2020-10-01

I am extremely bored with the media questions at press conferences! Whatever happened to investigative journalism?

Dear reporters and journalists, may I suggest the following please for the next press conference:

Please can you provide evidence that the lockdown worked, and explain why you feel future ones will work, in spite of the fact Whitty stated we peaked before the first one?

Where is the proof even that social distancing works? We are expected to accept this as a given, but why?

Please explain the false positive rate in laymen terms to the general public?

What would stop you from introducing another lockdown, and then during lockdown, reducing the cycle threshold of the PCR test, then claiming victory? Will you report on the exact date these changes are made to reporting standards?

Why do you choose the wrong statistics about Sweden? Rather than comparing to neighbouring countries, and bleating on about deaths per capita, how do you explain their excess deaths being similar to that of their last 20 years?

Please explain in laymen terms why masks work, when hundreds of years of research say the opposite? And as a secondary question on this point, please explain why social distancing and masks work, when flu levels are consistent with previous years? Should flu not be at record low levels?

When you say you are following the science, I take it this means following Whitty and Vallance. Please can you reassure the public that there is no conflict of interest with regards the fact the former is on the executive board of the WHO, and the latter has a £600k shareholding in GSK?

Why is it feasible that vaccines should be made mandatory when only 300 healthy people under 60 have died in England?

Please can you separate the hospitalisations between those who arrived with coronavirus symptoms, and those who did not?

Would you not take this suggestion as the best way out of this mess: prepare statistics to show weekly hospitalisations for all causes, over the last 20 years, adjusted for population changes. Then, compare this regularly to hospitalisations now. Thus, we have a simple way of tracking any issues, and can do away with a flawed test. Why would this not work?

Thank you and good night.

Someone pointed out yesterday that lockdowns in Switzerland were devolved to the Cantons, some hard, some soft, same outcomes.

It’s the same across the US. A lot of variables however. Population density appears a certain factor.

In Florida the governor just dropped all restrictions on businesses. He said “Businesses have a right to carry on” or similar. Much more enlightened than in Trotskyite Britain where business appears to be subservient to bedwetting.

I believe that as soon as it was ann the MSM reported a sudden increase in Covid infections. If common sense suddenly reared its head over here then doubt MSM would react in exactly the same way.

The main factor is Democrat or Republican.

excellent!

True investigative journalism is now on youtube and bitchute etc. Though youtube is gradually ridding itself of those.. some light in the tunnel on spiked, spectator, and telegraph.. and here of course.. though Toby still refuses to believe that the WEF, Gates et al have hijacked this cabinet. They have.

How does he explain Boris quoting Bill G in a number of speeches, replying to Bill’s tweets and committing large sums of UK money to the WHO?

He doesn’t explain those things. Possibly Toby’s reluctance in these delicate matters might possibly be tactical.

The hijacking is abundantly clear to all who look for it. Is Toby is applying the Nelson touch, which calms the waters somewhat? The great thing about this site though, is that censorship is only noticeable by it’s apparent absence.

The questions would be all pre approved.BBC,ITV,SKY are all fully on board with the Government agenda.They are allowed to criticise the handling of the crisis,not the reasoning being the lockdown policy

That was the way in the later decades of the Soviet Union, Citizens were permitted to criticize failed individuals or policies but not the system itself or the party big knobs.

Yep. Piss poor.

I’d like a questioning reporter to do a slow hand clap or wiggle their finger between their lips like a child. It’s all Pfeffel deserves.

I’d like someone to ask how many people per week are currently dying from “ordinary” seasonal flu and non-COVID related pneumonia. Last time I looked (ONS) it was nine times the death toll from coronavirus.

Asking awkward questions is not going to enhance your career prospects, here at the BBC.

Agreed, but I don’t think that any journalist prepared to answer these questions would be allowed near any of these propaganda affairs. Which raises the question: how is a challenge organised? Surely Toby must have some sort of approach available given his strong connections to many Government figures?

Fantastic — You are absolutely right – I cannot watch the news anymore because no one asks any of these questions……. What on earth has happened to investigative journalism — especially anyone connected with the BBC —

Yay, just got turned away by Toby Carvery for only having an old fashioned phone.

