2020-06-01

Apologies, I haven’t read today’s article, but please tell me this is a joke…

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/sex-your-house-person-another-22117105.amp?__twitter_impression=true

The police cannot enforce it: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/police-cant-burst-your-bedroom-22119909

The police don’t have the power to enter homes to break up two people bonking – they can still only enter if they suspect that ‘serious criminal activity’ is taking place, something which is enshrined under another existing law anyway.

It definitely seems odd that this law has been brought in now, when things are meant to be easing. It was always part of the government guidance but why explicitly legislate for it now? Commenters on the previous update reckoned it was a curfew in all but name to make the ‘tracking and tracing’ (already unenforceable) slightly easier, but I wonder if the government foresaw that the MSM would blow this up as the ‘sex law’ and end up scaring people into compliance. It almost feels as if they’re trolling us now.

Even if it is an unenforceable legal technicality, it is one which should never, ever be on our statute books.

They can go hang! Boris being a libertarian must be an April Fools joke!

He’s not a libertarian, he’s a populist.

He’s a libertine, not a libertarian.

And by means of a SI drawn the day before Parliament returns. I am hoping that one or more MPs kick up a fuss, if not a Lord Sumption. Enforceable or not, and it is the case I believe from what other posters have already said on the earlier thread, an SI is less water-tight than the Act it adjoins to, this government has taken away all our civil liberties, including now, the right to form relationships and pro-create. This is very scary!

It is scary, and it is surprising that this is even possible. I hope that in time we will have some constitutional protections which limit the authority of any Parliament. Ideally throughout the Union, but perhaps more than likely – just protecting England and Wales. Our constitutional situation is complicated, but I thought we already had such protections.

The lockdown is completely unconstitutional in America, yet it has still happened.

Constitutional protections, though, are only effective if the courts will enforce them. And as we have seen with the Dolan challenge, if the courts are with the government (rather than, as Hitchens pointed out the other day, in political sympathy with the challenge as with the anti-Brexit cases) then they can easily string any challenge out until most of the damage has been done.

Totally screws the hotel/camping businesses too..
Does it mean Antonia Staats (Ferguson’s girlfriend) or Ferguson himself can be prosecuted?

No, he’s different

My son’s mate was having a ‘zoom party’ at his flat in Hebden Bridge, He was alone but the ‘party’ was quite loud. He got a knock on his door, plod had been called because it was reported that he was having a party with ‘real’ human beings…. Apparently a neighbour had snitched on him.

I hope the neighour gets some kind of police harrassment in retribution for wasting their time – besides being a complete arsehole.

Well serious criminal activity will take place tomorrow between two old women seeing each other for the first time in three months and catching up over a cup of tea.

The police can’t enforce any of this drivel.

It does say you can stay at somebody else’s house if you are providing “Emergency assistance” which is vague and open to
interpretation. Stay wherever you want and just make up something that you thought was an emergency if somehow you get asked why.

This is just embarassing. The whole world must be laughing.

There was a play that ran in the West End for years called ‘No sex please, we’re British.’ I thought it was a comedy, not a dystopian drama.

Damn! I’ll just have to tell all those women who’ve been waiting patiently in the queue outside my house to go home then. And they’ve all been so good – all keeping two metres apart.

Seriously speaking, the government can just f*ck off.

*with apologies to Toby and those of a sensitive disposition for the bad language.

Your language shows great restraint under the circumstances, though it was an ironic choice of verb!

According to a human rights lawyer he says if the woman is a prostitute it’s OK because its her job!

probably done with a view to combating prostitution in a post covid world

Hahaha…there is NO WAY that I am giving up sex with my girlfriend, it’s too good. But if plod want to come along & watch….that’s fine with me.
Seriously, this is ludicrous, I showed my girlfriend this article yesterday & she was like seriously???
Lockdown is meant to be easing up, but you can’t have sex with your partner????….The UK is fast turning into the laughing stock of the world.

What next? Be arrested for farting?
Here is a question though, would Mr Cummings abide by this silly rule?….lol.

What next? Be arrested for farting?
Wear a mask over your bum?

Aside from the lockdown, the way regulations have been multiplying over the years I have wondered how long it will be before we have to purchase an annual licence to fart.

If you hadn’t realised by now this has nothing to do with the virus it’s all about control. All those with smartphones better make sure have them turned off. Big brother is here! So much for Libertarianism!

“ Downing Street today insisted police would show “ discretion ” and “ common sense “ .”

Because we’ve seen a lot of that, haven’t we?

This is a sure sign of really bad legislation; it leaves significant matters to the “discretion” (or lack thereof) of the individuals involved. This means you can never know if you’re breaking the law, leading to an increase in general anxiety, and you can never know if Dominic Cummings broke the law, even if you had an accurate account of his actions.

In other words, the establishment uses bad laws to leave themselves an escape from having to keep the laws they impose on the rest of us.

Law by regulation is not law but tyranny. The Sheriff of Nottingham is alive and well and calling it in to Westminster on Zoom every day.

I’d buy one if it weren’t sourced from China!

Staffordshire pottery Toby?

Aye. The bulldog looks a bit sad as well. I’d have preferred to see one punching ‘Prof’ Ferguson, with Witty, van Dam, Hancock et al queuing up behind….

Yes, yes, yes please to a new political movement to restore our Common Law rights.

The following three words in Toby’s update today have made me rather happy –

‘ Watch this space.’

Yep, something good has to come from this pantomime

Absolutely. None of the current main parties offer any meaningful choice to the current policies of imposing whatever the UN has mandated.
As Tucker Carlson (who should run for President in 2024, as he’s having to tell Trump what to do) said last night, we’re seeing a class war play out, but one imposed upon and against the working classes.

I wonder how long it would take the establishment to attack such an alternative party, to label them as “extremists” or “far right”?

Today I wrote my third and final response to my MP. I feel I have pushed things as far as I can with her but she’s still not listening. Here’s what I wrote in full:

Dear Munira,

Thank you for replying. This will be my final e-mail I will send to you on the subject, as I feel we have reached a stalemate – especially on the subject of social distancing.

I note that in your response you say, “public health and safety is [your] primary concern”. Given that this is your view, may I ask why the government does not:

1) Ban all traffic on UK roads with immediate effect? (we suffer 40,000 U.K. deaths from air pollution alone; 25,000 serious injuries and 1,750 deaths from road traffic incidents annually).
2) Ban the sale and consumption of alcohol? (7,500 alcohol related deaths per year).
3) Ban the sale of cigarettes and all forms of smoking? (78,000 deaths from smoking each year in the U.K.)

In these above examples, it is commonly accepted that all of them involve an element of risk, and will inevitably lead to some loss of life as a direct result of allowing them to continue. However, the risks posed are up to us, the public, to decide if they outweigh the benefits and not the government. Everything in life involves an element of risk and sadly the government has become completely blinkered with the risks of catching and dying of Covid-19, much to the detriment of everything else. Why has Covid-19 now become the de facto deadliest disease in the world? There are significantly greater risks encountered by all of us every single day of our lives, yet these have been either ignored or allowed to continue because they are widely regarded as acceptable and normal. May I add that according to David Spiegelhalter, the UK’s top statistician, the risk of coronavirus for the young is “staggeringly low”, as he condemned the government’s “embarrassing” handling of Covid-19.

This obsession with all things Covid-19 and making everything 100% “safe” needs to end, and it needs to end now. As outlined in my previous e-mail, the risks associated from continuing lockdown and social distancing are far, far greater than the number of lives that are allegedly being saved by continuing with current measures:
– Multiple suicides due to the mental health crisis
– Up to a predicted 60,000 avoidable cancer deaths now the NHS has abandoned cancer screenings and treatment (ref: Prof. Karol Sikora), again “due to Covid-19”
– 2 million operations cancelled by the NHS, “due to Covid-19”.
– Dental treatment withheld for three months “due to Covid-19”.
– A total devastation of the economy, mass unemployment, multiple businesses failing – I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of the links between economic recession and poverty, reduced life expectancy, poorer healthcare, poor mental health and increased suicides? Do these lives not matter?

There is also the fact that living in the current way is unhealthy, miserable, unsustainable and destroying all the elements of life that give us joy and purpose. If I had told you three months ago that this government would make it illegal to hug another person outside your own household, would you have believed me? I am not allowed to hold my baby niece in my arms, to have physical contact with my own girlfriend. I cannot go to church, yet the government says I can go to B&Q or Tesco’s. Do you appreciate the inconsistency of these new rules? None of them (which are being made up every day), are facing any parliamentary scrutiny and as such are both unconstitutional and have no legal basis in our so-called free and democratic society.

I hope that you and the rest of our representative MPs will see sense before it is too late, and before we risk more irreparable damage to the economy, our lives and everything else that makes life worth living. The entire debacle could have been completely avoided with simple hand-washing, isolating at home when sick and proper shielding of the elderly and vulnerable.

I will leave you with this quote from Lord Sumption, who from day one has been calling out the nonsense of this lockdown and social distancing:

“Somebody has got to stand up for a sense of proportion, somebody has got to stand up for a measure of balance and somebody has got to stand up for the millions of people who are being propelled into misery and in many cases financial ruin by the lockdown. I’m really sorry that it should be me and I think that it’s a sad reflection on the quality of our democracy that it should be me. But if no one else is going to do it, then I am.”

Great letter.

Good stuff! Would be nice to think that a politician reading that would feel at least some sense of personal shame.

Some will now probably – I imagine at least some already know all this is nonsense but don’t have the guts to say so.

Some will in due time.

And I guess some will carry on the rest of their lives thinking they did good.

If they don’t know it’s contradictory nonsense they shouldn’t be an MP. Spineless, all 650 of them.

Yup, not a single one has done anything so far that would save them in my eyes.

Steve Baker gets a stay of execution while we string the rest of them up. If he’s slipped up by the time we’ve done 649, he can go last.

I would hope that too. But my MP just fobbed me off with platitudes. I think the only thing that will have any effect on them is just to ignore them at the next election. I have told mine I will never vote again and I mean it.

But sadly they don’t care, that’s one less vote for the other guy.

As the guy below said you can’t tell them you won’t vote as they can still be voted in if only one person votes. You need to tell them You will vote for someone else.

Point taken. But I felt I had to say something like that to let her know just how disgusted I am with her government. And the comment that tipped me over the edge was “I’m sorry if the virus has impacted on your business”. So bloody tactless on so many different levels ….

A virus impacting your business, would be some of your staff being off sick.

“I’m sorry if the virus has impacted on your business”.

I’m sorry if blowing up your house may have caused you some personal inconvenience.

There are some people yet to be impacted by this. Still making money. Working from home. Drinking in the garden. Thinking that it is a bit of a shame that their foreign holiday will be postponed. I would’ve thought, that MPs may at least be aware of the level of destruction.. It is shameful, the lack of any sort of opposition to the most extreme policies we have seen in modern times.

I know, that’s why I fired off a pretty angry response. And to add insult to injury, to find that some cretin had dobbed me in for serving tea outside really pissed me off. No doubt that civic-minded twat (s’cuse language) is either still in work or is being bribed by tax-payers’ money to continue to hide behind the sofa!

What are the consequences of being caught serving tea outside?

The town council can revoke our licence to use the area for outdoor seating. So, while I am all in favour of being my usual stroppy cow self (!), I have to at least look as though I am abiding by the rules! (however, there are no rules to say you can’t serve takeaways in china cups!). Just now I did something really reckless, I offered an older lady my arm as she was struggling to climb over a step. She took it glady … As I’ve said before, I won’t let this strip me of my humanity and if they cart me off for that, then they cart me off. Thinking of re-naming my shop The Old Normal!

I mean ‘glad l y’ …

Good for you.

This is what I meant the other day when I said you should bend when necessary for you and your business to survive. We should all regard ourselves as under foreign occupation, and obey the rules or pay lip-service to them when necessary, while seeking to evade and undermine them at every other opportunity. There might be occasions for open defiance, but not when the inevitable result would be closure of your business.

Yes, you are right. It just goes against the grain of my general bolshyness to adhere to something that is so obviously a pile of crap. I would make a lousy poker player …

I would be straight into that shop!

Most of the MPs are the ones very happily drinking in their gardens and not having to meet their constituents in the supermarket. Many won’t witness what’s been going on, especially as the MSM don’t seem too keen to show it. Worse still, MPs have been paid a huge wodge of dosh to enjoy their gardens.

The recent story about Jamie Stone is a good example. If he can’t physically get back to Parliament because he needs to care for his wife, he should resign his MP-ship and be her carer for £66 per week. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/02/flora-needs-me-mp-caring-for-wife-hits-out-at-jacob-rees-moggs-plan

She isn’t called Priti Patel by any chance?
Besides, it wasn’t the virus that’s impacted on your business, it’s the stupid lockdown.

No, Kemi Badenoch who, I believe has some sort of role in the Treasury (she was in the group photo prior to Rishi’s Budget). This fact makes her comments to me all the more galling.

I’m sure many will jump on it if the public mood changes. They’ll then make up some lame excuse as to why they had to wait before they took up the cause.

Excellent e-mail!

As no moderately intelligent and sane person could argue with your reasoning, I am awaiting, with bated breath, news of your MP’s complete capitulation and determined intent to campaign as an active Lockdown sceptic.

‘moderately intelligent and sane’ does not appear to describe any political figure, great or small, at the moment.

A very fine letter indeed.

Well said. Let’s hope that this will give your MP food for thought.

RDawg: brilliant! Might I suggest – and I would value other contributors’ opinions on this suggestion- that you slightly tweak this email, taking out the references to your previous correspondence with your MP and inserting a more general introduction in order to produce a template? Then as many as possible of us who value this website could send the templated version to our own MPs. I would certainly send to my own MP, a Conservative. I suspect such emails would have more impact on Tory MPs.

Why not tweak it yourself, and send it to yours if RDawg doesn’t mind!

Well, I could, but that feels a bit like plagiarism, and RDawg not only deserves the credit, but also clearly has a way with words, and might be able to produce an attention-grabbing introduction.

My MP is Tory and has ignored all my emails, first one sent many weeks ago. Won’t be getting my vote next time around.

Me too!

I have now had a reply, to ONE of the emails I sent. The email was PARTLY about Cummings (who I don’t care much about either way, personally) but that was really a ruse to get her to respond to the other part, about indefinite social distancing. She answered the Cummings part and ignored the rest.

That tells me all I need to know about her.

Career politicians. They don’t think. They’re told what to think.

I loved Peter Hitchen’s comment the other day, about politics being like “showbiz for the ugly”. To look and to feel important, but not to lead.

Yes indeed. Even regarding the Cummings part, she wasn’t actually answering my point, she just saw the word “Cummings” and took her boilerplate email on the subject and put my name at the top.

Should be sent to all MPs!

Hi Aremen,

I’ve written three different letters to my MP now. I’ve posted all of them in the comments section on this site (although I can’t remember on which dates!)

I am very happy for anyone to use the wording to contact their respective MP. I’m not concerned at all about “plagiarism” or being credited – it is far more important that as many people as possible are contacting their local MPs and speaking out about the madness we are living through.

So by all means, if you find it helpful, please use the wording and share it far and wide. And of course, feel free to tweak the wording as necessary. Good luck!

Ok. Thanks. I’ll take that as your consent. I was hoping that we could have identically worded letters from afficionadoes of this site to lots of MPs, especially Tories, to produce maximum impact, hence my suggestion, but I’ll let it rest now. I’ll send a version of your letter to my MP.

It might be worth suggesting to Toby that he puts a MP letter template on his website? I’m not a professional journalist, so with Toby’s power of prose, he could spruce it up and give it some va va voom, as Thierry Henry might say.

I’ve now sent the letter to my MP, slightly modified by taking out personal references and adding a couple of my own grievances and views, but generally the same wording.

Nice work!

I’ve a Tory MP and he’s conspicuous by his absence in Parliamentary debates (what little there has been) and non-replies of any correspondence.

Maybe he thinks just because he has a 25000 majority he doesn’t have to bother.

A survey was done just before the election last year and a list of all 600+ MPs was produced, ranked by how much work they’d done for their constituents over the previous 3 years, based on Hansard and interaction with constituents. (I wish I’d kept the link.)

It was very noticeable that Labour MPs were predominant in the top half and Tories became much more numerous in the bottom half.

Our Labour MP, who had only done one term, was about a third of the way down the list, so one who worked hard for her constituents. She’d replaced a Tory slimeball who only does anything if there’s a photo op. Unfortunately he was voted back in and hasn’t been heard from since

I’d welcome such a template. My MP is the Minister for Local Government. He has ignored my somewhat lengthy email of several weeks ago. It dealt with the covid19 adjustments to the 1984 (yes I know) health act, and some other early covid concerns i.e. Bill Gates et al. Would like to credit RDawg.

Brilliant!

Thank you RDawg, what a brilliant, hard-hitting letter.

I sent a version of Rdawgs letter to my MP and received this reply:

Paul,

Thank you. I won’t give an extensive reply as I am one of a minority of MP’s who agree with you and if you review the articles and speeches I’ve made at http://www.andrewgriffithmp.com you will see that as a consistent theme.

Thank you for writing and let’s hope we can release the lock down quickly now.

Kind regards,

Andrew

Wow, seems you’ve got a good one!

Wowsers!

Fantastic! Nice work Paul. Now we just need to convince the other 649

Ha ha, no but seriously, the more we collectively lobby our MPs, the greater we can effect real, positive change.

Well done for writing to your MP.

Well done!!!

Hmm. A quick look at the website and Twitter feed was somewhat underwhelming. Some stuff about air bridges, opening things up quicker, but no real opposition to what has been and done and what is planned.

I may be asking too much, but some really need to tell it like it is – this has been a monstrous mistake and must stop now.

Careful, you might just get a knock on the door in the early hours…..

Wow, that’s a really good letter. Thank you!

Just an aside…

It is not common knowledge although some claim even the apparently straight forward and simple action of writing a letter to your mp is enough to earn you a file within one of the many security and intelligence agencies that thrive in this country.

Just passing it on…

Whilst that may be true it serves to discourage people from writing to their mps

That letter is powerful. I hope as many fuckwit mps read it (or a variant).

Enough is enough.

*as possible

Posting on here even more so.

I would die ashamed not to be in their filing system somewhere.

Nice one. Question: What is difference between smoking and Covid 19? A: Tax revenues. If they could monetise it we’d out of lockdown like the proverbial off a shovel

They are monetising cv19, the vaccine will be the money making element.

Do you mind if I heavily crib this in my letter to my MP?

Of course. That’s why I shared it. Please feel free to use.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news RDawg, but I suspect the Rt Honorable Member for Twickenham will be keeping you waiting for a response after receiving your fantastic letter; perhaps indefinitely.

The reason being, how can you cut through such plain logic and good common sense without outing yourself as a risk-averse, bed-wetting hypochondriac? How can you defend such draconian curtailments of our civil liberties in the face of overwhelming evidence that this course of action is quickly killing more people than it is supposed to save? How can you continue to defend a government that is wilfully vandalising its own economy, consigning millions to a bleak future of poverty and unemployment, all in the name of a routine virus that THEY KNOW has a survival rate of 99%?

We are witnessing the greatest failure in modern political history – the doubling down of this bizarre and hysterical response to a disease no worse than a bad strain of seasonal flu. Boris and Co. are unforgivably flying in the face of many decorated experts who are shouting “fire!” but this cowardly government – being spurred on by a mendacious, unhinged media, are carrying on like a Kamikaze pilot hurtling towards his inevitable demise.

We must resist at every opportunity their desire to take all of us down with them.

100% agree with you.

One interesting observation about the 3 examples of risky behaviour you cite. What do they have in common? The govt profits from taxing them all… so, if we pay Covid tax we should be fine to get on with life!

And your MP will not listen to you because you are all selfish self centred assholes. You call people who choose to wear masks bed wetting idiots. You are just as bad at dook and gloom as the BBC and the government are. And you think you are the good guys?!?……..fuck you, Lockdown Sceptics are just as bad!

Ha ha. The troll is back again. Oh how we’ve missed you “Anoymous”!

‘dook and gloom’ I like – ok if I use it, anoymous ?

