stupid people tend to get angry and blame others. Expect that this is what the Government will do. They will blame people for not following the lockdown and they may even ramp up restrictions or clamp down on those not seen as adequately compliant. This could go either way. The population may side with the Government. But they also may become annoyed at being heckled. My feeling is that people are pretty sick of this and scepticism of lockdown measures is widespread. But your guess is as good as mine in this regard. Was prescient. It would appear that this is now happening. I have just been on The Telegraph’s website and I cannot recall seeing so many comments that are totally furious with the way the government has handled the entire situation. It is going to interesting (to say the least), to watch how this is going to play… Read more »
Interesting times. Or should that be interesting Telegraph?
I take comfort from the speed with which the Soviet bloc collapsed.
And I pray.
And sticker.
And walk free.
Ultimately, cockwombles like Johnson and Whitty would love to see a full throttled police state unfortunately for them we have tiny armed services who now bow down to the pc doctrine and a pretty useless police service. Non compliance is the game now – just look at the morning traffic !! 66 million against a few globalist head cases, bring on the trials!!
Yep their pc policies have had the effect of destroying the police force.TSG aside.
The reason the police ran from the BLM protesters is that was all they could do.Puny men and 5f women are no good in a fight.
As for the Army their numbers are so small they can’t be everywhere.
“The CDC guidelines now say that anyone who has previously suffered an immediate allergic reaction of ANY SEVERITY to any ingredient of Pfizer or Moderna’s vaccines should not be vaccinated unless they have been cleared by doctors.”
Doctor ‘Have you ever had an allergic reaction to any of the ingredients in this vaccine?’
Patient ‘ Hard to say, I mean I did the 60’s. At Woodstock everyone was doing monkey DNA. They were all spaced out on that shit man. I lost whole weeks’
They make it sound like looking at the label on a jar of pasta sauce. Who the fuck knows what’s in a vaccine?
I’d bet the tag-team of chimp dna and shark’s liver excretion is pretty frothy and the compound of which is not on the label.