Land of the free!!!!

But all is well in the Posh Cafe where they have been happy to accept my stupid phone number.
No fear of getting infected. With thirty or so tables I am their only customer.

My friend praised the staff in Toast how they searched through the store room for an item she wanted.
I pointed out they need the sale to keep their jobs/the physical shop open.
(My friend went into the shop as the item was sold out online)
People trying to keep their business open and save some jobs will be more lax about the “rules”.

Chits at ‘spoons, quite full.

My large Spoons got stroppy about QR code two weeks ago after expecting me to queue in sheep pens. Left unfed of course.

I tried out the new pub procedures last Thursday evening. Arrived at the pub at 8.30 pm and was loudly admonished for baring my face. I replied that I was exempt and took a seat with the people I normally sit with.

The barmaid was clearly unhappy, but brought my drink, while muttering sulkily behind her mask. The landlady came down the stairs at 8.55 and she brazenly and very stupidly called last orders at exactly nine o’clock. I resolved, there and then, to stay out of pubs, as long as this madness goes on. I realise that, thanks to the very corrupt UK government, this may well be forever.

go back next week and the next. After a while the penny will drop when their custom does. I had a similar thing before the rule of six I found pubs that serve food were more interested in a party of ten rather than a single drinker like myself.

I do think economic leverage is our primary (possibly our only weapon). If we refuse to play their games and businesses suffer then the businesses and their representative groups will also turn on the Government. Perhaps it’s not fair on some businesses, but what else can we do?

As I keep saying, the power is in our wallet and feet, if enough people refuse to go along with this nonsense they will either cave in or go bust.

The problem with that is the government seem prepared to let a lot of businesses go to the wall. In fact, entertainment doesn’t seem to be a feature of the new normal.

When I have a spare afternoon I’ll visit the 6 local Weatherspoons just to get turned away (thick skinned me).
Dunno if Tim Martin keeps tabs on these things.

Local ‘spoons has chits and pencils and a box to post the chits into, or just a list of names and numbers when the chits run out.

The list is illegal because it’s on public view so breaks data protection laws.
The chits are best – for loads of good reasons.

First time I went to a Spoons post lockdown they just had chits so I put it in the ‘ballot box’ blank.

I have no idea if this is genuine but someone has apparently developed an app that mimics the NHS one but does not send any data anywhere. (Still won’t work on your old phone though!)

https://covid1984.life/

that’s cheating!

Well, they started it.

looks like it .. All it does is mimic the the screen that a phone will show when you correctly scan in. So you load the app.. to your phone. When you go out, you open the app, type in the name of the restaurant etc, and wave your phone at the QR to give the impression you are scanning. Then you can show the phone to staff and it looks like you have correctly scanned
Apparently app for older Androids and for iphones is coming

Sorry, bit of a thick question but doesn’t the pub’s qr reader thing bleep to say successful scan ? I haven’t been anywhere yet that needs a code so genuine question.

It’s just a bit of paper. Open question for me is getting the right name

yes – i went to my barbers and he has a QR code printed on a piece of paper on the wall.. Although he is sceptic and isnt bothered about people scanning.
And that might be the attitude of a lot of places. If you pretend to scan then thats fine by me. and they wont check details. Like most of this farce people will just go through the motions

Returned from holiday to Manchester Airport on Monday. Had to download the Governments form with QR code. Huge queues in passport control, (no scanners!) as people had to show the form to a Border Control Officer!

I do it all the time, same as I pretend to use hand sanitizer and wash my hands unless my hands are dirty of course: see: COMMON SENSE.

Just been to the garden centre so have seen the bit of paper. I understand now ! You don’t need to type a name in the fake app. You just press start and it comes up with the ‘signed in’ page with correct time. I love it.

That won’t work if they ask to see the check in screen because the genuine check in screen displays the venue name.

Oops, just seen the bit on the fake app where you type the venue name. Please excuse me. I’m not a technophobe, just don’t like my phone to play too active a role in my life !