Youth same anonymous? Did you watch the link I posted for you further down?

Have taken sections of this and sent it to Rishi, my MP.- thank you RDawg. I actually believe that he doesn’t agree with lockdown.

From the “Conservative Woman” linked article:

“Current mandatory social distancing measures promoted by infectious disease experts throughout the West are highly reminiscent of the Soviet and Chinese experience with Lysenkoism. This type of policy response to the pandemic has many pseudo-scientific elements and has led to the establishment of a new, destructive, and even deviant state-sponsored religion.”

Absolutely. There are various ways to describe “Social Distancing”, including:

PSEUDOSCIENCE • QUACKERY • WOO • BULLSHIT • FAIRYTALE

Here’s the challenge for the Government’s witchdoctors-masquerading-as-scientists:

“Please provide EVIDENCE from REPUTABLE PEER-REVIEWED RESEARCH, citing ALL RELEVANT JOURNAL REFERENCES, which support the concept of “Social Distancing” as a scientifically valid way of reducing the effects of a pandemic.”

And then, perhaps, wait for the sound of crickets…..

This pseudoscience should be repeatedly called out for what it is, unless such evidence is forthcoming.

IMHO “Social Distancing” is probably nothing more than a mechanism to inconvenience people as much as possible, so that one of the Holy Grails of this whole pantomime – “THE VACCINE, THE VACCINE, THE VACCINE” – will be enthusiastically accepted by the population even if said vaccine has been inadequately tested.

For a few weeks I changed my facebook profile picture to a black circle with “2+2=5” written in it because I’ve seen from the start that virtually everything about this social engineering experiment has been designed to break society – the people that make it up – to the point where they’ll accept and go along with whatever our rulers put in front of us. Whether that’s contact tracing apps, health passports or an un-tested vaccine.

“There always comes a time in history when the person who dares to say that 2+2=4 is punished with death”.
Albert Camus. The Plague.

‘… but the real question is still whether two and two do, or do not, make four’.

If you ask that question of an accountant his likely response is, “what do you want it to be?”!

Not just the vaccine – can track people more easily if they are not too close to each other. Interested to know when it became mandatory to own a smartphone and carry it on you at all time…

They’ve just about succeeded in abolishing the use of cash. Cards will be next and we’ll all have to use phone pay………

Or more worryingly, chip in the wrist..

Aaaargh!!

It’s another thing we can do – always pay in cash where not explicitly prohibited.

Well said. The more we use cash, the less they control us

I agree.

Very valid point!

Delingpole’s latest guest, Dr. John Lee is well worth listening to for reason and logic.

A few weeks ago I watched the Unherd interview with the Swedish expert Dr Gieseke . At the time a comment I noted was he felt that the imposition of lockdown was the easy part ,the difficult part would be getting back to normal. This gentleman has been a voice of sanity in this period of hysteria. Unlike our ” SAGE ” members who appear to be the sort of characters you see on railway station platforms recording numbers in their little note books , this gentleman appears rather academic but normal.

How I thought possibly would the reduction in lockdown and getting back to normal be difficult. Well now we know. In schools we are seeing the antics of the unions, twatterati and left media using all means at their disposal to try and sabatage the return to school . In my local hospital despite there being no covid cases staff are very reluctant to go back to routine work because of ” safety concerns.”

At this rate we will still be locked down until 2021.

The “new normal” is the continuation of lockdown by any other means.

Got an email from my hair salon – compulsory mask wearing when they reopen by customers and staff. I expect they will all be like that. I will become a hippy or buy one of those DIY razors and become a skinhead. Save a bit of money.

The dentist is trickier – can’t treat my own teeth, or check them. Compulsory masks, temperature checks, no waiting room, compulsory hand washing, no toilet, limited appointments due to extra cleaning, £25 covid-19 surchage to pay for extra PPE, other prices going up too, no doubt to cover the fact that they will see fewer patients, from 8th June until further notice no routine work (so fixing all the teeth that went rotten in the last 3 months due to the lockdown). I expect they will be like that too. Maybe a dental holiday to eastern Europe every 6 months for hygienist and checkup, check out some nice beers.

Hair salon …is that your local barber ?
Dentists during this whole shambles have been the biggest bed wetters imaginable. The pandemic was at its peak in March yet I dont recall many dentists amongst the covid martyrs .

Used to go to a barber, then I guess I must have ended up with more money than sense

I expect the barbers will have to fall into line, though I am sure there will be a good number of barbers and hairdressers happy to visit homes without all this nonsense. Round my way the young men who all came out to play this weekend often had suspiciously smart, fresh looking fades.

They weren’t allowed to open!

Private dentists could have worked and a very few did ( The ones who did work throughout deserve a medal ) . They could even do drilling and filling with PPE.
NHS dentists unfortunately were led by the hopeless CDO Sara Hurley who was content to throw dentistry back to the age of barber dentists.

Wouldn’t surprise me if it were an insurance problem.

This article supports: 1) masks are ineffective 2) Dentists’ own respiratory immune systems are good at making antibodies against respiratory diseases

https://www.oralhealthgroup.com/features/face-masks-dont-work-revealing-review/

The section titled “Respiratory System Defences” confirms my belief that our immune systems are the best snowflakes of all. The slightest insult triggers them. A vast #MeToo movement of epithelial and infiltrating immune cells ready to descend in fury on anything that invades their safe spaces. But you’re not allowed to mention natural immunity these days, even though it has kept us all alive till the present

I wish we could go back to normal normal, but I think we have to put up with even more interesting times.

My school motto was “forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit” which was translated for us as “someday even these things will be a pleasure to remember”. I have to keep persuading myself that it’s true, if only in comparison to what’s coming next…

Thank goodness for like-minded people speaking out on websites like this

Given that the WHO has now decided that masks are unnecessary and INCREASE the risks from coronavirus, perhaps the numpty pseudoscientists advising our numpty Government could explain why hairdressers and customers need to wear them. There is no “aerosol” risk such as that applying to dentists.

Dentists BTW are experts in infection control and therefore could have stayed open throughout. They did so in Germany.

Whilst many forms of healthcare here in Sweden have moved to various types of distance contact (video consultations where possible), our dentists have remained accessible. No reports here of mass deaths amongst dentists!

Not only that but also mask wearing can lead to long term health problems with breathing and possible issues with the brain (as there is no oxygen coming in, its all CO2) as well as weaken a person’s immune system.

The fact that dentists have closed is a travesty. I was lucky that I managed to complete my treatment before lockdown but am now due for a check up this month. Looks like that will have to wait for awhile now.

Hi, do you have a link to the WHO’s u-turn on mask wearing? There are about a million people I’d like to send this to.

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/when-and-how-to-use-masks

It’s not an explicit u turn, they just changed their guidelines on when to wear one. Only healthcare workers and those exhibiting symptoms. I was listening to the No Agenda podcast and they have gone barmy over masks in America.

It takes a while to filter through to policy practice. Many methods and treatments have been challenged by more recent studies but nothing changes.

if the hair salon I go to insists on masks, I shan’t be going. A few weeks’ ago I managed to cut my own hair by brutally hacking through it – OK its crooked but its fairly decent and it seems to have settled down now.

I think they all will, at least to start with.

I was always told and it has turned out to be correct the difference between a bad haircut and a good haircut is a week

Well i think they must have made those rules up! My hairdresser has told me what the guidance says and it’s not much- they don’t need masks and just have to be sensible! Time to change your hairdresser methinks!!

Whenever I have a choice I will vote with my feet and my wallet. Tougher if your kids go the local school and it has been turned part-time and into some revolting social distancing experiment, or if your offices insists you go into a perspex cubicle.

Maybe health care workers whose main concern is safety are in the wrong profession.

Their own safety, that is.

You’re right Annie. Didn’t make that clear.

Irony of calling the pop up hospitals ‘Nightingale’ should not be lost on anyone.

When discussing comparisons with flu numbers, it bares repeating, we have had over 40k flu deaths in 2020. When you hear the usual hysterical shrieking of ‘this isn’t the flu!’. They are quite right, the flu is worse. And far more indiscriminate, many more children have died from the flu for instance. These hysterical mothers should prioritise their irrational fears, when complaining of the dangers of sending their kids back to school.

So, sorry to sound a bit thick, I fear that I am! 40k flu deaths as well as the with/ of Covid this year?

Yes, if you go to the ONS weekly breakdowns they have a separate section for influenza and pneumonia explicitly not including Covid.

Over here in Sweden cases and deaths are falling, slowly but surely. About a week and a half ago the number of people in intensive care dropped under 400 for a number of days in a row, giving cause for optimism (even in the MSM here) – now it is close to 300 and will soon drop under that.
Our sixth forms, universities and adult ed are to open as of 15th June, which is kind of neither here nor there, because by then they are all technically on summer break, but it does mean planning for the autumn can be done, admissions sorted etc.
It is completely crazy that the UK is moving in a totally opposite direction and *adding* new rules, where everywhere else is relaxing or abandoning them…

Unfortunately our gov’ts have always been obsessed with rules and regulation – and control.
When Napoleon referred to us as a nation of shopkeepers it would have been more appropriate to describe us as a nation of bureaucrats (or jobsworths).

“This isn’t the flu!”

No – it’s a common cold that goes very wrong for a tiny minority of people.

Really? And I thought the flu had taken a year’s sabbatical. So they’re keeping that quiet aren’t they? So hang on – brain slowly grinding into gear – if they’re not making a song and dance over something that is as bad as, or even worse, as CV19 then we really are in hidden agenda/conspiracy territory aren’t we?

Apparently the BBC had one article stating that flu numbers were over 30k, but basically nothing. Please go to the ONS weekly breakdowns and check for yourself. People will not believe you when you tell them. They just won’t accept it.

I see that odious woman in Scotland has taken a leaf out of Gruber’s book, speaking to the people as though they are children. Today she threatened the entire nation with further draconian restrictions if they don’t behave themselves. BTW, Scotland reported 18 new cases today (yes, 18, not 1800 or 18,000), and one death. So basically the bat flu has gone from Scotland.

In April she actually said “it’s time to have an adult conversation”. I thought, “wasn’t that what we should have been having all along?”

She’s a desperate woman right now, prepared to desperate things to protect her image. And while she may have hoards of adoring worshippers who have bought into her cult, deep down she must be petrified that the same forces that threw Salmond under the bus will do the same to her over the care home genocide she helped create.

And who is keeping her hair cut and coloured under lockdown, I wonder..? No one in the public arena seems to be having a problem getting their hair done…

I have noticed that.

Actually it might be Salmond who throws her under the bus, which is probably one of the reasons she doesn’t want lockdown to end.

The Monday cases tend to be very low in Scotland because of the way the weekend figures are compiled so I would expect them to be higher tomorrow. However they will almost certainly be sufficiently low as to suggest that this virus is pretty much history in Scotland. Figures this low do suggest that Sturgeon is blatantly breaching human rights legislation as the massive restrictions on basic freedoms in Scotland are way beyond any proportionate response to the low level threat from the virus.

Greater Glasgow has a population of around 1.8 million. The virus is so dangerous here that there are currently SEVEN people in ICU. Out of 1.8 million. Meanwhile all of the region’s hospital’s remained closed to breast, bowel and cervix cancer test, screenings and treatments and the £43 million SEC hospital conversion has been empty since its grand opening.

You’re spot on regarding the figures for deaths given on Sundays and Mondays but the figures for positive tests over the weekend do give some cause for optimism.

There were 36 positive tests over the past weekend (30-31 May) compared to 115 the previous weekend and 147 the weekend before that. Tracking even further back we get weekend figures of 232, 339, 470 and 630 (19-20 April).

The most recent figures are less than 6% of positive tests at their height.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/world/asia/japan-coronavirus.html

Testing Is Key to Beating Coronavirus, Right? Japan Has Other Ideas

Another interpretation, an absolute anathema to those who wish to exploit this disease to indulge their innate desire to exert controls over their fellow human beings, is that covid-19 in Japan – and everywhere else, simply took its own course and did what it was going to do, regardless of governments and so-called scientists.

My guess is that, compared with many western countries, the Japanese already had large-scale immunity to this disease. I don’t see this possibility talked about much though. I wonder why not?

“Super spreader” <definition> : A person who plays a major role during a pandemic by creating population immunity so that the vulnerable can then emerge safely into the world and resume their normal lives. Example: “Super spreaders stood ready early in 2020 to solve the coronavirus pandemic, but unfortunately the government took the alternative option of destroying the country instead.”

As someone commented somewhere, “Boris has found a wasps nest in the loft and his tactic for getting rid of it is to burn down the house”.

The version I heard was the spider in the kitchen!

BBC News: Social distancing: A practical guide to how to socialise now

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52848793

4. Food and cutleryIn terms of bringing your own cutlery, it’s difficult. Everyone through these sets of guidelines is going to have to determine how much risk they’re prepared to accept.
If you think you’ve had coronavirus and/or you’re low risk, meaning you’re young, you’re slim, you’re female – those are the main variables – your behaviour at a picnic is probably going to be much more relaxed with regards to things like sharing the potato salad and using other people’s cutlery. But of course you need to be doing everything you can to stop yourself being a carrier and making other people ill.
If you are a man who’s older and overweight and don’t think you’ve had the virus, I would say bring your own cutlery and bring your own coleslaw.

What they didn’t say was, “If you’re an elderly, portly, black man, you might just wanna stay inside and eat the coleslaw on your own”……… Can’t be racist now can we

OK bought a mug for my sister as a test. Will definitely come back for some more merch in due course. The option to have it delivered direct to someone else is one I think I might be making more use of.

I bought the tote bag and will enjoy parading it round Waitrose where they delight in treating their customers like cattle.

Thanks to those who have already signed my petition end social distancing.
In case you missed this on yesterday’s page, here is the link again https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/320079

Signed it. Thanks for setting it up. If you haven’t already, suggest you could try to interest some of the more “followed” sceptics like Peter Hitchens, Toby Young, Simon Dolan to give this the publicity it deserves.

I’ve emailed Toby already so hopefully he will give it a mention. I don’t have email addresses for Peter and Simon. Not sure if they can be contacted directly somehow (maybe via twitter – sorry I don’t use it). If any other sceptics can contact Peter and Simon directly, please go ahead and let them know about the petition. Thanks.

I don’t have those email addresses, nor am I on Twitter. Hitchens can be written to at the Mail on Sunday. Dolan could probably be contacted via his company.

You might get hold of Simon at http://www.keepbritainfree.com

Hi Adam, really sorry I pre-empted your post about the petition … Peter Hitchens’ e-mail address is peter.hitchens@mailonsunday.co.uk . (I would send the link myself but I have already contacted him on several other issues so it may be better coming from you). Once again, apologies …

Thanks kh1485. Sending email to Peter now. And no worries about your earlier post – the more publicity the better!

Thanks Adam. I’ve sent a letter to the Daily Telegraph to highlight the petition and I have just placed a physical notice on a ‘notice board’ in my town (remains to be seen whether it will be censored!).

Signed

Well done the current leading constituencies – Midlothian, Stockport, Kingston-upon-Hull, Anglesey, Bootle, Clwyd South, Bromsgroe, Henley, and Torbay.

Leaders currently are Caithness & Sutherland, Anglesey, and Bromsgrove !

Last time I checked it was Bury South, Kingston upon Hull North and Kessle, and Bromsgrove leading the way.

Grrr. Kingston upon Hull West and Kessle

Bromsgrove, Bury South, and Banbury leading.

Followed by Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch, and Strathspey;
then Milton Keynes North, Rochford and Southend East, and Christchurch.

“We must fight YouTube’s outrageous censoring of lockdown sceptics Social media forums cannot pretend to be impartial while meddling in our democracy”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/01/must-fight-youtubes-outrageous-censoring-lockdown-sceptics/

“ Tech companies cannot pretend to be neutral forums and enjoy the benefits that brings while banning, hiding and undermining content and opinions they don’t like .”

Good to see this longstanding issue coming out front and centre, now the censorship is no longer just affecting dissidents with the standard taboo opinions that offend against traditional political correctness.

“ President Trump signed an Executive Order aimed at revising these exemptions and investigating allegations of bias and censorship .”

Once again Trump, for all his undoubted faults, right on the button here.

Not just YouTube, just tried too play some music on Apple Music to relieve the boredom. Got a message saying that #TheShowMustBePaused #BlackLivesMatter and unable to choose my own music!

I am always suspicious when public bodies change datasets, or the way they report data. Interestingly, gov.uk states:
‘From 1st June we will stop publishing a separate count of deaths in hospital as our daily count now provides a count of deaths in all settings’.
How convenient – not related to it being in double digits? If I am reading the spreadsheet for NHS England correctly, there were 13 hospital deaths yesterday. I know the data gets adjusted after a weekend, but bearing in mind the numbers in ICU is running at less that 9% of capacity, we are at levels last seen on 11/12 March. I will await the adjustments tomorrow.

Tune – has anyone suggested ‘Banana Republic’, by the Boomtown Rats ?

We are not alone.

One of my favourite US podcasters, Tom Woods, has a new free eBook called “Your Facebook Friends Are Wrong About The Lockdown”.

https://www.tomwoods.com/

It’s a US-centric read, but it’s well worth a look if you’ve an inquisitive mind.

If you’ve never heard of him but you’re a grown-up interested in the topic of more freedom and less enslavement to the government, he’s a good guy.

Tom is a History PhD, distinguished libertarian author and podcaster. It’s not tinfoil hat freeman on the land rubbish. He’s a godly, educated man and his podcasts are family friendly.

Whilst the ludicrous anti-social distancing rules remain in place, the economy will never recover. If you are a small or medium business with limited space in your working environment it will only be possible to comply if you only allow a certain percentage of your workforce to attend. Whilst the government are paying for them to stay at home that’s fine but when the furlough scheme ends what company is going to pay for 30 or 40 percent to stay at home every day. They will have to be paid off and then you probably won’t have enough staff to function anyway.

The government must realise this. Are they deliberately trying to kill off small business so we will end up with just multinationals run by their rich elitist ‘friends’ who actually run the country behind the scenes? Is there any sign of the anti-social distancing 2 metre rule being scrapped anytime soon?

Goodness knows what is going through their heads. It may be better not to know – like those scifi films where people who can hear others’ thoughts are driven insane by it.

As I posted elsewhere, my dentist are increasing their charges. Every business that depends on a public presence will need to charge more, or go out of business. Only the upper middle class and above will be able to afford a lot of things that are now more accessible to most.

Public transport – just can’t see how it will work. Where are the journalists who should be asking these questions? Bloody shower. No-one is holding these nincompoops to account.

It doesn’t take a genius to work this stuff out – it’s bloody obvious.

When people start loosing there jobs that is when all this crap will stop people have been shielded from the economic cost but that wont last for much longer not that I want anyone to loose their job by the way

Job losses will lead to mortgage defaults and general debt delinquancy. It’s the main reason why the government have been so willing to fund the furlough scheme and equivalent for the self employed.

Then the government needs to drop the nonsensical distancing rules and get everyone back while they still have jobs.
I know I’m preaching to the converted here but I do wonder why the need to distance is still being promoted by official sources and the press. I can’t agree with Hitchens that it’s just to save face because they’ve made a monumental mistake.

Because the mobile phone system used for tracking and tracing requires a minimum separation distance of 6 ft if I have read the technical documents correctly, preferably 10 ft, between phones or it can get confused and give strange results.

I have said this as well. Attitudes will only change when folk start realising their jobs have gone. Banker guy in The Times a few days ago thought 3.5 million unemployed within a few months was optimistic. Apparently, worst unemployment rate in last 50 years has been 12% – until now, that is. If you add in numbers who are now furloughed, the figure is around 35% of UK workforce being supported by govt. How many of those furloughed will still have jobs in a few months remains to be seen.

I used these figures to do a highly unscientific sum in my head and I think unemployment is gonna peak at around 20%. And that’s me erring on the optimistic side.

But will people be able to break away from the belief that a virus was the cause and not government interventions?

Ges, I keep reading that weasel phrase ’caused by the virus’. None of this mayhem has been caused by the virus.

People who believe in the “caused by the virus” mantra are basically saying there was no other option.