I’ve been checking the code of the official app and the QR code does contain the venue name so it should be quite possible to create an app that still scans the QR code and shows the correct venue code name.

They will make using them illegal like those gizmos that warn of live speed traps ahead, sorry Road Safety Partnerships.

But it’s not a law that you have have the app, simply businesses being overzealous by insisting on it. Since the spoof app is therefore not allowing to you subvert a law, there are no grounds to ban it.

Those aren’t illegal in this country. They have always been in France though.

It’s genuine, I’ve checked the code

Thanks Tee, the more people that do, the better

Yep, that’s my baby

I don’t think Toby is keen to have it on here though so by all means join the Telegram group to chat about it.
https://t.me/joinchat/MyCWKhzLK5GdK50PubfwLw

Massive respect for creating this, great idea. Oh, just to mention (sorry for pedantry but it will increase trust I reckon) there’s a typo on the site appearence/appearance. Thanks again!

Thanks Tee, I’ll fix it

I think this is the way to go: from passive resistance to active sabotage

They can’t do that.

nope just posted that above

After a few post on here this morning about being refused entry i checked the gov website:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/maintaining-records-of-staff-customers-and-visitors-to-support-nhs-test-and-trace

and it states “In England, you do not have to request details from people who check in with the official NHS QR poster, and venues should not ask them to do both. Venues must not make the specific use of the NHS QR code a precondition of entry (as the individual has the right to choose to provide their contact details if they prefer). Should someone choose to check in with the official NHS QR poster, a venue should check their phone screen to ensure they have successfully checked in.”

A large firm like Toby Carvery will be aware of that, probably the staff being lazy. Well it’s their jobs still on the line.

I would complain to head office .You will probably get a free roast .

And if you’re really lucky… indigestion!

You don’t need to be that lucky.

Note, it also says that if someone refuses to provide their contact details, the venue should refuse entry.
(I’m pretty sure it’s should nowadays, not just can .)

Perhaps we should make a list of worst offending businesses so we all know who to boycott when this crap is over

Indeed and it should be spread far and wide.

They should also be reminded that the following excuses will not wash:

1) I didn’t know
2) I was only following orders (or variations thereof)

NB I didn’t know also applies to us.
Ignorance is no legal excuse for breaking the law.

Yesterday the announcement was “already 14 Mill downloaded the APP”.
Only 14 mill. Out of 67Mill? Consider how many are children, live in some kind of care, , that leaves 40mill possible adults? That means uptake is very low.

I heard on some podcast (Spiked?) that there are 72 million smart phones in UK

Some people will own more than one, if they have a work phone..

In Germany, 14 million obedient bedwetters downloaded the app on day 1.
Three months later we’re at 16 million, and it has officially been branded completely useless.

Legally they have to provide more primitive means of T&T.

In the same way that they usually have to accept cash as legal tender.

Did they even give you the option of providing (false) details with good old fashioned pen and paper? I seriously think that some of these companies actually want to go out of business.

No absolutely not, it was QR code or no brekky, I didn’t argue just said ‘fine’ and left.

20 % of people don’t have a smart phone so by law they should offer alternatives .

The correct alternative is to not bother with them.

I don’t disagree as i’m personally boycotting all pubs and restaurants but i’m just stating a fact.

Their main lunchtime trade is the genteel elderly, exactly the demographic least likely to have a smartphone.

Would be interesting to find out if they are so negative to a very elderly person, or someone disabled..

Sod ’em. They don’t deserve your business. Did you tell them that they could possibly be discriminating against you, for which they could be fined? I’ve only got a dumb phone as have many, many others, and even if you do have a smart phone it has to be a later one to download the crap app. So many businesses will soon be out of business if they don’t grasp what is happening.

If I’d known what Wayno posted above about the government saying they should accept ordinary self ID I might have done.
He was a junior manager which is fine but his lilac mask matched his lilac waistcoat , perhaps needing taken down a peg but I don’t want to eat anywhere that does not welcome me with open arms.

They did you a favour.

Out of interest, what did they actually say? Tell you to upgrade your phone? Were they polite or aggressive?

Officious Carrie.
I had the breakfast tickbox menu in my hand and as he came out from ‘staff only’ door I asked if I was supposed to fill it in.
No hello or good morning, “Have you scanned th QR code ?”
‘No, I only have an old phone, (I lied), you can have the number.’
“No code no service”.

I don’t even think he said sorry but it was his matching lilac mask and waistcoat that really put me off.

Why won’t the government just let our immune systems deal with this?

Our immune system is the best, in fact only, weapon for “defeating” this virus. So why doesn’t the government just let our bodies get on with it and stop destroying society?

IFR
Valance and Whitty think that for every 50,000 who get infected 200 will die.
That means that for every 1 million people infected, 4,000 would die.
i.e. they think the infection fatality rate (IFR) is 0.4%.

Herd Immunity
If you believe that IFR, then if everyone in the UK (66m people) caught the virus, around 260,000 would die.
But that wouldn’t happen because the virus would burn out before that. But how much before?
That is the big unknown: when would we get to herd immunity?
Some people believe it’s 20% because they think we have a lot of pre-existing immunity. Some people like Ferguson think we don’t have any natural immunity and believe 80% of the population need to get ill before the virus burns out.
If you believe it’s 20% then that means the virus burns out after 52,000 people die (260,000 x 20%) – i.e. about 10,000 to go.
If you believe Ferguson, then it would be over 200,000 people – i.e. 160,000 to go.
So it’s somewhere between 10,000 and 160,000 to go, assuming the IFR is 0.4%.

Vaccine vs Shielding the vulnerable.
If the government is intent on “managing” the epidemic, as it clearly is, it has 2 options.

Option 1: affect the IFR by shielding the vulnerable and hope that herd immunity is reached sooner rather than later and mostly by spreading in younger, fitter people.
Option 2: suppress as much as you can until a vaccine is produced that provides the herd immunity without any deaths (supposedly).

They started with option 1 and switched to option 2.

They did that based on Ferguson’s assumptions of 0.8% IFR and 80% to reach herd immunity. (66 million x 80% x 0.8 = 422,000 deaths). The evidence now shows those two assumptions were very wrong.

They are clinging on their policy on the premise that we don’t really know when herd immunity is reached. But if it is anywhere near 20% as many suspect, then their measures will have been a complete disaster and caused all the economic and social destruction for nothing. Our immune systems will have done all the work. As they generally do.

Good summary. Though I would say they are a little more informed on the the herd immunity debate than we pretend. Yes there are those who’ve analysed places such as New York, Japan, Sweden and other places to suggest herd immunity has been reached, and it seems promising. They are bound to be looking at that. But ultimately this all now about politics.

To give them some degree of sympathy, they make policy that impacts millions and so they can’t just go all in on a particular position I would say because they would be out on their ear well before they got to the point where proof was on the table.

If they go for herd immunity right now, they’d probably not sustain it against the ill informed public opinion. Its still a toxic word for the idiotic press.

While Vallance had his scientist hat on in March, its clear the public just can’t understand or are scared by that perspective. So CMOs options are reduced by the political atmosphere.

Because it is not about health, but about the economy.
I now wish they would just admit that, get on with it.

Ultimately it’s all about the vaccines and Bill Gates, who is about using vaccines as a means of massively reducing the global population. The utterly corrupt government is doing all it can to keep the potential demand for the unlicensed and liability free vaccines as high as possible.

Only if the vulnerable want to be shielded, they still have capacity to make their own decisions under the 2005 act, which hasn’t been overturned by the current legislation as far as I’m aware.

Immune System
Has No
Side Effects

Don’t Let
Bill Gates
Kill you

Bill Gates, together with Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock, Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance are all out to kill us. We are in very deep trouble and resistance is vital.

Can we not lobby MPs about Bill G being so involved and also UK money being given to the WHO with no mandate from the UK population?

They may be thinking they will get away with it, because no one has noticed, or is bothered…

They probably think they have a pass to the Brave New Normal.

Thanks, very clear. What is their 0.4% IFR figure based on, I though it was reckoned to be more like 0.2%?