The purpose of the furlough scheme was to preserve jobs. If redundancies go ahead, this money will have been wasted and raises the question can the government ask for money back if employers make staff redundant.

If large numbers of people loose their jobs at the same time, this will place strain on the benefits system. Imagine having to claim universal credit which is unpleasant enough under normal circumstances when loads of other people are trying to claim it at the same time.

I’m still trying to work out how partner dancing will ever take place again unless the 2m role is removed.

My ballroom teachers have already stated that when they start back in July it will be “socially distanced” 2m apart and wearing masks. Yeugh.

Thankfully my latin teachers are as sceptical as me and we’ve already started lessons again outside as normal.

Even large businesses will struggle with the 2m rule.

Partner dancing will have to go underground, for a while. Like Christianity in China – meet in front rooms.

How are you supposed to do ballroom dancing with a partner at all, if you and your partner have to be 2 metres apart – no one’s arms are that long?

I’ve absolutely no idea and it’s one of the areas of the leisure industry that has been conveniently forgotten about by HMG.

Maybe broom handles might work though dance competitions could get interesting.

They might have to combine with a martial arts class.

There’s a new business you could set up – arm extensions for ballroom dancers.

The end of the Argentine Tango.

Fwiw, I recall there was a case of “superspreading” at a latin dance class in, iirc, Korea. I suppose dancing close for sustained contact is likely to spread it if it’s there to be spread. (Two of my daughters are latin-style dance teachers, which is why I noticed).

Mind, I’m not using that as justification for effectively banning proper dancing – if there’s no active epidemic spread then there’s no excuse whatsoever for imposing these kinds of measures anyway. It’s the usual complete absence of any sense of proportion and common sense.

once the penny drops that Strictly Come Dancing isn’t coming back soon that might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back with public support for the lock down

We can live in hope. Something has to wake them up and hopefully it will be less painful than financial ruin.

Its not only SMEs that are at risk but also hospitality, tourism, arts and culture, entertainment, museums and heritage. You can’t do “social distancing” at a museum or a concert – limiting the number of people won’t make money and defeats the purpose of broadening access as well as the principle national collection belong to the people.

There’s also the 14 quarantine. Talk about bolting the stable after the horse has bolted.

The short answer is:

No.

It does look suspiciously like the systematic destruction of the independent business sector.

It looks suspiciously like t otalitarianism because it is t otalitarianism.

There are various theories as to purpose of the lockdown. A theory is to destroy small businesses so that big businesses have a monopoly and can buy the assets of bankrupt business. The lockdown is a perfect way of achieving this. Unlike big businesses small businesses don’t have the financial reserves to survive long periods without trading. Under lockdown regulations, a shop only selling clothes could not open but a supermarket can sell clothes as they sell food. An effective way of hitting small businesses is to stop them trading during their busiest periods. Many small businesses eg b & bs, tour operators depend on the summer tourist trade. A summer lockdown is a perfect way of killing tourist dependent businesses. A lockdown has a knock on effect on business allowed to operate. Taxi firms are a good example of this. If high streets have no shoppers due to closed shops, people being unable to use pubs or restaurants and fewer people travelling on trains and getting off at train stations, this takes trade away from taxi firms.

I think we’re being run by psychopaths, basically.

I predict that they’ll reduce it in due course but only after dragging it out long enough for people to be begging for the torture to end.

Don’t forget that they have advice on the psychological dark arts to maximise the impact and thus influence desired responses for all their actions.

Yep, the SPI-B dudes should definitely be on our lists.

Look at this amazingness!

Man raps STRAIGHT FIRE about Coronabollox!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kIjqoHPJrE

“FUCK THE MEDIA
No really I’m getting sick of it
You get in a car crash and die on impact
And still get covid on your death certificate
I could choke on a piece of steak fat
And suffocate to death on my fucking sofa
The coroner could look at his colleagues and be like
Hey watch this….
RONA!”

It’s June, and we’re still in lockdown. During March, I honestly though this would be completely lifted by the middle/end of May at the very latest. Wuhan’s lockdown was around 2 months, so ours would be the same, right? All western democracies modelled their approach on China anyway with their lockdowns. Back in early April the idea of being under virtual house arrest until June just seemed totally unbearable – but here we are. It feels like it’s never ending and it’s absolutely f***ing horrendous.

I’m so angry and worked up all the time, it’s starting to affect my physical health, giving me massive headaches and nausea, as well as breathlessness and chest pains. I know that sounds totally ridiculous and a lot of people would just advise me to not get so worked up because ‘there’s nothing we can do’ – but that’s why I’m so furious, because there’s nothing I CAN do. I am an unemployed 21 year old (desperately looking and applying for jobs but to no avail), whose partner is 100 miles away, watching my life and everything that made it worth living get tossed in the bin, and I am getting very bored of every day being exactly the same. Being young, a housebound life with my parents doesn’t feel natural at all. It’s horrific. There is only so much with which you can amuse yourself with when most things are closed for almost three months and counting. I am a hard worker who likes being productive and who goes stir crazy sitting at home for months on end. I am a voracious reader, a cyclist and an artist in my free time but three months of the same thing and limited social interaction outside the household is taking the piss and we all know it. It’s not a meaningful life, which is why it drives me up the WALL when sanctimonious commenters on the BBC and Guardian say how ‘lovely’ it is to live ‘a simpler life at a slower pace’. Disingenuous. I know I should be grateful for what I do have, and I am, but I can’t help thinking of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs throughout all this – the entire pyramid.

I think it was the ‘Big Brother sex law’ that really set me off today. Even if it is unenforceable, it’s just the principle of it existing at all which is so revoltingly repellent. The fact that some public servant, in what is meant to be a western democracy, sat down and drafted the words forbidding private citizens to have human contact on private property is astonishing. It’s the precedent it sets, and it is deeply, deeply frightening. I sincerely hope that it is just our government clowns posturing, desperately trying to regain control of a situation they have completely failed to manage.

I feel like no one is really listening. I have all you wonderful people on this site, and Toby’s valiant efforts to put it all together, and all the fantastically brilliant scientists and commentators who have the balls to speak out against this deeply corrosive lunacy, but it’s not enough. We have to remember that we are all still a minority, and the general public dances to the tune of the MSM, which is very different. It is frustrating because the data is there but it is getting ignored. I feel like I’m stuck in one of those nightmares where I try to scream but no sound comes out. I really wish there was some way of mobilising my anger, besides venting on here, signing petitions, writing to MPs, etc. I just really wish I could DO something significant to change things, but I don’t know what. Toby, you really need to set up that political party!

The only grain of hope is that the truth is objective and cannot be changed, and the truth always comes out in the end.

Totally get where you’re coming from Poppy and I’m very very lucky and still working but I have friends who as dance teachers literally lost their jobs overnight.

What scares me is that whilst they’re obviously not happy about having no work they don’t seem interested in speaking out against the narrative.

Personally I hate the lack of freedom and so will try to figjt even if the only way is writing to my MP.

I think we all have to keep going forward and just keep pushing for the normal way of life.

It will end, or at least improve sufficiently that you can feel happier. It’s moving in the right direction. Europe is paving the way.

And you have good sense. No-one can ever take that away from you.

I feel for you, I have moments when I feel the same. But the truth will come out, even if it’s slower that we would like. And you have to look at people’s behaviour. So many people are fucking off the rules, it’s ridiculous. It’s all falling apart.

Poppy, I can understand why you feel like exploding with frustration.
They said we’d to lockdown to “flatten the sombrero”. Well it’s been almost as flat as a pancake for weeks, while they have systematically taken a steamroller to the economy and our social structures.
Obviously there’s no excuse now other than some weirdly sinister agenda that you’d have to be a psychopath yourself to understand.

My best friend phoned this morning and arranged to come over tomorrow so we can hang out and have a proper catchup – no sex involved. I haven’t seen her since March and it’s bad enough that we won’t be able to hang out in our favourite little cafe.
Then I read about the new legal tweak. Unbelievable!
Needless to say “I know nothing about the new rule.”

I feel exactly the same you are not the only one iv started taking antidepressants
For the first time in my life and I’m 55 but things will improve I’m sure of that .

I can relate and I wish I could recommend your comment more than once. What really angers me is the deafening silence from the leading names in my sector – museums and heritage. I don’t think they really realise how this lockdown and the social distancing will be the death of our sector or if they do they’re simply burying their heads in the sand and think it will all be OK.

We can only carry on what we’re doing and I believe that the truth will set us free. I also think the tide is turning and if more and more people continue to push back then we can still salvage what’s left of our country.

I work in the arts sector, and basically it’s just running on reserves now, if it has any left. The office will probably go. The whole thing is madness.

We are as well. My workplace has been lucky that it was able to capitalise on the last 8 years where they have put up successful exhibitions and events hence why they have a war chest which is being used to pay us. What is worrying is how we will replenish that if the government insist on this social distancing nightmare. And even with that gone, people will tighten their belts due to the looming recession which means we won’t get as many visitors as during the good days.

I agree. What troubles me most in all this is that people just seem to think that we will awake sleeping beauty-like from all this and just resume as normal. I don’t think the good weather is helping actually – it is just aiding the fool’s paradise element in all of this. I had one customer who came into my business (takings 87% down, thanks Boris) asking if I had enjoyed my “holiday”. I tell you, it took every last bit of my reserves of goodwill – and they are pretty low right now – not to tell him to eff off.

Agree with you, the furlough scheme together with the good weather is lulling people into a false sense of security and I seriously doubt that many people are prepared for the fallout once this is all over.

I’m technically on annual leave which is pointless and I’m angry that I have wasted time being cooped up in my own home and in a not so good neighbourhood which makes going out even more depressing than it is. That’s why I have not bothered to request a meeting with my line manager, as much as she is good and will listen I do not want to say anything that I will regret as I know that the situation is beyond her control.

I am sure the board room tables will be feeling very much like you are, they are simply too scared of publicly say that. Imagine a museum openly saying this is bollocks – they’d be screwed by the media. It’s why we are in this mess for the foreseeable. The overwhelming and growing evidence just doesn’t matter.

I was having back and forth with someone on Facebook today he replied ‘how does lockdown cost lives’, when I provided some links to estimates of cancer deaths etc he simply didn’t reply. That is usual. Fact is ignored and fear is celebrated.

My husband said the same thing – TPTB in the museums and heritage sector think this is all bollocks but they’re cowed into silence because of the media mob. Its the same with orchestras and other cultural institutions.

And you’re right about feelings trumping facts. Try to argue that the lockdown and social distancing has been bad for the economy and society, you’ll be hit back with banal slogans like “people before profit”

I don’t have any problem with having a friend round to my house, even if they have to park around the back. What’s dispiriting is that nobody seems to want to flout the rules.

Agree. I’m really disappointed with my friends attitudes but am lucky that two friends are ignoring the rules and I’ll be visiting one at her home tomorrow.
The odd thing is, it is the three of us who are most at risk. One is 80, one is 70, pre-diabetic and has Stage 3 kidney disease while I have HBP and an autoimmune condition, Limited Systemic Scleroderma.
My other friends who are terrified by the disease are healthy and range in age from 40 to 60. I can’t even talk to them about it anymore for fear of saying something and destroying good relationships.

I understand how poppy feels. It feels that the lockdown is a brutal collective punishment. When you examine the lockdown it is a form of mental torture. Everything is taken away from you. Many people can’t run their business and many are not allowed to work if their business is not allowed to operate. Initially you couldn’t meet friends or relatives outside your household and now you can only meet them outdoors. It is impossible for single people to form new relationships. Leisure activities such as pubs, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, nightclubs and travelling have been taken away from us.

And yet so many don’t care. It amazes me how (and I know this from my working environment) people talk at great length about the mental harm caused by “microaggressions” – yet willingly submit to their lives being cancelled for an indefinite period.

Those will be the people who read Susan Cain and obsess over their oppressed status as an introvert in a world of extroverts. They’ll be thinking and loving the supposed fact that their time has come.

You’re absolutely right to be outraged by it. The MSM are starting to shift gears however with a lot of anti-lockdown opinion appearing in the Telegraph.

It’s all starting to look less planned now and like the government are just flailing around perhaps genuinely worried about a second wave.

But there won’t be a second wave and this will become more and more obvious as other countries lift their lockdowns. Even our pathetic and incompetent government will eventually tag along, copying every move as it happens in the rest of the western Europe that they claim to despise so much.

“…there won’t be a second wave”.

A second wave can easily be engineered. Continual ramping up of testing and tweaking of the rules for registering deaths can see to that.

As was observed a couple of weeks ago, the emphasis is now changing from deaths to ‘infections’ or ‘cases’, and even if the newly-discovered infections are among the young and healthy resulting in no symptoms, then to an unthinking person it looks like “Second wave. Told you so….”

Ironically, the government seems desperate for this to happen. Even though it makes them look incompetent to the unthinking person, they must have worked out that it’s better to look incompetent in the face of a disastrous epidemic than to have created a catastrophe from a mild cold virus (for the vast majority of people).

A second wave can easily be engineered.

The bastards have already been padding the figures (“with” vs “from”). When the untreated cancer, etc. patients start dying, I suspect that a lot of those will be deemed to have died “with”. There’s your second wave, neat as could be.

Unfortunately, unthinking people are in the majority and are very easily led.

Yeah, it’s tough Poppy, particularly for someone of your age. Try to see what might be positive. I’ve taken to a lot of meditation, but I’m used to solitude as I’ve worked for myself on my own most of my life. But there’s still got to be something there for you. I’m minded of the story of the two children, one stuck in a room stuffed to the rafters with gorgeous toys and another stuck in a room full of horseshit. The first kid sat and did nothing and cried and when asked why said ‘With all these beautiful toys I’m bound to break one so don’t want to play with any of them.’ The second kid was happily shovelling horse dung all over the place. When asked why he/she said ‘With all this shit there’s bound to be a pony in here somewhere.’

Hi Poppy, I am hearing you and I totally appreciate your anger and all the physical pains you describe. It’s your body’s response to a constant surge of adrenaline, which manifests itself in physical symptoms.

For the sake of your sanity, I really advise doing some form of intensive aerobic exercise every day. For me, I go running every other day. My best mate is letting me use his weights at his physio clinic in the evenings.

Really important you do try and take a break from thinking about this mad situation, otherwise it will eat you up and consume you. The frustration has battered me my mental health, and I realised I had to come off all social media and avoid watching/reading the news. You‘ll feel so much better for it.

And later on, when you feel ready, you need to forgive yourself for going onto social media in the first place.

Excellent advice, if I may say so. I suggest also getting out into the natural world if possible. Exposure to green vegetation (especially trees) has been shown to be good for the psyche; and when you see the birds and bees going about their daily lives unmasked, ungloved, and without a whiff of sanitiser, you are reminded of and reassured by a reality that has nothing to do with Downing Street.

Moreover: observe any living thing, or any natural process, and you can hardly fail to be impressed by how wonderful it is compared with the clumsy, vainglorious and ignorant achievements of men.

An excerpt from a novel:

Then one day last week, walking with her in the countryside near her house, he had been struck by the fact that the natural world was beautiful. Astonishing as it seemed, this had simply never occurred to him before. Nor had he given any thought to how intricate and right it all was. None of the colours clashed, however unexpectedly they were aligned; everything was proportionate and fitted together at every scale from the atomic to the galactic. It did not matter whether or not science could establish the presence of a guiding spirit: you could believe in it anyway, because the evidence was all around you. The belief, even if deluded, simplified the world and made you feel more comfortable. And if its creator really did exist, would it not be an act of gross ingratitude to refuse this gift of comfort, let alone his primacy?

It is unfashionable to believe in God; the godless have made it so. The very same people are behind this attempt to enslave us. I am not suggesting that anyone should become a born-again, or a fanatic, or an adherent of any particular faith. What I do suggest is the possibility that there may be a higher authority than Alexander Johnson or Bill Gates to whom they will in time be answerable.

So get out on your bike, Poppy, pedal hard to get an endorphin rush, and take a moment to understand how wonderful it is that you are thus rewarded by your endocrine system; and let this observation lead you to others that are equally healthy and grounding and independent of the diktats of psychopaths who strive for temporal power.

What a wise and lovely post.

Dear Poppy, you are terrific, but you need a rest from MSM, and even from us.
Take a complete day iff, avoid hotbeds of Covhysteria, and think cheerful.
Personally I find that listening to Jonathan Cecil reading Jeeves stories on Audible is one good tonic. I laugh out loud and feel much better. But there are a thousand other remedies.

The whole stupid shebang will stop pretty soon anyway, whatever the bedwetting media say.

“The fact that some public servant, in what is meant to be a western democracy, sat down and drafted the words…”

I was thinking exactly this as I read some of the new laws yesterday. The most annoying, terrifying aspect is that they had been put together without debate or accountability, by anonymous people. They talk about the “emergency period” but we know that they have arbitrary powers to decide when – or if – that ends, too.

Sometimes it really does feel to me that our lives are pretty much over. But then I also try to remind myself that billions of people would swap with me in a heartbeat if they could. The main problem is the not knowing when, or if, it will end.

You might have thought that any government would balance the negatives with hope, positivity, inspiration, but not our lot. It all feeds the suspicion that they are covering up for their catastrophic mistake by dragging this out for as long as possible to make it look as bad as possible. They are also feeding the media the headlines to maintain the charade. I really, truly despise the lot of them.

Poppy – just deliberately break the rules. It will make you feel better. Worked for me! From Day One.

And look for the ludicrous, the stupid, the insane. And have a good laugh about it. There’s a plethora of material all around us.

And yes, the truth will come out in the end. It already is. There will be no hiding place for the charlatans who have done this.

Poppy,
Exercise releases the feeling of helplessness; you must take some time, outside, away from this madness each day.

Also, I think the tide is turning rapidly. The Below the Line comments on the BBC website yesterday (under a piece about Hancock’s gov’t presentation) were almost all negative.

Poppy, I really feel for you as I am feeling just as frustrated. Your posts on this site have been brilliant. You are obviously an intelligent person with a very good grasp of ridiculous situation that we are experiencing.
The announcements from this government are becoming increasing more ridiculous. Clearly, they are so totally incompetent, arrogant, disconnected from reality (close to psychopathic) yet realising that they have massively screwed up. They are perpetuating this disproportionate lockdown and removal of our civil liberties to give the pretence that what they did or did not do earlier was actually justified.
I am self employed professional contractor. I have worked in 6 different countries often working in conditions that civil servants and local government employees would never in their wildest nightmares accept. e.g. 12 hours a day, 6 days a week for 18 months with only 15 days off. Or being away from my loved ones for months at a time. Why? Because I have always been prepared to work hard and make sacrifices to provide the best that I can for my family.
At the start of the year the work in my sector dropped off due to changes to UK tax law for contractors. Then along came C19 and the lockdown and my work has not resumed and I am now into my 6 month of being out of work. I hold this government totally to blame for the decline of the economy which has directly impacted on my livelihood.
I wrote to my MP at the end of April after Dominic Raab announced that the LD would continue for a further 3 weeks. I stressed to him then that business needs to see an end to the lockdown ASAP. The reply I received from my MP was the standard Conservative party line about achieving the 5 points etc. He did nothing to address my concerns about the inevitable rise in unemployment that the country would be experiencing as a result of the lockdown.
Here we are now in June and all we get from them are the most ridiculous guidelines to make workplaces “covid 19 safe” (total bullshit) and stupid rules on who can enter our gardens and who we cannot have sex with (simply evil totalitarian thinking). All this is doing is reinforcing the fear in the unquestioning members of the population that are unable to think for themselves.
BTW. We had a family round at the weekend and ignored the stupid rules on what we can do on our own property.
We have to keep supporting Toby and this brilliant web page so that we can continue to exchange our views and information that we have discovered with like-minded individuals.

I’m really sorry you’re feeling like this. You’re right, it’s not easy and it’s not fair, but you’re made to feel like a whiner if you voice that. Especially by those pro-lockdown sat at home on their furlough money.

I’m 30, with a mortgage to pay, not eligible for any government support because I don’t have 3 years of accounts, not eligible for other benefits, and can’t work in lockdown because of the type of job I have. I haven’t had a penny come in since early March. I’m tearing through my savings – that I’ve lived frugally for years to accumulate – to pay the bills, and the amount of concern or support from “friends” is non-existent. Most of them are teachers, and they’re quite happy basking in the sun all day drinking wine getting paid a full time wage. They drone on about the inevitable second wave and how deadly the virus is.