Good post!
I’m sure Tweedledum and Tweedledee know perfectly well how immune systems function, which is why they advised going for herd immunity in the first place.

Seems a lot of money and personal threats have been involved since.
And let’s not forget Macron’s blackmailing de Piffle into locking down.

Radio 4 Today show are schizophrenic this morning. One report that the rate of virus spread is slowing. Another report on Witless and Unbalanced and BobaJob’s press con yesterday claiming the apocalypse is here. Heads will start exploding all over Broadcasting House in the confusion. Happy days.

Same yesterday, More Or Less explained why ‘record cases’might not mean more deaths followed by Womans Hour describing it as ‘a new Peak for the virus’.

Nono, they need both to be true simultaneously. It’s out of control, so we need more measures. But the measures are working, so that’s why it will be good to have more of them.
Fuckers.

BBC, offering a balance of opinion for once?

Trying to cover their arses more like.

Thankyou for giving me a huge laugh x

Daughters school has turned off the water for the pupils because of risk of cross contamination. The only water available has to be paid for. I was under the impression that access to water was a human right. Pubs have to provide drinking water for free if asked dont they? Does anyone know if I have anything legal to hold against them?

Yeah I thought that was illegal.

I would be fuming, and I’d be letting the staff know how angry I am and how scientifically inept they are.

Done that – I told the head he was despicable and forwarded a post that said what they are doing is child abuse. No comment was the firm reply. Arseholes.

Am sure that is illegal. Restaurants are not allowed to charge for tap water and must provide it if asked for.
Ask Francis Hoar and contact Us For Them…

Illegal under health & safety for staff, almost certainly under Disability Legislation.

If the water goes off in a school you need to be sent home. It’s basic hygiene standards

Sorry it’s the taps where they would normally fill up their water bottles

I think that’s illegal at the bare minimum under Disability Discrimination and H&S legislation. Not to mention blatant profiteering.

Perhaps ask for their risk assessment and also the contact details of someone in the school who should be addressed should your daughter or anyone in school suffer due to water deprivation.

Probably best the kids ain’t drinking the school tap water, it’s just pish recycled a trillion times.

Do they still have the drinking fountains I remember from the 60s?

I’m not sure tbh – i dont think so. Am going to get all my ducks in a row before contacting them.

Haven’t drinking fountains been banned since the mockdown started?

So how are they washing their hands the required 1000000 times per day?

There you go again with reason and logic.

Sorry – wasnt clear – it’s the drinking water taps they normally fill bottles from. The loos flush etc.

Very excellent point.
I won’t trouble you with what we small lads used the drinking fountains for but it wasn’t for washing hands

Same at my stepdaughters secondary school. My son’s primary school allow them to bring in water from home. Her’s insist pupils buy water from the canteen – and wear a mask to stand in line to buy it.

The use of masks was not mandatory in the first week back, but was made mandatory afterwards because….the staff requested it. Ill informed twats.

My son’s school sent home a letter yesterday asking what was successful and unsuccessful about home schooling, in case it needs to resume again because of “the escalating pandemic”. What you can do, Headteacher, to protect childrens’ education at this time, is lobby our local MP and ask her to stop supporting this ridiculous regime that puts a theoretic extension to the life of an 80+ year old ahead of educating the young.

I have 2 friends who’s 3 year olds have been sent home from nursery to self isolate for 2 weeks because of “a positive test”. Them and all of their class mates (they are from 2 different nurseries).

It’s disgusting, you couldn’t make it up!

3 year-olds FFS!
And the parents who now have to stay home and look after them will no doubt have to get tested, and their contacts – and so the farce goes on!

The parents have been advised they dont have to isolate unless they get symptoms, and then they should isolate. But the kids must isolate, because they’ve been EXPOSED to a (false?) positive test. Old people are vulnerable to this, we must do something. What can we do? I know, lets lock up the kids!

Its bullshit of the highest order. With no right of appeal. Our local MP so far declines to respond to anything I’ve sent her. It seems teachers are being disproportionately tested – which probably accounts for the alleged spread in educational settings.