At the end of the day, this whole episode has shown me that people believe what they want to believe, to justify whatever benefits them. I’ve spoken to many, many people about this, and there’s a staggering divide in opinion on how deadly the virus is depending on how much money they’re getting paid to sit at home.

My father was captured at the fall of Singapore and spent his 23rd birthday in a godown on the docks wondering what would happen next. It was 3+ years up and down the jungle camps along the Death Railway. Get a grip.

Unnecessary and unhelpful Bruno. If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say it at all.

Seconded.

Do you really think anyone is going to obey this diktat? Nothing in human history has ever been allowed to get in the way of copulation. Nor will this.
But the thought of two Covizombies trying to do it while wearing face masks does maje me goggle slightly.

Hello Poppy. First of all I applaud your well thought out post. As someone much older I feel you’re pain and sense of despair of this utter risk averse idiocy which has been inflicted on us. The important thing is not to become consumed by it. I’ve probably broken most of the rules simply because I’m not going to waste the last few remaining healthy years of my life by sitting at home wrapped in cotton wool. I had planned to climb Snowdon and Ben Nevis this year and am furious this is unlikely to happen. I’m still going to work in a front line service and don’t know anyone who has contacted Corvid -19. I would urge you to ignore the nay sayers, get on with you’re life as much as you can and don’t download the ridiculous NHS tracing app.

I understand why young people want to smash everything and riot, if I was 20 I would be doing it too.

Norman Lamont throwing his two pence worth:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8374891/Former-Chancellor-NORMAN-LAMONT-Ditch-two-metre-rule-rescue-economy.html

Good article. I had not realised that Priti Patel had said that ‘Social distancing is here to stay’…. for how long is she thinking, I wonder? As one commenter wrote under the article, as yet no supermarket has yet had to shut due to vast numbers of their staff being infected, and they work in close contact with large numbers of people, day after day…

Yes, she said that ages ago: https://www.itv.com/goodmorningbritain/articles/social-distancing-is-here-to-stay-says-home-secretary-priti-patel
It’s probably wrong to say she is evil, but the idea is evil

She is proving to be a great disappointment – look at the policing over the weekend. Black lives Matter – no social distancing, no real policing. Protest against lockdown – heavy police presence and intervention. And why are Brits under curfew and restrictions, and visitors to the country quarantined, when every day boatloads of people come in on dinghies and are free to move about as they wish..?

A very great disappointment. I emailed my MP about the double standards to which you refer.

Well she will have to do a U turn when the crime rate goes up as more and more people lose their jobs or become bankrupt.

Socially distanced rioting will indeed be an interesting development. The corona panic will be forgotten when people realise they won’t be able to feed their families.

Exactly. When people can no longer put food on the table and keep the roof over their heads, things can turn nasty indeed. The State ignores this at their own peril.

20,000 troops …..

50million+ pissed off uk citizens.

It can stay for her as long as she wants, not for me though. People can have hugs a plenty from me. Take that Patel! (no not a hug for you, you devious *$£$**)

Yes, it’s a good sign, though he concedes 1 metre, sort of, which ultimately needs to be consigned to the dustbin too.

I read a couple of the comments, one of the first claimed a mortality rate of 2%. Some people shouldn’t be allowed out of the house without a responsible adult.

1 metre is a good transition before its abolished. I find it odd that while the WHO recommends 1 metre and many other countries have it, we have 2 metres which is bonkers.

The explanation they gave was simply patronising and offensive.

Lamont mentions that Priti Patel stated that social distancin[g] could be here to stay. Have I passed through a wormhole into a parallel universe?

Is Patel here to stay?
What’s the betting?

In employment terms [the hospitality industry] is bigger than the financial services industry or the automotive, aerospace and pharmaceutical industries combined.

Wow, yet the government is doggedly determined to destroy it?!

Exactly. The mind boggles – if the hospitality industry is destroyed, it would definitely sink London for sure.

Sturgeon is an authoritarian control freak. However she is not the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom but nevertheless seems to be threatening laws which surely go beyond her powers under the devolution settlement. Health is in her remit but her approach goes way beyond responsibility for the NHS in Scotland. Surely Johnson ought to be reining her in and making clear the limits to her powers. Unfortunately Johnson seems to have become a singularly unimpressive PM with little concept that his role covers all of the UK. The police in Scotland, Sturgeon’s stasi, have been turned into a centralised state police all too ready to do her bidding. I find it all deeply depressing.

How is this poor showing by Ms Sturgeon going to impact the chances of Scotland gaining political independence from the rest of the UK?

I think she has made a dismal showing as do my friends but it is very difficult to know whether the country is waking up to how much of a clueless tyrant she is. There is currently no effective opposition in Scotland while she gets her daily show on television. However she has been very much “bought and sold for English gold” as her Government could not afford the furlough. It would be interesting to see her try to make the economic case for independence now as she daily destroys what is left of our economy. Personally I doubt if she will last more than a few months after lockdown ends as troubles will rapidly escalate out of control for her – economic destruction, Nike coronavirus cover up, care home scandal, Alex Salmond, etc.

By her decision to destroy Scotland’s financial and economic independence while the indie golden goose of oil and gas lies gasping for air in the corner? She’s got no hope. The Scottish finance minister is bleating about furlough ending, I assume because the SNP’s plan is to keep Scotland locked up for as long as possible. Sturgeon says it’s a concern and she’s looking for Scotland to be able to borrow more money. Keyword being “borrow”. It’ll need to be paid back.

I’ve said it before, but a devolved Scotland has less freedom than England.

Friends, especially in Scotland, this is a must-read from the highly respected Hugh Pennington:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/01/no-evidence-suggest-coronavirus-second-wave-coming/

Professor Pennington gave evidence to the Scottish Parliament to say he was sceptical about a second wave, and he was criticised by Ms Sturgeon. In a very clever way, he then points out that he started his virological career under the tutelage of the discoverer of human coronaviruses.

Truly, Saint Nicola’s talents know no bounds. The gullible might have given credence to the opinion of a man widely regarded as the leading scientist in Scotland. Thank goodness the Dear Leader was on hand to save us from this reckless evidence-based optimism…

Hold aloft her judgements. Praise on high her guidance. All fall before the thrown of her Stay at Home podium.

He does say at the end that we should be striving to eradicate the virus which to some people (NS for example or those advising her) could be reason to maintain a lockdown as long as needed to achieve this.

I thought that could be misconstrued – or it was a cunning bit of misquoting by the reporter.

I’m looking forward to hearing more about the new ‘freedom’ party Toby.

There is ample room to to frighten the two main political party’s with a ‘Brexit Party‘ style of approach and change the political narrative.

I believe it would be wise to choose candidates that have had some success in life, whether it be in business, finance, teaching, union representative, supermarket manager or whatever. Maybe a minimum age of 50 or so should be considered too as this would mean they could offer constituents a real alternative to the PPE graduates who dominate politics these days. I strongly believe many of the political problems of today are caused by MP’s who have had no proper job in life since leaving university other that politics. This means they are totally removed from the real world problems and it’s one of the reasons most MP’s misread the Brexit mood so badly last year.

Thank you for giving me, and I know many other people (when they eventually hear about it) some hope.

Re the stop press on masks , I’ve found https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-masks-recommendation-trnd/index.html

Any other offers?

I sent the WHO’s recommendations to my MP several weeks ago.

His loyal “man-friday” replied to say that Mr XXXX was not a member of the government and declined to comment.

(Hence my outraged e-mail of last week that I reproduced here a few days ago).

WHO link is here
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/when-and-how-to-use-masks

Like many, I was shocked to learn about the number of deaths caused in the US by the 2017/18 flu. I lived in NYC at the time and though I recall getting my annual flu shot (I’m in my 70s) I don’t recall anything else about that awful visitation of just 2-3 years ago. I don’t think I even had the sniffles during that flu season. And yet many thousands died–and many children. But not to worry about the disparity of media coverage any longer. From now on, every flu season will be covered with the same fears and alarms. CNN will have a minute-by-minute countdown display of the mounting cases and fatalities. Every seasonal flu starting this year will be given a name–as hurricanes are–and we will hear constantly that Flu Harold or Flu Katrina is deadlier than COVID-19 and suddenly according to WHO seasonal flu can be far worse than a pandemic.
My humble prediction is that the Coronavirus will prove to be merely the dress rehearsal for the next stages of the media’s daily Theatre of Fear.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52876999 I wonder how many people realised when the lock down was imposed that cancer treatment as well as other treatments would be suspended

My initial estimate would be at least 2M people.

All just doing their bit to protect the NHS, I’m sure they will understand how important that is!

It’s interesting to note that Sky News are running a series of programmes entitled “After the Pandemic Our New World”.

Seems as if they’re saying the pandemic is as good as over.

Well, our New World is!

The collective wellbeing of Scotland would be vastly improved if the barren Sturgeon just fucked off.

Pity she’s barren.The roe of the sturgeon is said to be delicious.

In her case, the Japanese Puffer Fish would probably be a closer match!

In reflection on the current troubles in America, the William Burroughs “ A Thanksgiving Prayer ” comes to mind for our current “Covid-19 Crisis”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLSveRGmpIE

Coronavirus Prayer

For King John of England,

In hope he is still listening in.

Thanks for weeks of never-ending bbqs, destined to be shit out through feeble british guts

Thanks for a lost spring of memories never to be recaptured

Thanks for nightingale hospitals providing little filled beds

Thanks for vast public spending, leaving the future economy to rot

Thanks for fines for meeting with friends

Thanks for STAY AT HOME, PROTECT THE NHS, SAVE LIVES to vulgarly save the face of the nhs whilst leaving care homes to wither

Thanks for epidemiologist s feeding their models of doom, for sage members with their mean, pinched, bitter public health advice

Thanks for “two metres apart” posters

Thanks for a laboratory or human stimulated virus (China)

Thanks for the Coronavirus Act and all its dictates

Thanks for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business

Thanks for a nation of finks

Yes,

Thanks for all the memories of the last 10 weeks… all right, let’s see your masks and gloves…

Social media always was a headache and a bore.

Dear Boris, thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of British dreams (Magna Carta)

Meh. The Declaration of Rights came after Magna Carta, I believe. And was far greater.

Wasn’t British. Was specifically anti-British.
Never mind. The point is that people in this country have striven, however imperfectly, for a thousand years to create a system of rights, only to have it swept away literally overnight.

We nursed the pinion for the Yanks, Annie.

1688 Declaration of Rights.
1689 Bill of Rights.

Worth minding about, and definitely worth a read !

The original point was incorrect is claiming the Magna Carta was the latest and greatest, that’s all.

I stand corrected!

No problem Annie.

You wouldn’t believe the grief I had with the kids’ secondary school history department, who were ignorant of the existence and the importance of the Glorious Revolution.

And thank you, dear NHS, for neglecting sufferers from every condition except one, and for lying about the deaths of those allegedly suffering from that one disease.

Had to laugh at this one- whenever MSM interviews anyone from the retail sector about re opening the PR person is always at pains to emphasise the lengths they were going to ensure social distancing, hygiene etc. Today they interviewed someone from a car showroom who went through a whole list of precautions. It went well until he mentioned that if someone wanted to take a car for a test drive, they would have to drive the car alone. Good luck with that!

I’ve always wanted to ‘test drive’ a Ferrari …

Is this any actual evidence for this myth of the Asymptomatic Superspreader? Several studies have shown that children (usually asymptomatic) struggle to spread SARS2. I would have thought asymptomatic adults would be similar, because they aren’t coughing and sneezing and generally “shedding”. This seems a likely candidate for why R0, and therefore prevalence is low, and for why the epidemics all follow Gompertz curves.

Again I’ve flipped on this. I thought before that a shit tonne of aysmptos were out and about spreading away.
However, now I think it’s basically just nocoso…. still can’t type that word. You need viral load to get it. So the chances of aysmptos giving it to anyone, given that they have no symptoms and are therefore not ‘shedding’ much virus, are slim.
If primary spread in the community is within households this also holds up. The only people aysmptos (and symptos, for that matter) spend enough time with to shed significant viral load on to are the people they live with, if anyone at all.
So….. All this social distancing crap is just that – crap. All this touching of surfaces crap is just that- crap. You could probably only get it off a surface if you literally licked that surface inmdiately after someone directly sneezed on it. Likewise you could probably only get it off a stranger if you literally sat there whilst they rubbed their bodily fluids all over you.

In any case I think we can safely even without a peer reviewed study that virus particles do not migrate to your feet and then exude from the soles of your shoes.

Reading the actual story isn’t it just as likely that the Hercule Poirot of Singapore is overestimating his sleuthing abilities and that those people caught the virus from any of the thousands of unknown infections that would been around at the time?

It seems kinda like that false alarm in South Korea – where they said the guy went on a club crawl and infected a shit tonne of people, then later it got debunked somehow.

Well I wish they’d make more of the debunking because our “experts” are still using the original version to promote the second spike bollox.

I agree, and I wonder whether this forum is going to have to turn into “Social Distancing Skeptics”, because if the lockdown ends and this garbage is still in place that will be a disaster.

Social distancing is the continuation of lockdown by any other means.

It is against nature.

Great point

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2766114?guestAccessKey=4c625815-0722-4a1c-b15c-3c3b2fcb642a&utm_source=silverchair&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=article_alert-jamapediatrics&utm_term=mostread&utm_content=olf-widget_06012020
“It is highly likely that the most important reason leading governments to close schools was the evidence that the early introduction of this restrictive measure had been effective in reducing influenza incidence rates and related clinical, social, and economic problems during both seasonal and pandemic influenza outbreaks. 1 However, it is not at all certain that the same advantages can be expected in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is even possible that school closure may have negative effects and lead to greater medical, economic, and social problems. Modelling studies seem to indicate that school closure can be significantly effective for infection control only when the outbreaks are due to viruses with low transmissibility and attack rates are higher in children than in adults. This applies to influenza viruses and influenza infection but does not seem valid for coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, which have different transmission dynamics, or for COVID-19, which affects mainly adults and elderly individuals.”

This is from JAMA USA. It is unbelievable that UK is not opening schools immediately. There is now multiple reports how low transmission is in schools of Covid-19. All statistics show that flu is up to 8 time deadlier in primary school children.
Are we going to have yearly closure of primary schools because of influenza we have every year?
The Directors of Public Health coming out against school openings have lost all credibility if there was anything left.

Maybe TMI – but today I got invited for a smear test.

Does this mean service has been resumed?

Luckily you don’t live in Nicola’s Kingdom where she’s stated the NHS is still under too much pressure and it’s not safe yet to resume these potentially live saving tests.

In the whole of Scotland we have 20 CV19 patients in ICU.

It’s a glimmer of hope.

“Now, Colorado has published the results of ongoing antibody tests with a massive sample size of 56,000. The study found, as of Thursday, that 7.75% of the entire state has been infected. That means that an estimated 489,500 Coloradoans have already had the virus. If you divide Colorado’s 1,135 deaths by the number of infections, you get a 0.23% IFR – almost exactly what the CDC pegged as the IFR nationwide!”
Publication after publication come to this figure about IFR. And it must still be lower as we are not counting the asymptomatic not ever tested. This latest from Colorado is a massive test number. Also in a state in the middle of US and not on the coasts .The virus have been spread more evenly than suspected over the US landmass.

Can you direct me to the results in the linked folders?

https://www.conservativereview.com/news/horowitz-colorado-antibody-testing-proves-cdcs-remarkably-low-fatality-rate-coronavirus/
Inside this are links which are more complicated to follow

What we need to remember when looking at these sorts of stats is that many more people will simply be able to repel the virus before it “boards”. So they have been exposed to the virus but they deal with it in their nasal cavity, at the back of their throat or in their gut. They don’t need to develop antibodies. So what you might call the “repelled exposure rate” might be vastly higher than 7.75%. The other thing is – how “random” are these exercises? Where are they taking place? Do they include people with poor hygiene? Are they biased towards hospitals and care homes? I wonder – presumably in very aged and ill people, although they may be exposed to the virus and it may kill them, they may be unable to produce antibodies, due to their ill health…

This study was people over 18 visiting grocery stores in New York. So ordinary people walking into the store. Not care home and hospitals but randomly collected in stores. And then subdivided into ethnicity etc.

Sorry comment for another of my blog about New York study.Can’t comment on details of the Coloradostudy

You have a blog and you’re not telling us the URL? I’d be interested in reading it.

Sorry.The Colorado statistics was in the link above
https://www.conservativereview.com/news/horowitz-colorado-antibody-testing-proves-cdcs-remarkably-low-fatality-rate-coronavirus/
But when you click on links in this article you can’t get to the original statistics. I therefore gave links to a similar study in Florida below with even more people tested and the results rather similar.

http://ww11.doh.state.fl.us/comm/_partners/action/report_archive/serology/serology_20200529.pdf
I found this on Florida 29th May rather similar figure and linked above,123000 persons tested for Covid-19 antibodies enormous numbers 4.4 % positive. A bit lower than Colorado but important is that testing is now done at that scale. Sorry not to get a link to the exact Colarado figures but the the documented Florida figureres above is on even bigger testing scale so the Colarado figures are most likely correct.

Interesting, the population of Florida is estimated at 21.5 million according to the latest census. and we have 2461 deaths according to Worldometer. 2461 / 21.5 million * 0.044 is 0.26%.

They will never know what the real IFR is but I think looking at all the data right now we can surmise it’s probably lower than a normal flu. Like……. a ‘rhinovirus’ maybe.
AKA……. The common cold

Keeping your kids at home is NOT the way to protest and does NOT help the lockdown sceptics’ cause. There are three simple reasons for this:
1.      Kids don’t differentiate between the silly rules we make for them.
2.      We must claim our freedom, not sulk at home that we don’t like its form.
3.      We should maximise our interactions to end lockdown sooner.

1. Kids don’t differentiate between the silly rules we make for them.
Our son went to school today. Only 5 out of 15 of his reduced class-size showed up, but he was sooo excited to see his friends, few as they were. He absolutely loved it! And according to the class WhatsApp group, many of his classmates said it was the best day ever. Yes, there were some new rules, but do you think that is what he talked about when he came home? Absolutely not. We had to ‘interrogate’ him to find out about the new arrangements.
Some people think our kids care about these ‘special’ new rules. However, I think that to them, they are just more silly rules. “Don’t run in the hallway.” “Don’t run in the house.” “Don’t shout on the bus.” “Don’t eat with your mouth open.” “Don’t point at people.” “Don’t talk about other people when they can hear you.” “But don’t whisper in company either!” “Don’t sit right next to your friend at lunch.” These are all just silly rules to our kids. Do they care about their silliness? Do they differentiate between one set of silly rules and another set of silly rules? Are they emotionally scarred by one set of silly rules, and not by another set of silly rules? Come on now, of course not! They are just getting on with life, trying to minimise the ‘tax’ of the rules on having fun.

2. We must claim our freedom, not sulk at home that we don’t like its form.
In order to regain our and our kids’ freedoms (which were always our prerogative, and never the Government’s to ‘grant’), we must start by claiming what little we have been granted. What good could it possibly do to sulk at home that we don’t like the form of our reduced freedoms? Get out there and claim what is rightfully yours and your kids’. So at least, you have got that. And then demand more, of course.
Mix in a little bit of deviousness, and you could tell your kids not to pay too much attention to the new rules. Kids never really listen anyway, right? How often do you have to tell your kids the same thing? Well, let’s see how often they need to tell our kids these new rules before our kids get them. Hopefully, the new rules will be gone before long.