They shouldn’t have to buy water. Contact your local water company. What an absolute disgrace this is.
How many young children will have to fall ill before this criminal nonsense is stopped?

That letter re home schooling is interesting in the light of other posts today saying doctors have had a head-up that schools will be closed in November and December – have schools been told the same?

What about the risks of dehydration? A potential threat to health and general well being?

Ask the local water company in your area .

Children should never be denied access to clean drinking water, which should be free of charge.

This is child abuse; it’s disgraceful.

And, to Mel and CGL; I’m still fuming about this ,despite not having children: contact the NSPCC and Citizens’ Advice as well as your local water companies.

https://www.rcpch.ac.uk/

See also the link for the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health; may the force be with you both.

Pets and farm animals are legally entitled to clean, fresh drinking water at all times.

Disgusting.
Write in to Talkradio? Julia Hartley Brewers has been brilliant in questioning ministers.

AFAIK it’s not true for pubs & restaurants, but it is true for schools.

In our local rag (Kidderminster shuttle) serving Wyre Forrest,Worcestershire.
“PUBLIC BLAMED FOR VIRUS SPIKE”.
The free press?,?,?,?

Kidderminster Shuttle owned by Newsquest Media Group and an offshoot of the Worcester News which contains 2 embedded BBC reporters (paid by BBC) . So local press is just following BBC instructions
So it is not free press.
All local press is not independent. It is BBC in disguise

Just as bad as regional Local Live, all part of mirror group news, full of rubbish about everything, not just covid/lockdown.

May be ave a quick serach for BBC local democracy reporters. Local rags up and down the land have bbc paid staff working in them. I don’t proposed they wrote the individual headline, though they may have. The local press has been exceptionally poor throughout. Possibly the government buying of advertising to prop up the newspaper business has an effect but it seems a much more structured deceit than that, something D notice-like that blanket commands the press to publish such junk.

Much of the local junk comes from the same source, with a sprinkling of locally relevant stories.

A virus spread by humans…. wow

CANCER PATIENT BLAMED FOR DYING AFTER NHS REFUSES TREATMENT.

Have any of the so called “rebels”, who were prepared to vote for the Brady amendment, made any comments about the renewal of the Coronavirus Act which was passed yesterday? I would be interested to hear why they didn’t vote against it.

I don’t think they will go public with what is undoubtedly a multifaceted ‘deal’. Boris used up a lot of political capital yesterday to save face in public, but there were conditions attached. Interesting interlude in HoC yesterday when Graham Brady gave way for Chris Bryant, who wanted to know exactly what had been agreed. No direct answer from Brady, but it seemed clear there was something.

Boris should invite some of the sceptics closer to the fire now. He needs to start hedging his bets

This is an interesting political intervention – from someone close to Cummings and Gove:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8791661/JAMES-FRAYNE-Seven-ways-Prime-Minister-win-country.html

The photo is perfect.
Hands: De Piffle waving his hands about
Face: grimacing
Space: the gaping gap between his words and the Truth.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54366478
right on cue, the wind changes. The Coronavirus act is passed and a sliver of good news. Expect more this week.

Love the way they say the rule of six “May be having an impact”. So it may, or it may not? We don’t know. Just like face coverings, but they then say that’s one of the things we have to keep doing.

Doesn’t feel like a very “scientific” approach.

Remember, this is from the makers of “In certain circumstances , masks might have a small benefit…” They’ve since taken out ‘small’ by the way.

It’s not, because they introduced various other restrictions in some cities/regions after a week or so, so impossible to conclude anything about any single measure.

less people in pubs/restaurants overall means less risk. There again it also means less profit.

Risk of what and to whom?

The Imperial survey, no doubt predicated on Ferguson’s model, is for the first week in September before the rule of six kicked in. Do they think we won’t notice these things?

Their fingers are crossed – probably permanently considering their perpetual mendacity.

It’s a logical fallacy. And so many of these measures fall into that category.

The letter to J. Rees-Mogg could’ve been infinitely more succinct- “In view of the breathtaking amount of unwarranted illiberal legislation.Stupefying incompetence, complete loss of reason & untold economic damage. Care to impart what the real,hidden agenda of H.M. Government really is?