3. We should maximise our interactions to end lockdown sooner.
All that the lockdown-believers ever had, was spreading fear by predicting disaster if we did not comply. But every time that the spell was tested, nothing happened. They spelled disaster if Sweden would not lock down. Sweden did not lock down. Disaster did not happen. They spelled disaster if Florida opened up when it did. Disaster did not happen. They spelled disaster when our Government started relaxing the rules a little bit. Disaster did not happen. On the contrary, infections have dropped 35% in the last 7 days https://covid.joinzoe.com/data#levels-over-time .
The examples are countless, and still they tell us we should be fearful. Fearful of a second wave, fearful that immunity has not been proven, fearful that there might be terrible things in the future that we don’t know about. So, some people are really fearful.
We can do our little bit to help demonstrate that there is nothing to fear, by maximising our interactions now, and showing that it does not lead to disaster. They said that allowing people from different households to meet would lead to disaster. They said that reopening schools would lead to disaster. Let’s meet other households and let’s send out kids to school if we can, and let’s prove them wrong. Let’s demonstrate that this line https://covid.joinzoe.com/data#levels-over-time just keeps going down, regardless of how many rules are relaxed.
The sooner we can expose that there is no foundation for the fear, the sooner we can all move on. So that people dare to resume their lives, so that the teacher’s unions stop their protests, so that we stop talking about 2 metres distance, and so that we forget about a ‘new normal’.

I agree
You have to interact with the stupid rules sometimes in order to fuck with them.
My friend sent her daughter back to school today. Apparently she thought the rules were silly. She will return to normality after each day and be treated totally normally by her parents and grandparents which will make the rules seem even more silly.
It’s the parents that matter I think. Which is sad because most of them still seem to be terrified.

This is the crux – sensible parents (and grandparents !) will make sure their kids are alright. Children of the fearful will be in a difficult place.

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings cometh truth.
Truth. Not bloody viruses.
Such a pity most adults have been so inoculated against truth that there is no chance whatever of their catching it.

I’m not sure, RS. I very definitely think that adults should push this nonsense to the limit and beyond, all the time, and in every way we can think of.

Kids is somewhat different though, and very much age-dependent. Schools are, sadly, very good at instilling conformity.

My granddaughter was very happy to be going back to school today, to see her best friend. Sod being devious, I said “Will you give her a big hug ?” “YES”, she shouted, just ahead of her mum (who teaches at the school) could get in with her “No”.

Interesting post and I think there’s a lot in what you say. In Spain, muzzles are compulsory in public where a 2 metre distance is impossible. What’s actually happening is that there are fewer and fewer muzzle wearers and those who wear the useless rags seem less afraid of those who don’t. Even muzzle wearers no longer swerve when passing other people in the street.

Thanks for the great post. Now if we could only get the other year groups back to school.

Funny how everybody talks as if getting the kids back to school were an enormous problem, when all they need to do is resume exactly where they left off before the mega idiocy started. After all, the bug was allegedly’circulating’ at the time, and no kids or teachers dropped dead that I can remember.

Absolutely agree with you, Victoria! Keep pushing!
We just got the happy news that our little one can go back to nursery next week. I must admit that we had been hounding them a bit with stories of other places opening up, and why weren’t they doing the same.. perhaps that made a tiny difference.
Guidance from the Government is that the kids should all be going back before Summer, right? It’s just a matter of when? So why not next week? Ask them, why not next week? They were all so afraid that return to school would lead to disaster, right? But there is no disaster, right? Where is the surge in cases and hospital admissions? Exactly, there isn’t. So carry on then, keep opening up!

Absolutely agree with you, Victoria! Keep pushing!
We just got the happy news that our little one can go back to nursery next week. I must admit that we had been hounding them a bit with stories of other places opening up, and why weren’t they doing the same.. perhaps that made a tiny difference.
Guidance from the Government is that the kids should all be going back before Summer, right? It’s just a matter of when? So why not next week? Ask them, why not next week? They were all so afraid that return to school would lead to disaster, right? But there is no disaster, right? Where is the surge in cases and hospital admissions? Exactly, there isn’t. So, carry on then, keep opening up!

Brilliant post with concrete suggesitons. Thanks.

What a lovely post.

Great post.
BUT
The “joinzoe” website you link to (which has a lot of followers, I believe) has a 1 June article “Lessons from previous Pandemics” ‘proving’ that lockdown, quarantine, track and trace are the only solution.
That’s what we’re up against – depressing!

https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/17567-finland-s-coronavirus-deaths-rise-closer-to-100-actual-number-could-be-much-higher.html

Counting deaths of Covid-19 and comparing countries is getting more and more complicated.
In Finland only Covid-19 deaths occurring in a health care institution is counted. The criteria prescribe that the deceased must have tested positive for and died of complications caused by the new coronavirus. Deaths in care homes of Covid-19 might not be counted. As Finland have few deaths in all of Covid-19 perhaps not such a big problem.
In Sweden things are complex as regarding death of Covid-19. There are two different systems. One is done by FoH(Public Health Agency) and count as death anybody with Covid-19 pos diagnosis and death within 30 days. The Covid-19 test results is checked with reported deaths. The other is done by National Board of Health and Welfare(NBHW) which is the official death certificate. A doctor must report a death immediately separately and then within 3 weeks send in a certificate with the cause of death.
On 21st April NBWH had 1491 deaths of Covid-19 according to cause of death on certificate. But only 82 % were pos for Covid-19 in the laboratory report. During the same period in FoH 1329 patients were pos for Covid-19 and reported to have died and having a cause of death certificate. However, 4.5% of them had in the death certificate, death of other causes than Covid-19.

Today is the second time i see a reference here to WHO reversing course and now recommending against face masks. Also made in one of the comments earlier. Any reference that can be pointed to? This would be huge, but i hate to tell this to anyone without having a reference.

I can find nothing about this either and like you am loathe to mention without a citation or reference of some sort…..if you find one can you post it here please ?

Is this what you were looking for? It doesn’t say it’s recommendations have changed though…
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/when-and-how-to-use-masks

There is this, but in regards to medical masks, not clear if it applies to all facial coverings.

• If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with COVID-19.
• Wear a mask if you are coughing or sneezing.
• Masks are effective only when used in combination with frequent hand-cleaning with alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water.
• If you wear a mask, then you must know how to use it and dispose of it properly.

I visited my parents again tonight, now that it is legal to do so. Their garden summer house seemed a safe venue for the rendezvous. They are both 77 and in reasonable health. Well, my father has prostate cancer, but it’s not at an advanced stage, though his treatment has been delayed.

They seemed a little grumpy when I arrived. On reflection I wondered if they’d been quarrelling. My father shares some of my skepticism and his social life – mostly the nineteen holes of golf – has been blighted. In particular, although he is again at liberty to play, it is now only possible for him to play eighteen holes. The vital nineteenth is still off limits. Much to his chagrin no doubt.

It was nice though to see my mother putting up a bit of resistance to the continued closure of the churches.

The highlight of the afternoon was an amusing anecdote from my father. (Well, I thought it was amusing, though my father was none too pleased.)

He related that he had almost cleaned up a conscientious citizen that afternoon. Apparently the wayward townsman had considered that my father’s motor vehicle was a safer bet than the fellow pedestrian who was approaching him the other way on the pavement. Having assessed the risk to his life as too great, the brave man had leaped off the pavement and into the road – doubtlessly avoiding certain death by virus – hoping instead, no doubt, to be welcomed into the loving embrace of the bullbars of my father’s 4×4 mercedes. He was to be disappointed. My father may be 77, but his reflexes – and wits – are still about him.

Rather a pity your dad missed, I’d say.

Last week Emily Maitlis thought failure to respect the lockdown, even in just one case (yes Dominic’s of course), the greatest evil on Earth.

This week? Quelle surprise…although Emily saw numerous video shots of people not social distancing while they engaged in manufactured protests across the USA, UK and elsewhere she didn’t mention it once on Newsnight. In fact she seemed only too keen to back these people who have no respect for lockdown legislation.

In other news…cycling along the Thames path today I must have seen 100 plus kids congregating at various points to swim in the river (probably more dangerous than Covid to under 18s if they imbibe any rats’ urine) and play on the river beaches. The idea that they would be more at risk in the structured environment of school is absolutely absurd but our teachers’ unions propagate this nonsensical idea.

There’s something deeply ironic about ‘protesters’ throwing missiles, burning cars and looting while wearing the face masks that do-gooder busybodies have been promoting. No doubt some people (like Guardian readers) think that not only are these people looting in a noble cause and have deeply-held ethical concerns, but they are also respecting social distancing.

Can’t help thinking they like the masks for more traditional reasons – the Clanton gang, Butch & Sundance, Jesse James, etc.

Yep, Fake pandemic, mandatory masks, Fake cop killer, mandatory riot with mandatory mask.Wonder what is behind it all, must all be just Fake.

Of course, there is an enormous difference in Cummings’ case: RULE-MAKERS SHOULD NOT BE RULE-BREAKERS!!!

I think you will find that the excess deaths in the US are going to go down further once averaged out.

Essentially there has been an event which has caused a “bulk rate” death count in the US- and elsewhere. That event is not some virus that landed from Venus rather it is one of administrative euthanasia brought about by very real health and government officials.

The elderly from nursing homes (in the UK you call these care centers) in the US are the victims of this negligence- these are crimes not issue of a viral contagion.

Now that many of the “low hanging fruit” (forgive this crass comment) have been put down by The State we will see that there will be a temporary lowering of the death rate- until the cycle begins again assuming the social conditions worsen which is a near certainty given the consequences of the lockdown and the accompanying economic wreckage.

It should also be noted that these “excess mortality rates” need context. For example in the US death rates were in decline up until 2008- then these rates began to go into an upward cycle that has continued every year since.

Italy is another excellent case study as their data is clear- these “excess deaths” have become common place in Northern Italy over the last decade due to social conditions deteriorating- primarily due to the increased levels of (and different types of particulates) pollution but also due to an aging population and the deterioration of their health system.

It’s much easier (and profitable for certain sectors) to simply call this a viral problem when in fact it is a systemic problem.

I’d say most care homes in the UK are designed to spread viruses. Rather than have people grouped in separate locations within a Home, the tendency is to get everyone close together in one central room, often very close together. This is no reflection on the standard of care from the staff – which is, more often than not, superb. But if people are put so close together in rooms with no ventilation (pretty much) , then it is very easy for viruses to spread. I am not saying there is an easy solution and any solution will cost. But I think the idea of a central room for residents should be put to one side as an historical mistake.

My dad was in a care home and fortunately had the choice to stay in his own room where he could watch documentaries on BBC4 and listen to audiobooks. The prospect of being herded into a room with a load of old women and left to watch daytime tv was our worst nightmare.

Like everything we’re missing right now, IT SHOULD BE A CHOICE.

James Delingpole in discussion with Dr John Lee:
https://delingpole.podbean.com/e/dr-john-lee/

Fantastic conversation: make time to listen. Why don’t we have people of his calibre advising governments?

Will def have a listen.

I would also recommend going back and listening to the London calling podcasts from the beginning. Great banter and it’s interesting to hear the pre lockdown sceptic Toby Y and Delingpole discussing how panicked they are then eventually coming to the realization that it’s all nonsense.

Been there, done that! (blush)

PS: The panicking, I mean.

Yes, Dr Lee just oozes common sense, especially when he talks about the “science” having changed but not the narrative.

So we all know that the lockdown was, is, the biggest mistake ever made by any British prime minister. But even beyond that there is another self-inflicted wound: the failure to put test results in context, and the seemingly deliberate exaggeration of Covid death figures. In today’s Guardian Larry Elliott writes about re-opening schools:

“Yet, while the infection rate in the UK has fallen markedly from its peak in April, it is still higher than it was in Germany and France when the schools were reopened. In Spain and Italy, where infection rates per head of population are similar to the UK’s, teaching has not resumed. That, coupled with the fact that primary school classes are on average higher than the European average, means the prime minister should remember the advice of the Roman emperor Augustus: make haste slowly.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/01/boris-johnson-could-take-classical-lesson-in-his-rush-to-reopen-schools

So gestures such as increasing testing result in the killing of your own economy by ‘finding’ more infections, and prompting even intelligent people like Larry Elliott to see only the bad headlines.

At every stage, the UK government has sought to make the figures look as bad as possible for as long as possible, thus making itself look incompetent in the eyes of the people who matter: the unthinking morons. And in doing so it has ruined the futures of the rest of us. It is still doing it, even now, digging itself – and us – in, ever deeper.

Indeed. And the piecemeal lockdown lifting is just a ruse to ensure the ‘unthinking morons’ don’t notice they’ve been had!

I will be trying to do my bit for getting more signatures on the ‘End (un) social distancing’ petition by placing an actual notice on a bit of fencing that ordinarily acts as a quasi notice board just beyond the main car park in our town. I will also make its existence known to fellow lockdown sceptics who come into my shop. Small steps, but it’s a start …

PUBLIC HEALTH ENGLAND ISSUES GUIDANCE TO CARE HOMES!

..respiratory infections are a major cause of hospitalisation, morbidity and death among the elderly. Underlying chronic health conditions make patients both more susceptible and vulnerable to severe disease, and hospitalisation rates during outbreaks can be high. Respiratory infections may also spread rapidly in care homes, resulting in high attack rates due to prolonged close contacts between residents, and between patients and their carers.

Risk groups…..:

 Neurological, hepatic, renal, pulmonary and chronic cardiac disease

 Diabetes mellitus

 Severe immunosuppression

 Age over 65 years……..

 Morbid obesity (BMI ≥40)

Hand hygiene is a key infection control precaution to reduce transmission between staff and patients.

……..staff should work with either symptomatic patients only, or asymptomatic patients, but not both,

barrier measures such as gloves, gowns and surgical facemasks may be considered to reduce the spread of respiratory viruses.

suspend transfers to other care homes during the outbreak period. Visits or other transfers to acute medical facilities should be considered based on medical necessity and the destination facility should be warned in advance about the infection risk.

……..the dominant circulating strain may vary with one dominant strain being replaced by a second strain later in the same season.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/747543/Influenza-like_illness_in_care_home_2018_FINAL.pdf

Sound familiar? It should do to the government’s advisers. It was issued October 2018 regarding Influenza Like Illnesses (ILI) in care homes

Global pandemic? Nonsense on stilts!

P.S. Note that the ‘second wave’ idea comes from influenza research, and that, if there was a peak in overall mortality, including ILI, in January (and there was) we may already be well past any second peak (which occurred more typically during the colder weather!)

Can anyone explain why the government are still continuing to make the numbers look worse than they are?

Surely as they ‘rush’ relaxing of lockdown they will want to do quite the opposite?

Keeping people frightened keeps them obedient.

Psyops!

Because they have dug themselves into a hole and rather than do a mea culpa and apologise they decided to keep on digging.

From the SAGE meeting minutes

“Lifting restrictions on assembly will also permit protests against the economic effects of the lockdown,which will become more visible as time wears on”

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/888551/7a._SPI-B_Policing_Protest_and_Changes_to_COVID-19_Control_Measures_in_the_UK_20200504_S0331_Redacted.pdf

Hence the de facto curfew by way of yesterday’s statutory instrument. I hope returning MPs today due their civic duty to get this removed.

A few of us have already predicted on these very pages the possibility of protests and rioting especially when the aftershocks come and the economic fallout becomes a reality. The furlough scheme has been hiding the unemployment figures, what those figures will look like come October when it comes to an end is pretty much academic. Add figures that will come in the last 3 months of the year when more businesses go bust will make very sober reading indeed.

Surely the government knows that they need to act now to stem the tide and minimise any economic fallout from the lockdown and social distancing. Why they haven’t is infuriating and is only asking for trouble later.

Fascinating stuff. Interesting that the government’s policy is partly driven by the drivel that comes out of the Guardian.

Which is sponsored by our friend Bill.

Read some of the other stuff in that document. Staggering. This is one document of hundreds of pages!

Definitely psyops then!

“Simon Dolan, self-made multimillionaire, Le Mans winner and author, is launching a legal action against the UK government’s lockdown legislation, brought in to tackle the coronavirus outbreak. He spoke to me from his apartment in Monaco about his case.”

That last line is beyond satire. I’d be deeply sceptical about taking lessons in serving the needs of the British public from a tax dodging multi-millionaire. Clearly a naked attempt to protect his investments. By all means let’s have a grassroots anti-lockdown movement, but this guy stinks of privilege and self interest.

At least someone is willing to take the lead in fighting this erosion of our rights and liberties. Don’t see any others leading figures doing that.

Just Lord Sumption.
It’s astonishing, isn’t it? Where are they all?

It’s not him I’m interested in, it’s really worth reading their legal arguments, published on the crowd justice site (and people said all kinds of stuff about Gina Miller, but the law is the law).

What’s wrong with him wanting to protect his investments? If he’s self-made, I would think that was even more of a reason to do so. It would have been far easier for him to sit on his arse and do nothing. I for one couldn’t give a toss how rich he is, at least he’s doing something …

You’re right. The term “self-made” was originally used pejoratively by people from ‘old money’, but is now being parroted by ignorant tw*ts who think they’re being edgy and anti-establishment. For them, ‘self-made’ represents an oik who has thrived under the wickedness of private enterprise rather than a warrior for the left who has bravely and honourably sucked at the public teat like themselves.

The embarrassment about money is a REALLY middle class concern!

V true. You rarely see working class people agonising about people with money standing up for them. Also imo the greatest leftwing politician we’ve ever had (Tony Benn) was pretty posh, so……

He was really terribly posh! And I agree, you rarely see them agonising about it either if they come into it (this is why Labour keeps losing elections!).

I don’t know much about Dolan. He’s put his weight behind a legal case that could make things a lot better for Britain. At present, I am not too worried about understanding all of his motives for doing so. It’s not as if he’s being proposed as the next PM, though it’s hard to see how he can do a worse job.

I’d like to think that those of us who think that saving lives at all costs is mad and wrong and impossible, and who are realistic about politicians and their motives, can unite behind that point of view regardless of other views we hold.

I was actually hoping he could be persuaded, along with others, to fund a team of machiavellian Facebook manipulators a la Cummings with Brexit, to tip the balance a bit towards the sceptical point of view, given the mass media are not giving those views much room. But maybe that’s not a good idea.

I won’t be licking the floor of the tube.

And, you never know, it might keep Corbyn in his seat!

Probably wise.

Another Bill Gates business adventure…

https://twitter.com/ElyseCane/status/1267544459060772864

Grrrrrr…

The link says the Twitter account is now suspended – more censorship?

We have to understand this situation is a projection of their fear not ours. They are terrified of us and know the game is up. It’s only a matter of time.

The empire is like a drunk refused entrance to a nightclub on a Saturday night. So it may go home, get a gun and drive up onto the pavement at the bouncers. Truth is, its never coming in. No one wants a drunk on the dance floor.

No one.

Everyone has had enough of this tosser.. and yes, it’ll rage, threaten and intimidate but sooner or later someone will kick the shit out of him. It won’t take much…

Really, it won’t… and it’s coming.

Nothing and no one stops the dance.

hear, hear

A parliamentarian with a backbone: great piece from Lord Dobbs who is ready to get back to work My hair is long, I’m 71 – but it’s my duty to get back to work

http://digitaleditions.telegraph.co.uk/data/246/reader/reader.html?social#!preferred/0/package/246/pub/246/page/65/article/47248

There is a lot of content on BBC iPlayer where the Lord’s have discussed lockdown. You won’t be surprised to read that this is usually done with a much more cooler, proportionate tone than the lower chamber.

I wouldn’t get too excited about the Lords. Most of them are just as bad as the other lot. Most of the institutions of this country benefit from their longstanding reputations as respectable and sensible organisations, but those reputations were build up by decent people long since retired or dead and are simply no longer true.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/02/prof-lockdown-neil-ferguson-admits-sweden-used-science-uk-has/

Thanks for that, it came at the right time.

I cannot see the end, my short trip into the surreal world really damaged me. If this is going is going to go on much longer I have no idea what’s going to happen.

My wife was intubated and ventilated for 3 weeks in the swine flu epidemic. Within the first couple of hours I waited for the consultant before I could see her with my 2 young daughters. He showed up with his registrar in tow. I thought, ‘this doesn’t look look good….’. ‘We are doing everything we can but we aren’t expecting her to survive the night’.

OK, not exactly what I was expecting. To cut a extremely long story short, she went from imminent death to dying soon, then surviving with massive morbidity. The staff on the ITU where exceptionally professional and compassionate.