Quick update from the doctors lunch room.
” So are you all downloading the track and trace app?”
The unaminous reply was NO WAY … even from the lockdown luvvies.!
There is hope …

I do not believe for one minute that 10 million people have downloaded the app

It means they effectively won’t be able to go out to eat.

I have resigned myself to this. Two pals said let’s go for a curry and I said it’s too awful out there with masks, apps, temp checks, servers dressed like surgeons and general fear. I just don’t any of it. Wife said I’m not being pragmatic enough…

perhaps we should actively visit establishments armed with an old phone. If enough of us do it and enough get turned away maybe these places will realise the NHS is mandatory for entry

Or bring your new phone but don’t get it out, and say you’re happy to put a (fake) name in the book. It’s not like they pat you down upon entry.

my experience on Sunday was every place used the NHS QR reader rather than their own QR reader and with that no option for hand written details. I guess it’s a case of pushback

Try ‘spoons, paper chits here still.

I wander past the QR reader. I won’t use it. If I am challenged, then they get a real name (thanks, compliant wife) and a fake phone number which is so close to the real one that the wife doesn’t notice the difference.

Anyone who challenges that (I have seen some shops with “No Mask, No Service”) I explain that they will have to live without my custom and bid them adieu. They’ll learn.

The option to give handwritten details is a legal requirement.

Before all this kicked off, we ate out at least once a week. Since the latest muzzle edict came in, we’ve decided to restrict ourselves to a couple of restaurants where we have a longstanding relationship with the owners and don’t have to justify our exemption every time we go in, having takeaways delivered the rest of the time. I certainly won’t be downloading the app and anywhere that expects it as a requirement for entry is welcome to go bust as far as I’m concerned.

The farce of wearing a mask on entry and then to go to the loo. The problem with exemptions is the looks and the explaining. It’s bad enough when I do my mission-based shop at Tesco at 6am on a Monday morning without one, but to repeat that experience for my fish and chips and pint of bitter at the pub destroys the experience. It’s less the owners than the other patrons. Invariably compliant and ignorant.

The mask is like the Hitler gruss. Not giving the Johnson salute can be uncomfortable. But vital to maintaining self-respect.

The mask is a boot on the human face, forever (copyright George Orwell).

If it is possible to book tables, maybe a few groups of people should book out a whole restaurant, and then turn up, refuse to scan or give details and then just leave. See how a restaurant copes when an entire sitting (and income from it) suddenly evaporates and they are left with only ‘drop-ins’… Could be particularly effective if done in the evening, when fewer people are likely to just pop in without a booking…

I like your thinking

Or book then don’t turn up. Many people have been doing that since this farce started.

See post from Wayno above. Government advice is that venues should accept usual types of ID if customers cannot or do not use QR code. Means the cancellation is the venues fault not ours so demand refund of any deposit.

As someone working the hospitality industry this is NOT the thing to do!!!

These people are just trying to keep a business going, remember , it is not just the people in the restaurant, there is a whole supply chain.

With xmas parties cancelled this year, there are no crackers to be made (often in home work), 1000s turkeys going to waste, DJs (who maybe do it as a 2nd income) haven’t worked all year, party decoration suppliers either, a lot of casual staff gaining important income by waiting, washing dishes etc,, taxi drivers, cleaners, It is a long list of people who rely on hospitality to succeed.

There’s an easy answer; if your job relies on hospitality income, don’t make things unpleasant for your customers. EASY! If you want to keep your business going, don’t be a bedwetter to the sceptics.

If your job relies on hospitality income…

…don’t be inhospitable.

Then the frontline establishments should make sure what the law does and doesn’t require, instead of using their own (often ridiculous) interpretation of the rules.

No one is suggesting it’s used wholesale against the hospitality industry but just on those restaurants treating people appallingly .

Hi Carrie i’m boycotting all unnecessary going out myself but that is a great idea and it’s direct action like that which is a great tactic for any restaurant treating people badly .