After a couple of days, she was transferred to a general medical ward, that’s where the fight began. Among other things, she had post critical care paralysis. Again to summarise, I turned up every morning to feed her breakfast, perform her personal care and then lunch. Back in the afternoon with the girls and then home. Sleep and repeat.

The nursing staff were lacking in compassion, skills and, at the very worst, basic humanity.

She is now completely back to normal, completely. And I love her.

If that happens last month, she would be dead now. I absolutely 100% believe that.

I cannot understand why people, professional people are not speaking up.

Sorry for ranting on, I’m passionate about good patient care. There is no excuse for neglect or inhuman treatment.

So sorry that happened, and I hear you and agree. I also wonder why professionals are not speaking up. I have not been ITU sick, but I had a very very serious endocrine disorder that went undiagnosed for a decade (I made a fuss, they took no notice). Being diagnosed, and in the ‘system’ was – if it were possible – a million times worse than the disease. I had some appalling care, and some really cruel things said to me (‘stop crying, we have people here who are actually ill, unlike you’). It took a third private opinion to get anyone to take me seriously (German professor, he was an absolute diamond of a man), he then kicked some serious butt for me (‘how are you not dead?’ he asked me). Patients loved him, he was a brilliant, brilliant man, they hounded him out as a ‘maverick’ as he would not toe the (barbaric) line. For that, and many other reasons, I have not been clapping the NHS.

Thanks BecJT, I’m sorry that you had to go through that.

In my previous career I uncovered a rehab ward that was neglecting (possibly abusing) patients, led onto a investigation.

Nurses are advocates for their patients, that should never be forgotten!

I’ve never clapped for the NHS and I hold the most disdain for those who do.

Thanks, and I believe you, I’ve hard so many terrible stories. I’ve been through it all again with gynae (unbelievably patronising and dismissive care, I go private now, I’d rather go without a nice holiday, and at least pick my own care, with someone who will listen and work with me to figure out what’s going on) and I have met so many people who have been through similar. And if you dare complain, the absolute lies they put on your notes! Not just me, I’ve heard so many stories. One friend of mine did not consent to something, that was discussed pre op, she’d done her homework, and did not want it. Surgeon did it anyway, caused very severe problems for her. She tried to get redress, her case was thrown out because he’d put ‘hysterical amnesia’ on her notes, ie) she’d consented she was just to barking mad to remember. They are the bloody mafia.

Yep, my wife’s a ex-gynae nurse, I’ve heard the stories

Good article!

Awesome dude!

One response to this fear-mongering tweet from Scotrail asked if “mental health reasons” were a justified reason to travel. Scotrail replied that walking in your local area is good for physical and mental health.

Can we get all the news networks updated that Scotrail is now offering a mental health counselling service?

Toby, very interested in your Common Law Rights Party. I would be interested in joining. The Twats have shown themselves to be utterly incompetent and the BBC an organ of the state. They are still peddling CV19 porn and the NHS as a saintly institution beyond reproach. I get sicker each day of this. And my offspring is still 11 weeks without proper education. We should be raging at this. Fingers crossed that the weather turns to shit and the furloughed day trippers wake up to fact that this 3 month paid holiday has destroyed their (and our) futures.

I agree. The good weather has just aided the fool’s paradise aspect of this. I heard someone in the street the other day saying he was enjoying the lockdown as he was being furloughed and could sit out in the sun. I thought, “just wait until you get back to work pal and your job has gone, you won’t be so bloody cheerful then …” (sorry, uncharitable I know, but these people are just idiots if they think the economy will just spring back into life).

Back in the mists of time when we were told house arrest was going to be for 2 weeks to protect the health service, the Spanish gov’ made it clear that any time lost would have to be made up later. This, wage freezes, higher taxes, unemployment and a higher cost of living will be the price that these idiots will be paying for years for their “free” holiday. Sadly, the consequences of their selfish idiocy will be shared by us all.

Seems like the WHO are now saying that 2m social distancing is twice as effective as 1m (1.5% risk as oppose to 3% risk). Seems quite small either way to me.
Let’s just stand 10m apart – I’m sure that’ll decrease the risk further??

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/01/two-metre-rule-halves-chances-catching-coronavirus-first-major/

The only safe place is under your bed receiving food parcels.

WHO are just covering the collective arses of those who thought 2m would be a good idea in the UK, ‘cos we are thick.

This comes at a very convenient time for HMG, given that the voices for a relaxation are getting louder by the day. This is “The Science” that they will now be following.

Best on another planet.
Best of all, send the WHO to another planet, preferably an uninhabitable one.

Personally, i don’t have a issue with the “lockdown mug” promoted at the top of the page however, i know plenty who would.

Really, guys….?

I mean, come on…

Having that at the top of the page will definitely prove counter productive to some from Scotland or Wales checking the site for the first time…

Just saying…

What about a scottie in a kilt?

regarding the mugs and t shirts. super idea but i would be a little concerned about wearing something that looks like it is a 15 year old national front t shirt. Unfortunately the union flag and british bulldog imagery has long since been taken over and unlike the st george flag has not as yet been fully rehabilitated.

Apart from anything else , the global nature of this plandemic proves this goes far beyond notions of nationalism.

What we are really dealing with here is an Us vs Them scenario.

Surely…?

I’d go with a bulldog or St George’s cross without too much agonizing.

However, the image of ‘us’ wearing a mask defines the problem – i.e. poor us; whereas for a successful outcome, we should have something that portrays a/the solution !

Yes. I recoiled from the design for those reasons.

God help us the exec editor of the BMJ https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m2102

I am so fed up of the politicising of this by people who are meant to be impartial. If your blood pressure can stand it, here’s an extract:

“This is meant to be a moment of optimism, a green recovery, centred on the health of people and the planet (doi: 10.1136/bmj.m2077 , doi: 10.1136/bmj.m2076 ), backed by an effective system of testing and contact tracing and possibly informed by a public inquiry (doi: 10.1136/bmj.m2052 ”

People are living in 15th floor council flats in appalling conditions, being propelled into mass poverty, I’m all for saving the planet, but surely Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs dictates our order of priority?!

You’ll be unsurprised to learn he’s pro extinction rebellion, virtue signalling like mad about BLM (I’ve now watched so many videos of BLM telling white, suburban, SJWs to f**k off home, and they don’t need need white folks to speak for them, or meddle with things they don’t understand, I concur, the conflation of genuine grievances with identity politics will be the undoing of us all imho)

He’s also pro the new “independent” sage, that’ll be the one where one member thinks “ China has a socialist, collective system (whatever criticisms people may have) not an individualistic, consumer-oriented, profit-driven society badly damaged by 20 years’ of failed neoliberal economic policies.” https://twitter.com/SusanMichie/status/1238803749373652993 (you’ll be unsurprised to learn she’s terribly posh).

Oh and I am no fan of Cummings, for reasons I won’t repeat, but this seems a massive stretch “Transparency and political interference in scientific advice was controversial even before a trip to Durham by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s senior aide. It seems incredible that Dominic Cummings, who attended the government’s scientific advisory committee and plays a key role in the pandemic response, thought it reasonable to carry covid-19 from London to a region of lower infectivity and into a local hospital.”

Cue, deadly second wave!

For the Left Wing lurkers amongst us, I really recommend following Paul Embery, he’s a trade unionist, with his head screwed on, and he’s sharing some sensible and sane stuff, about all this, including about the disgraceful political opportunism of the left, and how it’ll come back and bite them, see for e.g. here https://unherd.com/thepost/supporters-of-emily-maitlis-should-be-careful-what-they-wish-for/

You can follow him on twitter here: https://twitter.com/PaulEmbery

Sadly many of these ‘prestigious’ health journals have hidden political agendas. So many so-called peer review studies are published just to be retracted afterwards.

I agree. So many people do too. Even in micro, one of my scottish friends is hugely pro SNP. I know for a fact he broke lockdown, went to stay with his brother as his mental health was up the creek (it was me who told him to go!), privately he’s sent me messages telling me he knows it’s a crock. His facebook is just FULL of pro Nicola, it’s all the Tories fault, deadly second wave, under funding of the NHS is to blame etc etc etc. I have never voted Tory, and I really don’t have a political axe to grind with all this, and when I call him out and say, ‘come on my friend, don’t be a hypocrite’ or I provide data again to show what he’s saying just isn’t factual, he just says, ‘sorry, couldn’t resist’. Which wouldn’t be so bad if we were just arguing about some trivial issue of the day, but this is people’s lives, democracy itself. He’s not a bad person, but he is most assuredly ‘split’ (in the psychological sense, in that at the time he does it, he’s unaware that is what he’s done).

The recent discredited ‘study’ on hydroxycloroquine in the Lancet is another example.

Editor of the Lancet is another one who deserves a closer look, he most assuredly has an axe to grind.

Editor of BMJ was a hospital doctor for 5 years and hasn’t practised for 23 years!
Kamran Abbasi is a doctor, journalist, editor, and broadcaster.
Following five years in hospital medicine, in various medical specialties such as psychiatry and cardiology, he worked at The BMJ from 1997 to 2005. He is now back at The BMJ in a new role as executive editor for content, leading the journal’s strategic growth internationally, digitally, and in print.

Paul is a hot ginger warrior.
He’s a fireman too. Miaow. #lockdownthirst

I confess to a certain weakness for firemen

I live next door to one – do you want to buy my house

Only if I can accidentally set it on fire.

Sadly BecJT, we are not talking Kurt Russell in Backdraft

Firemen and male nurses.

Well…. not so much now I’ve seen them all dancing around on TikTok whilst old people die in the next room.

‘male’ nurses…….

Most nurses are women. It’s the type of work that lends itself to women. Similarly, scaffolding, refuse collecting and running FTSE100 companies is work that lends itself to men.

I’m guessing that’s irony/sarcasm?

Sadly there’s no accounting for sexuality As I’m a straight lady I only fancy the males

And yes, I qualify them as ‘male’ because they are relatively rare and I feel their ‘maleness’ should be celebrated in that context!

I used to get really annoyed when people referred to me as a ‘male’ nurse, I didn’t mind being called ‘Florence’ by my squaddie mates though…….

Just nurse will do

Winston…. are you married? <3

bless you, yes

You know that the infamous Sage terrify-them-all minutes recommended that vulnerable individuals should ‘if possible’ have their own private bathroom? Must have been a welcome piece of advice in tower blocks etc.

Talk about misplaced priorities:



Nothing about how the current situation is having a negative impact on them and their sector yet found the time to comment about something that didn’t happen here and nothing to do with us.

Wish there was an edit button. Here are the screenshots:

Sorry … ffs!

Exactly. Shan’t be visiting the Horniman when it reopens and won’t listen to Classic FM (have actually been boycotting them because of the hourly news bulletins and patronising adverts from the government and NHS).

I’d started listening to Classic FM as there didn’t appear to be as many gov’t “we’re all doomed” ads. But, after this, no more. Used to listen to LBC but the commentary was just getting hysterical (though I still like Nick Abbot as he at least takes the piss a little). Thought Steve Allen was totally irresponsible recently with his “It’s either six foot away, or six feet under” comment …

They did at one point and that’s why I stopped listening to them. They’re more bearable in the evenings when they focus on longer programmes without the news interrupting every hour. But after this no more.

Heard the gluey ad where a family makes granny’s favourite fudge AND (voice becomes positively syrupy) POSTS IT THROUGH HER LETTER BOX?
We now turn the sound off whenever the music stops.

“Blackout” exposing gay black people is not the way forward. I’m getting down on two knees in protest

I happen to agree that the BLM have a right to organise in the states, but the hijacking of genuine grievances by white SJWs and the dishonest conflation of identity politics is just unforgiveable in my view (and actually is just more of the same, the black community do not need white people to speak for them, that’s kinda the point! Even in ‘solidarity’ it’s still the centering of white concerns, it’s causing a great deal of anger).

You’ve raised good points here. What angers me is how this has been hijacked here when it has nothing to do with us. Instead of getting worked up over how this situation is gradually destroying our way of life and economy, they’re getting worked up over something that has nothing to do with us in order to virtue signal and play to the narrative of orange man bad and America is racist.

again it is the MSM and BBC who are hyping this up with footage, interviews etc . Just been to shop (still some masks out there) and caught Radio 4 programmed interviewing 3 english black mothers about how they and their children are handling all these reports – so extending the BBC meme that everyone in UK is concerned about USA and the small racism problem it has and how no doubt we in england are all similarly racist. Yet where if the same level of reporting on other events around the world? . China and its racism to Uighar muslims, Muslim countries and their persecution of christians (and also other muslims) etc etc . Hardly a sign, But that does not go with the narrative of USA bad, USA under Trump worse than Stalin and Hitler combined, that they perpetuate

hadnt seen the Classic FM thing above .. Sh*t… i just cannot believe the triteness of that. I agree that there is an underlying concern and racism should not be tolerated anywher. But that notice!! Again as i said above .. what about all the other injustices in the world. Why pick on this one. They just cannot watch a bandwagon (or should that be a string quartet wagon (boom boom!!)) go past without jumping on it.
Next it will be thursday – applause for the NHS. Friday applause for the BLM rioters.

Exactly. As Brendan O’Neill pointed out, the same tactics were used against the yellow vest protesters in France…not a peep. China against the Uighurs, gays being persecuted in some African and Muslim countries, violence against women India….all deafening silence. We can go on but they ain’t interested.

The Guardian is bad for that sort of thing. My father-in-law complains about their heavy coverage of the USA which I agree. I always find it odd – for a paper that dislikes America they sure are obsessed with the country.

I know, I don’t really blame kids for being young and idealistic, it’s kinda the job description when you are 17 and righteous (we’ve all been there), but I do take issue with the naked, cynical political opportunism in play, both with BLM and with Lockdown.

Hear, hear. And how they swallow all this uncritically without checking other stories or looking at the nuances.

Worse for me because imo BLM and antiracism are actively evil, promoting anti-white racism and using dishonest, shroudwaving propaganda to try to bully and browbeat people into accepting their dangerous agenda.

When they parade the latest incidence of violence, with their self-serving and prejudiced assumptions about it and their dishonest misrepresentations of context, they are exactly like the coronapanickers parading some tragic death that is only peripherally, possibly related to covid to try to exaggerate the risks and portray anyone who resists their agenda as a heartless supporter of the deaths of innocents.

The leaders of movements like BLM are emotionally manipulative, politically damaging, whippers up of hatred and violence, and the followers are deluded naive fools, or people who just like having an excuse to justify personal aggression and violence.

Coronapanic and BLM – in this sense, two cheeks of the same basic societal arse, to coin a phrase.

Can you please ( if atall possible) provide a link to the WHO’s latest advice on mask wearing.? Cant seem to find anything….. Thanks.

Two links have been posted further up the comments section.

Thanks, looked but can find nothing ….I’d like to mention this latest advice to others but cant without legitimate reference…shame.

Take a look at this WHO page.

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/when-and-how-to-use-masks

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1267477040107671553

This briefing (yesterday) appears to be where it came from

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.25.20113050v1

New York Study

“Statewide cross-sectional seroprevalence study, conducted April 19-28, 2020 Tested 15,101 adults
entering stores(12.5%) were reactive using a validated SARS-CoV-2 IgG
estimated cumulative incidence through March 29 was 14.0% (95% CI: 13.3-14.7%), corresponding to 2,139,300 (95% CI: 2,035,800-2,242,800) infection-experienced adults.
higher among Hispanic/Latino (29.2%, 95% CI: 27.2-31.2%), non-Hispanic black/African American (20.2% 95% CI, 18.1-22.3%), and non-Hispanic Asian (12.4%, 95% CI: 9.4-15.4%) adults than non-Hispanic white adults (8.1%, 95% CI: 7.4-8.7%, p<.0001)
Conclusions and Relevance: Over 2 million adults were infected through late March 2020, with substantial variations by subpopulations. As this remains below herd immunity thresholds, monitoring, testing, and contact tracing remain essential public health strategies.”
14% pos in the end of March. Must be even higher if we did the test one month later in May.
Implies also that the IFR in New York about 0.3% and not 1 % as stated earlier
Interesting is the last phrase which I think is highly controversial now with multiple publications suggesting lower thresholds herd immunity due to cellular immunity in a big part of population.
But the narrative with TTT must be put up as much as possible otherwise the house of cards would be crushing down.

Losing someone is always bad. But….
Will she set up a memorial for the tens of thousands who die of influenza every year?
https://twitter.com/BBCBreakfast/status/1267725890789638144?s=19

Off topic but I look at the worldometer every day daily infections are about 100000 but deaths have been steadily falling 3000 yesterday know this will be far from accurate but its interesting all the same.
Also Brazil has done nearly 1 million tests half of which were positive an incredible amount compared to other countries there must be millions that have had it in Brazil I would imagine.

If you look on that site at the daily deaths graph for the whole world, it peaked a while ago and the shape of the curve looks a lot like the shape of the curve in every other country.

My mother called me this weekend to inform me that my uncle had passed away, this was of no great surprise as he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer a while ago and his condition had been getting worse resulting in him being admitted to hospital last week, the cancer had spread from his pancreas into most of his major organs and he had been given literally days to live
What was surprising was the cause of death on his death certificate, yes you have guessed it – COVID 19
Apparently in the 8 or 9 days that he had been in hospital before his death he had been given no less than 3 tests for COVID 19!!
Why would you waste money on testing someone in his early eighties with terminal cancer once never mind three times?
Apparently his first 2 tests came back negative and his last test which was taken the day before he died came back positive so it was an “official” COVID 19 death.
This death of an 82 year old man with terminal cancer in all of his major organs who had literally one day to live when he tested positive is now on the statistics as a COVID death.
When this all over we need to demand an enquiry into this kind of stuff and people need to lose their jobs and cosy pensions at the very least

I have no words

Outrageous. Fraudulent. If this happens often the whole death statistics is in grave doubt. And the whole sham response of the government is based upon such figures.

It is obviously fraudulent but the problem is that my Aunt or my cousins, who are only ones who can challenge the cause of death, are not going to do this because they have just lost their husband and father and want to move on with their grieving process. The doctors know very well they are not going to be challenged in these cases.
By the way, they now have a funeral to look forward to with only a maximum of 10 mourners and no wake

That’s how they get away with it year in and year out. Death requires a lot of paperwork and emotional processing, so mourners are rarely in a position to protest. Those who do protest must have the impetus of extreme anger to fuel them.

We know it happens often, if only from anecdotal evidence. But the whole disgusting business needs to be investigated.

It’s clear than those in the system are trying to screw with us by inflating the numbers to the highest possible. It’s pretty obvious why really, they’ve never been adored like they are now and they don’t want it to end. Every additional number keeps this going a little longer.

There is no comparison with other countries because all countries treat cases so differently, unfortunately a combination of our health service and media mean we are going to be the last to get out of this mess in Europe by some way, and our numbers are going to show how right they all were, and how wrong we are.

The people ordering these tests are like those who collaborated with the Germans in war time France – quislings. Plus a bit of Gestapo.

I believe the Norwegians knew what to do with their quislings; our snowflakes, not so much.

‘people need to lose their jobs and cosy pensions at the very least’ – so true : but they won’t!

This is where I struggle to believe this is not some great conspiracy to usher in george Orwell’s world. This is so obviously doing everything to pad the numbers what else can you believe

This is truly disgusting.
I wonder if any of you are wealthy enough to do a Simon Dolan, club together and launch a mass court case.

It might come out through the judicial review. Can only hope.

If an illness or anything else is deadly and dangerous, you should never have to resort to dishonesty to show this. If people are being added to coronavirus dishonesty by including people who have not died of coronavirus, this raises two questions. Firstly, if coronavirus is so dangerous with a high fatality rate, why is it necessary to inflate death figures by including dishonestly people who didn’t have coronavirus? Secondly, why is the government exaggerating the coronavirus threat? I want a full investigation into how coronavirus deaths have been counted.

It’s all nonsense anyway. If they made flu a notifiable disease deaths from other causes in years gone by would take a sudden drop.

Day whatever of the global takeover, the News from the Pictish Underground

Here in the continuing tyranny of Socialist Republic of Scotland Citizen Sturgeon has banned Irn Bru, Pints of Lager, Buckfast, microwave burgers from the Garage and Soor Plooms. Space Raiders, Strawberry Milk and Wethers Originals are to be banned from Monday the 11th so make sure you stock up before they are no longer available.
Oor Wullie and the Broons have been banned from social media along with Pigeon Fanciers, Patchwork Quilt Makers, Van Morrison fans and Historical Reenactment Societies. Van Morrisons fans feeling particularly aggrieved because old Van was preparing to release a new album of songs about lost youth, fucking and how he’s sick of this whole thing and just wants to go to the pub, play Draughts and pick up women. They claimed it was gonna be as good as Astra Weeks. The whole problem being Van’s song Brown Eyed Girl is racist and sexist under new Hate Speech Legislation dreamt up by Citizen Sturgeon. She claims libidinous attitudes towards fun, drinking, dreams of youth and a longing for a return to simpler times won’t keep people safe. They need to be sterile, cold, harsh and about as sexy as twenty stone woman riding an electric shopping trolley full of no name brand fizzy juice, frozen chips, Extra Large Nighttime Sanitary Pads and Chat Magazines. Van ‘the Man’ and his fans are now finding out that he ain’t ‘the man’ after all, Nicola is.
This years 12th of July Billy Boys March has applied to the Parade Licence Board for permission to march, observing the mandatory face mask and distance requirement off course. Orange Man Ian Paisley citing new technology in the prevention of spittle flying from the ends of a Flute reducing the chance of those splattered with infected sputum catching covid19 by nearly 95%. They’re still waiting to hear back from the Allowable Music Committee if the popular singalong “The Mustache My Father Wore” is hate speech but have been told that in all likely hood it is.
On a brighter note with no football being played Scotland haven’t slipped further down the world rankings and are still 126th in the world just behind The Peoples Democratic Everything is GenderBalanced and Trans Friendly Black Lives Matter Nation of Special Snowflakes and ahead of Tibet but to be fair to Tibet China has banned them from playing football so it’s gonna very hard to improve their league position

More reports soon.

Keep it up. Brill.

Some years ago in Scotland, I saw a sign in a public loo urging people to phone a designated number to inform on anybody they thought might be smoking in one of the cubicles.
A foretaste of things to come.

First they came for the smokers …

Never been a smoker but have never been bothered by smokers either. Smoking bans were the final nail in the coffin for lots of pubs.

Scandalous, everyone knows you don’t smoke in a toilet cubicle that’s where junkies go to OD.

Didn’t say anything about snitching on junkies. So presumably shooting up was considered ok.

The bad guys make even more money from heroin than they do from tobacco.

Looks like the Spanish government are preparing to throw the sainted health service under the bus and shift blame for their own failures. La Razon reports that a note has been sent to La Princesa hospital in Madrid querying their criteria for treatment, triage procedures, use of ventilators and access to ICUs at the height of the pandemic in March. This has been met with “indignation and rage” by the medical profession who have defended their actions pointing out the lack of preparation and resources in hospitals due to government inaction. Interestingly, they have claimed that the condition of many who sought medcal attention worsened while in emergency rooms of hospitals which, in turn, increased demand for ICU beds. The criteria for ICU admissions were determined by the “palbable lack of adequate materials provided by the Ministry of Health before and after the declaration of the state of alarm”.

Paulito, I hear that the Spanish government intend to extend the emergency measures in the country for another 4 weeks. I also understand that they have been using the emergency measures to force through legislation that is unrelated to C19.

Do you have any insight as to why the Spanish population are accepting this?

For those who haven’t seen it, I spotted this chart posted on Hector Drummond’s site recently. Based on NHS figures, it seems to offer a compelling slam-dunk regarding the futility of the lockdown suggesting that, as of May 26th, the number of fatalities among the under-60s with no pre-existing health conditions, is a statistically-inconsequential 279.

However, adding up all the figures included on the chart results in a total of 25,830 which, obviously, falls way short of the 40,000-or-so figure we currently have for UK, Covid-related deaths.

Can anyone explain the whereabouts of the missing 14,000 or so?

This matches (almost) Swedenborg info above showing belarus with 20x less deaths per million than the uk. I’ll repost his info here

swedenborg
swedenborg
4 hours ago
Boris Johnson UK versus Alexander Lukashenko Belarus.

Belarus seems to just have passed the peak of infection but still longer time to go than UK but looking very good compared to UK.

https://www.covibes.org/public/Belarus

Test/1 mil UK 63158 Belarus 58561
Cases/1mil UK 4072 Belarus 4593
Deaths/1mil UK 575 Belarus 25
Not bad for a definite non-lockdown country. Had its ice hockey, football and military parades.
And 20 times less death than UK. And the dictator will not expect a 10 % BNP contraction and he didn’t have his population in house arrest

They are most likely saying if person X dies of heart attack CV will not be listed as cause of death. Where as here in the uk they will be.

Nicola Sturgeon is now threatening to tighten the lockdown after mass outbreaks of naughtiness over the weekend. And you thought BoJo was bad. The mentality of our aggressive mollycoddler ruling class! People are breaking the rules!!! I know, let’s make the rules stricter, and then nobody will break the rules. Alas, this is what we get with a toy town parliament, the power to micromanage, but not to govern, and accountability in the same way your town council is accountable, ie none

Break the rules. Break them with impunity.

I’m very grateful for the existence of this site and feel uplifted by all the comments. The early days of this lockdown were confusing but it became apparent very quickly that the whole thing was being manipulated for maximum effect, i.e terrorising the population. It was easy to see, when the deaths numbers were being reported, that it was all being inflated , manouvered and positioned to make it look like an absolutely awful killer disease.
What has been gobsmacking is the sheer obedience of the public. Yes government, no government, three bags full. We will comply. The virus is deadly. Lives must be saved. Clap for the NHS. Kneel and worship. The economy can be sorted later. Look at me, I’m wearing a mask and gloves, aren’t I a good, community-minded and caring person? Not like that monster over there who’s got no mask and refuses to stand in a spaced queue. They ought to be arrested. let’s dob in our neighbours for walking the dog more than once a day.
The list is endless. We must not allow the government to wear us down to the point where we literally beg them to end the whole thing by agreeing to ANY terms….any terms at all, and we all know what they would be. Like many here, and I think of Poppy especially, I have family that I cannot visit….they’re in Wales and thus behind the new iron curtain that no Englishman or woman may cross. Not seen them since January, and yes it hurts enormously. But somehow we’ve got to stand firm.
I will not join the mask culture; I will let my hair grow and will take my chances with my teeth. No way will I visit any hair salon or dentist looking like something out of a porno movie.

If course we all agree.
But when life returns to normal, WHICH IT WILL, we’ll discover that all these zombies were closet sceptics all through and were never really taken in. Sez they.

Boris Johnson UK versus Alexander Lukashenko Belarus.

Belarus seems to just have passed the peak of infection but still longer time to go than UK but looking very good compared to UK.

https://www.covibes.org/public/Belarus

Test/1 mil     UK 63158 Belarus 58561
Cases/1mil    UK  4072   Belarus  4593
Deaths/1mil UK     575  Belarus     25
Not bad for a definite non-lockdown country. Had its ice hockey, football and military parades.
And 20 times less death than UK. And the dictator will not expect a 10 % BNP contraction and he didn’t have his population in house arrest.

I think the most pertinant metric will be excess deaths as Belarus may not be bothering to document all CV related deaths.

I’m inclined to think their excess death figures will be proportionately less than countries that had stricter and longer restrictions.

I’m also of the opinion that lockdown and other measures exarcerbated the problem and actually increased the risk of people dying from it.

I agree, and Belarus will be a very interesting test case. Assuming, as currently seems likely, it comes out at least no worse than the UK, it will be good ammunition for criticism and even derision aimed at our government and our coronapanicking elites.

They will try to weaken the force of the inherent criticism by claiming that figures from ~Belarus are unreliable, but it’s pretty implausible that a country like Belarus could successfully hide the kind of medical disaster the bedwetters constantly predict.

Lukashenko might fiddle with the deaths (like Johnson in the other direction) but hiding 20 times higher deaths would be difficult. Belarus is a more like Mussolini led rather than a totalitarian state The population is highly educated and catastrophic figures of Covid-19 deaths would be difficult to hide.

I’ve been wearing a Belarus T-shirt as my own small protest against our very own tin-pot dictator here in the SNPeoples’ Republic!

Their death rate per million is about 5% of the uk.
That would tie in with the data that the vast majority of the uk figures are when people have died of heart attack cancer etc. But they also had a cough so the medics are instructed to put it on the death certificate.
The actual deaths FROM CV are very low

Exactly. Italy revised their death figures down to 12% – and they had it particularly bad. 5% genuine covid deaths sounds about right.

This may be a very interesting read on 5th June:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/analysisofdeathregistrationsnotassociatedwithcoronaviruscovid19englandandwalesjanuary2020tomay2020

Bookmarked it.

Got the t shirt. Looking forwatd to my trip to Sainsburys next week!

A few weeks ago, Boris was begging me for my vote. Now he “instructs” me on where I may stay. What a w*nker.

Put my question on gov.uk/ask for the hell of it:

“Everyday more and more research shows that lockdown was an over-reaction and unnecessary and cannot be proved to have saved one life while the collateral damage deaths are rising, economic destruction continues unabated and health of the nation collapses mentally and physically. The NHS has been saved, Other leaders have apologised to their nations. No 2nd wave on opening up with no over the top “new normal” precautions. What is going on with this country and who’s orders are you following as it’s not the “science”?”

Maybe a knock at the door early one morning and off to the re-eductaion camp because that is where I feel this is heading.

I have been told by people “oh, you don’t want to question as you never know what will happen to you.”

Is this how low this country has sunk, no questioning of authority as the people are frightened of the government?

I agree. The collective shrugging of shoulders and general all-round bloody wimpyness is truly, truly depressing. I’ve said it before, I feel like an alien in my own country, like I’m screaming and no-one is listening. Thank god for LS!

Well there are more voices than this website now… the press are seeding stories more rapidly, but if you want a huge laugh head over to Youtube and the comments section of daily death update news conferences streamed by BBC news and Sky News.

Hearteningly, it’s now 95% anti-lockdown now…No holds barred! Yeah there are a few going a wee bit too far with the 5g/lizard head stuff but’s it great for a laugh and your soul.

And…. WHAT a change to merely 3 weeks ago. The evisceration is deafening.

If there is some sort of virtue signalling police on Youtube they’ve now given up..

I wonder… could the wokest of wokey dokes Facebook be next? I somehow doubt it sadly

It is, very sadly, among a majority of people.

We just need to question more loudly and persistently to make up for them.

I sometimes feel that the gov’t needs to bring back conscription in the hope that it’ll put a bit of backbone into people. Unfortunately the military are on the same path as all our other institutions. We need a radical overhaul from NHS to education to the military and beyond. A huge cutting of regulations when we leave the EU so that small and medium sized businesses can thrive alongside cuts to the bureaucracy, which burdens our nation in an ever increasing spiral of salaries and pensions.
Lots of work to be done by the Common Law party :).

This from Reuters (whose reporting has been as useless as the BBCs).

Headline: Distancing and masks cut COVID-19 risk, says largest review of evidence
Link: https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-protection/distancing-and-masks-cut-covid-19-risk-says-largest-review-of-evidence-idUKKBN2383T6

Read a bit further into the article:
“ The researchers noted that the findings, while comprehensive, have some limitations for the current pandemic since most of the evidence came from studies of SARS and MERS.”

Scaremongering headlines rule, ok!

Day whatever of the global takeover, the News from the Pictish Underground ….

Daylight Hours, day? not sure, awaiting press conference at 5pm to tell us.

The Pictish Woman’s Guild of Daisy Chain Makers have been declared a terrorist organisation. Groups of “terrorists” have been seen in parks, fields even in gardens collecting daisies to be turned into frivolous items like bracelets, neck chains and head bands. “We don’t need people relaxing and enjoying nature when nature is the enemy” said the Spokesperson for the We’re All Enjoying This Lockdown Aren’t We! Children, Committee for Public Health. “These people are siding with the dark force that is trying to kill us” they continued . “Nature must be stopped. Anyone found making daisy chains will be treated in the same way people sculpting bushes, pruning roses and using non GM fertiliser like horse dung and organic compost with an extended period of detention in front of BBC News 24 in while locked in the SECC”.
A cat is missing, it’s Black and answers to the name Sushi. Last seen shitting in Citizen Strugeon’s garden.
Brown Sauce will no longer be allowed under stringent new laws regulating what you can have on your chips. Obviously Brown Sauce is racist and Tomato Sauce is being kept under close scrutiny in case Native American Indians start to feel uncomfortable. Most likely it will be banned. Better safe than sorry.

On a lighter note Citizen Sturgeon will be issuing permits for those showing the right kind of attitude allowing them to praise her magnificent handling of what is the greatest threat to humanity since the time the Wombles caught BSE from eating their own Brains and had to be burned on huge funeral pyres. Great Uncle Bulgaria is still at large. A reward of a state haircut for anyone giving information leading to his capture is being offered

more reports soon……

State haircut, lol.

Can I have a supreme leader back and sides please…?

I’ll have a chief of secret police crewcut …

Can’t come soon enough! There are people in Scotland trying to LIVE! They aren’t allowed to do more than exist!

Brilliant, keep it up.

Biker,

You and I were obviously brought up on the same diet of TV, Blue Peter, Roy Castle, etc.

Do you think that the Wombles will be declared as an underground , terrorist group next?

Well, they did do their wombling free.

This latest study is a disaster for rational responses to respiratory diseases.

Risk of infection could double if 2-metre rule reduced, study finds

The problem is that in identifying and quantifying (however spuriously and speculatively) the tiny increase in risk from closeness, it plays to the inherent irrationality in the current response to disease (see the essay “The Hyper-Rationality of Crowds: COVID-19 and the Cult of Anxiety” linked in the sidebar above) and allows people to insist that there is some degree of increased risk from reducing the distance.

The fact that it is a small increase in a tiny risk is irrelevant because the response is fundamentally irrational.

This study will cause real harm.

a) It’s from the WHO via the Gauudian
b) It’s a highly conveniently timed meta-study
c) Predominately SARS/Mers rather than cv19
d) Prof Linda Bauld to be added to our lists

Yes, all very valid points.

The problem is that we are not dealing with rationality here….

She (L Bauld) is also involved in tobacco control. Once a reptile, always a reptile.

Yon Linda Bauld is regularly on the telly, she’s a “go-to” talking heid for BBC Scoatland, always dispensing gloom and doom to the brainwashed populace up here. She must be solely responsible for at least 50% of the suicide rate up here since the CV19 panic started. Always appears with perfectly coiffeured hair, I wonder how that’s done. Have to stop myself smashing the screen every time. I’m sure she must have a hotline to Nickla to keep her up-to-date with every global doom-monger.

“The Lancet’s meta-analysis of observational studies across Covid-19 but also – predominately – Sars and Mers, highlights the potential consequences of a change.”

“However, the modelling also suggested that for every extra metre further away up to 3 metres, the risk of infection or transmission may halve.”

My emphasis.

The researchers also wade into the debate about face masks. Based on evidence from 10 studies involving 2,647 participants, they found that the risk of infection or transmission when wearing a mask was 3% compared with 17% when not wearing a mask, although they said the level of certainty was “low”. Similar benefits were found, also with low certainty , concerning wearing of protective eye coverings such as face shields, goggles and glasses.

My emphasis.



Yes, I’d spotted all the mights and perhapses. Unscrupulous use of stats, as per usual. Double what is already a low risk is still low.
The article resembles a colander full of red herrings.

Shameless fearmongering propaganda and an appalling piece of sloppy journalism (quite possibly intentionally sloppy!)

It would be nice if these articles cited the publications so you could go and examine what has actually been said.
I wish journalists would be more careful about percentages and deal with actual numbers. If you moved from 0.0001 to 0.0002, that’s a 100% increase, which looks absolutely terrifying if it’s something bad. The costs of keeping whatever it is to 0.0001 may be immense

Relative risk Vs. absolute risk. This is an old trick used by Pharma in reporting results of clinical trials.

Sweden has used one metre and now even Neil Ferguson admits they have done well!

Linda Bauld links to Edinburgh University which has links to? Guessed it – Bill Gates yet again. Nearly $750000 given to them in2013 for Purpose: to improve current global estimates of morbidity and mortality due to RSV–associated acute lower respiratory infections in young children

Good old Graun, keep the fear-porn going and keep collecting the Government-Media partnership fees! Anyway, for anyone, like me who missed the ‘Cult of Anxiety’ article in the sidebar I can thoroughly recommend it. The Old Man and I have been trying to explain the all-pervasive ‘Coronaphobia’ to ourselves and arguing about how best to try and reason with people who we know (nearly everyone, sadly) who is suffering from it.

‘Wilfred Thomas’ doesn’t offer any answers to that but his explanation of hyper-rationality is spot-on. His example: ‘People who are hyper-rational, [ ] just can’t let go of that slim statistical chance that they might be the one tragic case to die or suffer from X. They could be the special one. Their child could be the special one. Someone they know from down the road could be the special one. To them, this uncertainty – this sense that something might happen that they can’t control – is unbearable…’ fits several people we know.

What I don’t understand is how the O.M. and I missed out on it!! Anyway, many thanks, Mark for reminding us the article is on the site; I’d have been sorry to miss it.

You’re very welcome, Miriam. It’s a great article and as you say quite useful in an explanatory sense.

We’re working on how to share it without making things worse!

These will be the same people who play the lottery believing that it could be them.

Try telling them that this virus is like playing the lottery but the difference is that most people playing the virus lottery are actually winners.

Ferguson being questioned by some Lords sub-committee. Looked at the transcripts – made me furious – powder-puff questioning. God, I’d like to grill him properly, the smug little get!

Did I read correctly the False Prophet himself has admitted he can’t explain Sweden?

Where did you see that?

Not the same info but I found this in DM:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8379769/Professor-Lockdown-Neil-Ferguson-admits-greatest-respect-Sweden.html

LOL

I’ve been thinking about this “new normal” that is getting banded about everywhere. I am a shift manager at an international fast food restaurant. We are re opening shortly. The last two weeks I have inundated with zoom meetings and emails describing what new procedures we have to go through before we even arrive at work. We will have limited menu and a limit on the amount on people can order so that we can operate with skeleton staff.

Whilst most of us are happy to be back to work and are willing to have our temperature checked everyday and wear a mask, I’m not sure the shareholders will be happy about their lack of bonuses and dividends coming their way.

Whether you agree with it or not our company works by making as much money as possible with as little effort and cost to them as possible. Whilst the company I work for and many other national or international companies are happy at the moment to open reduced hours, limited menus etc. They won’t be happy for it to carry on for much longer. The shareholders will be getting the jitters, as they will have already eyed up their next holiday home in the Carribbean that they are wanting to purchase. I’m hoping they will be lobbying the government (both Westminster and Scottish) that this “new normal” won’t be normal for too long.

Business leaders have in general been wishywashy in their public response, probably for fear of being shamed on social media and the the TV and press. I hope in private they are screaming at the government to stop this madness.

Ditto with TPTB in the museums and heritage sector as well as arts and culture. As we stated above, the possiblity as to why they are silent is because of the fear of the media mob.

It’s harder with businesses because they will be tarred with the simplistic “people before profit” trope.

Anybody else enjoying scraping and scuffing their feet whilst placed on one of those ridiculous ‘stand here’ spots? I was thinking today about how their gluey impressions will remain on shop floors for years to come and children will ask ‘nanny what’s that spot on the floor?’ and I’ll say ‘that my dear is where your liberty and freedom were lost. Not on a battleground but on a supermarket floor.’

Remember to whack the perspex screens with your basket every time too… by accident of course

I’ve done that and I don’t bother with those spots on the floor.

I just creep further forward all he time and totally ignore the arrows.

I’ve just had this explanation from one of the Royal Parks engineers for high water consumption at St James’s Park:-
“Correction, it is irrigation. We have a sprinkler running overnight, as the shrubbery has been used as a toilet, and we are flushing it out.”
Can anyone advise on what bacterial infections could have been spread as a result of public toilets being closed, whether they are more dangerous than Covid-19?

My house backs onto a city park, and there has certainly been an increase in people using the bushes as a toilet, presumably because the public toilets are closed.

It was always an occasional issue when rough sleepers used the park overnight, but it’s much more evident now. Pretty unpleasant tbh, with toilet paper and old tampons littered around the paths in some places.

Yet another cost of lockdown that the advocates of this insanity will just brush off as “necessary” collateral damage..

Insanity and insanitary.

According to the Internet possible diseases could include hepatitis a, cholera, typhoid, salmonella, e coli, norovirus etc etc etc

There’s a sign in a housing area near the tube station where I live that waste from dogs can cause the plants to die. I believe the same is true with human waste which can lead to hepatitis A, cholera (possible rerun of the Great Stink of the 1850s) among others.

I’ve been watching with interest the protests/riots in the USA. It made me think of events such as the Arab Spring where MSM reported it as people rising up against oppression and it was our duty to encourage people to fight for freedom. After all, democracy is the epitome of all political systems, isn’t it?

Now the rioting may not be directly linked to oppression, but it does beg the question what is it when people rise up against oppression in a democracy? It can’t be because they are demanding something better because there is nothing better than democracy, is there?

It’s perhaps an interesting theoretical issue to discuss, but as far as any applicability to current events is concerned, I would have thought anyone who has been enlightened as to how modern mass and social media works by watching the coronapanic unfold would know not to take the “x spring” bollocks seriously.

Unrest in a country is generally termed a “spring” in that country when there is an agenda to be furthered by encouraging that unrest. Whether there is any objective merit in the unrest in question is absolutely a secondary consideration.

Do not confuse the riots in the USA with anti lockdown. I would hope that most people could see through that, it’s a push for a Marxist agenda, pure and simple and takes the focus away from ending lockdown and the misery it has caused

As the picture in Europe is still looking positive and the lifting of restrictions hasn’t caused significant issues, then surely we will be the same in 2-3 weeks? Including restaurants etc.

How would our government explain any gap in approach should the UK government say otherwise?

They wouldn’t have to explain it: most of the public are so pathetic, scared, short-sighted, the government can carry on covering their own a*ses indefinitely. So at the public enquiry they’ll be able to show just how hard they kicked that virus’s butt, and how they were responding to public pressure. All democratic, like.

It’s hard to see how they’ll get out of that one, though it will rely in part on this being pointed out by the media as a lot of the public seem profoundly uncurious as to what is happening elsewhere, or indeed here.

With a little luck, most/all places will reopen in the next couple of months. I think people who can work from home will still be strongly encouraged to do so, for a long time to come, to keep pressure off public transport, especially in London. Also hard to see how things like music festivals or mass spectator sport could work, though perhaps all-seat venues could be allowed to fill every fourth seat.

And hopefully people will be allowed to shag again.

HOWEVER we will have enforced social distancing and covid-safety madness everywhere and it will screw everything up.

I am not clear on the extent to which the covid-safety business is being imposed in Europe or elsewhere, but there is definitely some of it going on.

It seems fascinating to me that there must be many warriors against the virus who support the lockdown but who were caught ‘single’ when the shutters came down. Needless to say, they’re not going to be very attractive people, but are they not even slightly frustrated at their enforced celibacy?

Well I think there would be plenty who simply break the rules, and others for whom the fear or belief in following the rules is greater than other urges, though you wonder how long they would hold out.

The lockdown won’t apply to them. You’re forgetting that the cardinal tenet of leftism is hypocrisy.

Please be careful with your generalisations. I have ‘leftist’ tendencies as far as some policy making is concerned and I am neither a hypocrite nor do I support lockdown in any respect, as is pretty obvious, me being here and all that

So do I, but I’m willing to acknowledge that a good majority of today’s ‘lefties’ (once again, ” because I don’t believe they’re real lefties) are massive hypocrites.

Don’t think it’s a left-right issue. Do as I say, don’t do as I do, is the maxim of governments and power brokers everywhere and at all times.

It’s not a left-right issue until people make it one.

Sadly, people (generally on the ‘left’) are making it one.

No offence intended If it’s any consolation I’m equally rude about the right.

Apologies to all for going off topic (unless you believe everything about the lockdown is interconnected with what is happening worldwide and the lockdown is not an isolated event) but not seen Anonymous today or have I just not seen his posts?

Got sent this link from a 2015 interview that he would have found interesting given his views.

https://benjaminfulford.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dr.StrangeGates.mov

Can we get a letter template for demanding an immediate end to lockdown for our MPs/MSM so we can speed up the end of this & save lives & the economy ?

“ Stop Press: The WHO has changed its mind about wearing masks and now recommends against dong so. Let’s hope it doesn’t post its new guidance on YouTube because the company may be forced to remove it on the grounds that it contravenes the recommendations of… the WHO.”

Once again, we have a comment that alleges a change in WHO policy, while inferring that this change is recent. The norm in this column is to provide links to corroborate the stories, especially when an item is current news, but again, there is no link.

It is a change in WHO policy, widely reported.

If that were the case, it would be very simple to include a link . . . for Toby, and for you.

It would also be exceptionally easy for you to Google it as I just did. (Also the word ‘pilkunnussija’ when you get the chance).
It’s from this briefing yesterday https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1267477040107671553
Nobody is ‘quoting’ directly because nobody has transcribed it, apparently.

Applause on the broadening of ones vocabulary, have an uptick!

I don’t see tweets in my search results, thankfully. But again: this site is very liberal with its links. A link to this tweet or an explanation would have been in keeping with the way the rest of the information is presented on this page, particularly when readers here are more than likely using the information learned to spread the word of what’s really going on.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/06/02/architect-swedens-covid-19-plan-warns-uk-not-hold-vaccine/
—
“Historically, it’s not been that easy to produce vaccines for diseases – and this is a disease where the immunology seems to be quite complicated,” he said. “That’s usually not a good sign that the vaccine will work very well.”

He said countries should instead embrace sustainable, long-term measures designed to reduce transmission, because the virus “will stay with us for a substantial time, probably forever”.
—
I think it’s fair to assume social distancing could be with us for a while.

Only if we agree to it!

No-one seems to be mentioning that the ‘viral load’ is crucial in all of this and I have only seen one article – one – where a doctor in Lombardy (worst hit region in Italy I believe) says that there the viral load is virtually zero. So this bollocks about social distancing is pure propaganda. An exercise in social control – pure and simple – and the great British Public are making sure it works.

Unfortunately it seems that the objective of flattening the curve is morphing into nobody needs to die from this virus just because other countries managed to get a low death count.

It’s easy to see how The Spanish Inquisition and Salem Witch Trials happened. We may be more technologically advanced today but our brains don’t seem to have matured over time.

We don’t need social distancing or a vaccine. I won’t be taking it myself, and will vigorously oppose any attempt to make it compulsory, but I think the ChAdOx1 vaccine will actually probably work quite well. It doesn’t really matter if it does or not– if they get it through the trials, it doesn’t do too much harm, and they start shoving it in people’s arms then it will be an excuse for everyone to calm down.

History of vaccine development in general is not necessarily a good predictor as this is a new design of vaccine. The MERS version of it is already in human trials (I think they started in December 2019) and that’s a very similar virus and a very similar vaccine.

Flying sounds like it will be fun:

https://www.travelmole.com/news_feature.php?c=setreg&region=2&m_id=bvT_T_bm&w_id=37594&news_id=2042907

New guidance issued by the International Civil Aviation Organisation says passengers should have restricted access to toilets as airlines start to relaunch flights.

What is the obsession with toilets?

Surely, people wash their hands LESS when they’re not regularly going for a widdle? Funny how they were obsessed with hand washing a few weeks ago (possibly the only bit of valuable advice we’ve received) and now they’re denying people facilities which enable them to wash their hands.

Again, just evidence that these twats want to be seen to be ‘doing something’ when the advice is actually contradictory and goes against common sense.

I was very glad to find the lavvies in Oxford station very much open and stocked with soap over the weekend…

Mind you, sinks on all the planes that I have flown on are close to useless for significant hand-washing!

Read Toby’s comment on WHO advising not to wear masks. Was looking online but nothing could I find. Can anyone point me in the right direction to view this online?

Thanks

It was taken from this briefing yesterday
https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1267477040107671553
Which apparently nobody seems to have properly transcribed despite reporting on extensively (NB: I haven’t listened personally but this is the briefing everyone links to when quoting the ‘WHO flips on masks’ line)

I asked the same and and someone came up with https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/when-and-how-to-use-masks

Aaaah ok cool. You know what. I bet this ‘official advice’ on the website has never actually changed the whole time, and they’ve just been giving mixed verbal signals in briefings, flip-flop-flip-flop-flip-flop

Only briefing on CV19 you ever need to see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYUMQL5ABPw&feature=youtu.be

(First time post, so sorry to jump in to a conversation unannounced)

First of all, the introduction of this law is a deliberate strategy to make it easier to persuade the public that they should be able to come a little further out from their house arrest. Apparently, the thinking is that people got far too comfortable with the way the original rules said “you can do nothing except this small handful of things” and so it would be easier to relax things if the rules said “here is a definitive list of the things you can’t do.”

Of course, it probably would have been better if the government hadn’t run such an effective campaign of terrorizing the public into submission in the first place, or if they hadn’t set things up in so that everyone had their power to make decisions for themselves taken away from them (and most apparently found they liked it), or they hadn’t designed a world where there was no longer any need to make any of the hundreds of assessments of personal risk that are part of normal everyday life for human beings, but that ship sailed ten weeks ago.

The other thing to say, though, is that enforceability is exactly not the point. Great that the police can’t come bursting into our bedrooms (yet) if we’re shagging someone who doesn’t live with us, but this strikes at the very core of being a human being. The drive to procreate and to be intimate with other people is absolutely fundamental. To legislate very specifically to say that one adult can’t enter, invited, into the house of another in order to have consensual sex is staggering. It’s hard to imagine a greater assault on our freedoms. And it’s almost impossible to imagine that any British government (except perhaps Oliver Cromwell) could possibly have considered it and even harder to believe that most of the population seems prepared to accept it.

I’m about to lose friends over this, I think. The fact that people whose intelligence I used to respect see this as an excuse to make jokes along the lines of “how’s Boris going to get up to his usual tricks now?” instead of being spittle-flecked with rage, leaves me… well… even more spittle-flecked with rage.

Where is the press? Where is the opposition? Where are any of the usual checks that should be stopping the government from getting away with this utterly unacceptable overreach of their authority?

This was supposed to be a reply to another post above on the new “anti-sex law”. It got orphaned somehow and probably make less sense now. There’s another one of those around somewhere, I think.

It is as you say an assault on our basic freedoms and turns on its head the whole foundation of UK law…In contrast to most European countries, where the people can only do what is *specifically allowed* according to their law, we have always been free to do *anything* UNLESS specifically prohibited by law.. But no longer…

Outright, shameless media and government dishonesty? (Whodathunk, eh?)

The garden police! Officers in England can now order people to leave a friend’s backyard if they are breaching lockdown rules – as government bans paddling pools and having sex with someone from another house
This purports to be the Mail’s interpretation of the new dictats that apply to us (in England) from yesterday. The report clearly states in several places that we are “required” to stay 2m apart.

Buried in the middle of the piece is a reference to the police “previously” having admitted they have no power to enforce this, but it appears the Mail,wants to leave the opportunity for people to assume that this inability to enforce does not still apply.

Unless there are regulations of which I am unaware, there appears still to be no basis for enforcing this 2m rule in the general social activity they are discussing. So I have to assume that the Mail (like the government) is intentionally seeking to mislead people into believing that they are forbidden by law from getting closer than 2m from each other.

Obviously it’s too much to hope for that anyone at the Mail would feel in the slightest ashamed of this open dishonesty and deception. After all, it’s for the Greater Good. What else are journalists and journalism for, if it’s not to encourage people to obey authority, by any means possible?

There’s no mention of social distancing or 2 metres in the Coronavirus Act. It’s not the law. It will be “enforced” as a series of Health & Safety rules governing businesses and other establishments etc etc.

The media keep doing this.

There was a story in the BBC about people who had been asked to shield at home being “allowed out” now. There was never a law about this – it was just advice. I wrote to the BBC about this, waiting a reply.

Yes, I think I remember you suggesting writing to the BBC about this point a week or two ago. You’re right to do so, and I should as well, but I gave up on the BBC in exasperation years ago.

“ The media keep doing this .”

Indeed. Clearly no accident or oversight.

Likewise the government make no effort to distinguish between advice and laws, and in fact appear to intentionally try to confuse the two..

paddling pools???? Despite the low risk of children being infected and especially outside?

You don’t get it, m’dear. Children ENJOY paddling pools.
Can’t be having that.

I’m not sure if I dare watch the Dispatches programme on Channel 4, this Wednesday evening.

We know it will be highly critical of the government’s response to Covid-19, but I suspect for all the wrong reasons. My guess is they will say the following:

– The government should have locked down earlier, most likely 1st March.
– The government should have used track and trace like they did in South Korea.
– The government should have stopped inbound flights from certain “high risk” countries, especially China.
– Airports should have been screening passengers on arrival, but didn’t.

But I have a feeling they won’t talk about the any of the REAL issues of lockdown, specifically:

– The colossal and completely unnecessary economic damage.
– The non Covid-related deaths I.E. the suicides, the withdrawn cancer screenings and treatments, the two million cancelled operations, those panicked into not attending A&E for serious conditions such as heart attacks, strokes and other life-threatening illnesses.
– The scandal of discharging elderly patients into care homes without testing them for Covid-19. Refusing to accept the elderly into hospital for treatment unless they met a specific threshold.
– The scandal of adding Covid-19 onto death certificates without testing. Adding Covid-19 when it was clearly NOT the cause of death.
– The government’s ignoring of SAGE advice NOT to lock down.
– The SAGE minutes which recommended tactics of psychological manipulation to ensure forced compliance from the general public.
– The passing of draconian laws which faced no parliamentary scrutiny.
– The suspension of people’s liberty, forced closure of businesses, forced home imprisonment.
– The forced closure of schools and huge educational cost to children.

I guess we shall see tomorrow night at 9pm…

Yes – I think your summary saves me from wondering if I should have bothered!

Don’t do it, it will make your head hurt and delete your energy reserves.

I’ve just been speaking with my mother this morning (a GP, just shy of 70, who never got round to retiring). One thing she told me that I hadn’t realised – if a patient dies and they have previously tested positive for Covid, the current rules GPs have been given say that you _have_ to put Covid on the death certificate. Even if the patient actually died of something else and you know it. Even if they have recovered from Covid and then died of something completely unrelated, weeks later. So this isn’t laziness on the part of the medics (to be honest, I’d assumed that was exactly what it was) or individual doctors trying to skew the numbers to exaggerate “the crisis” (though I’m sure some of them are delighted to be able to do that as well). This is policy.

Absolutely disgusting.

1) “Protect the NHS” from the patients who paid for it by ejecting actual covid patients out into environments where they will spread it amongst more vulnerable people. But as long as they’re not in hospitals, that’s great!
2) “Protect the NHS” from the patients who paid for it by cancelling all other treatments, so it becomes the NCS rather than the NHS.
3) Justify all this “protecting of the NHS” at the expense of its patients by fraudulently inflating the covid death rate using various nefarious practices.
4) Codify the “protecting of the NHS” further and further into law using diktats passed quickly and with no accountability, henceforth stripping every citizen in the land of their basic rights and freedoms in its name.

I think you are spot on RDawg,no-one in media or government wants to deal with the real issues.I’d better not watch,I can’t afford a new TV just now !.

…plus the new ‘night curfew’ for the purposes of track & trace…

More from my world of travel:

UK travel businesses expect to make up to 60% of staff redundant if quarantine measures are introduced next Monday.

https://www.ttgmedia.com/news/six-out-of-10-travel-staff-redundant-if-quarantine-introduced-poll-finds-23264

I will try a number to that but it will be high

Half of those who responded said they expected future bookings to fall by 80-100%, while 71% said they expected to make “almost two-thirds” of staff redundant. Another 28% said they may cease trading altogether.

This is sad. It’s just sad. WTF ARE THEY DOING TO OUR COUNTRY

Saving lives. Oh, wait…

If there was any sanity, the government would cave on this. If they don’t, then the conclusion is that all other business are fucked – hospitality, entertainment, etc. If they can destroy tourism, they will have no qualms about the rest. I predict a riot over the next few months, especially when those furlough payment cease.

P and O have just informed us they are cancelling all cruises until October 15th. We were due to go in September and have paid in full but if we want our money back they have said it will take up to 60 days! They are prepared to offer us 125% towards the value of another cruise next year but having read the proposals for flying with everyone muzzled, we really don’t fancy it.

I don’t blame you. If anything they are suggesting as measures on aircraft and in airports come to light, it will be a most unpleasant experience.

On the refund side of things, you may get it sooner if the staff numbers go up now businesses are starting to reopen (if they still have jobs that it). TUI are currently receiving 1 million calls a day on a skeleton staff. I don’t work for TUI but run a small travel agency. We are running backwards as each cancellation is refunded. It is kind of like a coffee shop having to refund every coffee they sold over the past 12 months.

You will get your money back and by law, it should have been within 14 days as per the Package Travel Directive. That directive however, did not account for the collective madness and shut down of the world and refunds in that timescale are impossible given the volumes even with full staff levels.

Interested whether you think companies like P&O will survive, if they emerge from this panic into a world of significantly reduced ongoing business for years to come? I suppose the financially strongest will continue, but there must surely be a big shake-up coming.

Personally I’d hold off from booking a holiday until after winter. If the virus doesn’t come back in full force then it will be a good sign that things could go back to normal.

If the virus comes back then at least we’ll see how countries respond.

Will depend for me on whether an ‘immunity passport’ is required for travel..

How does any travel fit in with the new law forbidding people to sleep anywhere other than their home?

Cardiff airport (I flew from there a couple of times) just sent me a questionnaire asking me what measures would make me feel ‘safe’ as a air passenger.
I ticked ‘not at all important’ for all of them and, in the comments space, told them to ditch all that shit and get back to normal.
Expect I’m in the minority among the bedwetters, but at least there’s me.
And you, too, maybe?

At least they asked you and you were able to express your disdain for the idiocy!

Some good news: UK weekend briefings to stop …

https://twitter.com/NahasNewman/status/1267788683391971329/photo/1
https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2020/jun/02/covid-19-is-a-second-wave-inevitable-podcast
At least interesting now coming into MSM. 20% of infected are behind 80% of infections. Perhaps this new fixation on super spreaders can get us out from lockdown with a fig leaf for UK gov.
In the first twitter is mentioning an opinion piece in New York Times from a Professor in Hong Kong that you should only concentrate all efforts on super spreaders. Unfortunately, the article is behind paywall but the essence is in the twitter. The second link is Prof Heneghan EBM Oxford in an interview about possibility of second wave also high-lightning the importance of super spreaders. The interview is quite good considering it happened in MSM

But how the hell do you identify a super spreader until after the fact?

I don’t like this angle even if it’s founded in reality. I foresee gangs of masked cretins running after people without masks screaming “KILL THE SUPER SPREADEERRRRRRRRRS!!”

But… that’s how I know when to start drinking on a Saturday!

From the Telegraph “Lockdown measures will be reviewed every four weeks – instead of every three – under new Government plans.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock, in a written ministerial statement, said the maximum review period will change from 21 days to 28 days.
“This will allow decisions to align more closely with the period of time necessary to assess the impact of previous changes on key data feeds, including the R (infection) rate.
“The Government will also keep all the measures under continual review and will account to Parliament on an ongoing basis.”
So that’s another week of misery

I read this and just thought FML! They should be reviewing the data more often. 3 weeks was bad enough.

“will account to Parliament on an ongoing basis”. Well that’s a first.

Interesting though, it does say the “maximum review period” will change. And “The Government will also keep all the measures under continual review…”. Put together it’s not clear what all this means, but could it be that it’s not really a tightening of the measures at all?

Clutching at straws probably, but straws is all we’ve got atm

AQs Dr. John Lee says https://delingpole.podbean.com/e/dr-john-lee/ the R rate is just another form of modelling and means diddly squat