Fancy dress might work – Doctors and nurses!

I’m going for the highwayman look

I am now picturing you as a cross between Jack Sparrow and Adam Ant…

I just need the tricorn hat

Stand and deliver, your money or your life!

Just stay away from the chains.Small businesses will go through the motions because it is law but they will be desperate for your custom.

Ok good tip

I believe we should all just boycott everything pubs .restaurants and any unnecessary shopping while all these weird rules and masks are in place.It’s the only way to get the message across hit them in their pockets and then they will put pressure on the government for change .

Completely agree. It’s the only real power we have. Don’t even bother to tell them why – they aren’t listening to anyone but sooner or later, their accountants will speak.

Peter, what is your view as to why that is the case, and will this extend to attitudes among your colleagues to being in line for the unlicensed vaccine?

And, we had a thought, what happens if you go into a cafe/restaurant/pub, download the app and then look at the menu and decide not to stay? Can you un-download it?

If they haven’t thought that might happen when they designed this app, then it’s dead on arrival.

It wouldn’t be the first!

As far as I know, the app doesn’t unscan you till you scan at the next venue.
You could be at home for hours while still officially in the cafe from lunch.
Ridiculous!

And subject to quarantine because you were exposed to someone testing positive who called in three hours after you left. Really just a bad idea to download it. The thing to get out there is the risk to your job, etc., if you are subjected to an unwarranted quarantine.

Discussion of alternative option here
https://t.me/joinchat/MyCWKhzLK5GdK50PubfwLw

5 million downloads for android devices.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.nhs.covid19.production&hl=en

No data for IPHONE
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/nhs-app/id1388411277

is that 5 million globally?

Yes it is, but outside of UK is useless.

AFAIK it’s automatically downloaded on the latest iPhones as part of OS patching, so doesn’t even need to be actively downloaded from the app store.

Phew!

A large number may have downloaded it but it doesn’t mean that they know how to use it or will actually use it. I remember a couple of Christmases ago, an older family member declaring with pride that he had ‘over 80 apps’ on his phone, as if it was a badge of honour. I doubt for one second that he uses any of them. He’s a scaredy cat and complete hypochondriac who barely leaves the house. Why he bothers to have a state of the art ‘mobile’ phone I have no idea. Scrub that, I do know why, he thinks he’s cool and down with the kids. Sad.

Same in my hospital! We’ve also had ongoing arguments with the various restaurants within the actual campus demanding we track and trace-they don’t seem to understand that we can’t be included and logically must be exempt inside the hospital. If someone has a positive PCR do we all have to go home for 10 days? Duh!

12 million download it = 55 million didn’t?

Well, kids don’t have to, do they?

That’ll be the 10 million I left out

I’m suspicious that the figure might be similar to when Facebook first launched video. They celebrated these fantastic viewing stats, until somebody pointed out that most were autoplaying and only partial views.

Funny thing is my wife and colleagues in healthcare aren’t downloading the app because it is sure to ping since they work with “Covid patients” now and then.

Plus on a related fact a lot of them are worried that the flu vaccine this year will include some experimental stuff for a Covid vaccine. A lot are not going to take even the flu shot because they don’t want to be guineapigs.

I’m not having the flu shot this year. Firstly, I’m hardly going anywhere because everything you do is such a miserable experience, secondly, everyone is wearing a mask so I can’t catch anything can I?!.

Same here; similar circumstances

My thoughts exactly and I’m not remotely medical.

I think that your lasts para is a lot of nonsense. To get the flu vaccine delivered in quantity the decision on it contents will have been made many months ago and production started before the covid thing properly kicked off and any vaccine research on it commenced.

The NHS app is UKgov’s direction of travel for all, I believe. Compliance by the public will be achieved not through laws (e.g. “you must download the app”) but instead implicitly, like we are beginning to see now where some of us are being refused access to pubs/restaurants. This will inevitably broaden to other venues – shops and public transport – before the next stage, which will be a requirement (or rather, we will be ‘encouraged’) to show a ‘certificate of vaccination’ on our phones before being able to access venues or use transport. Tobias Elwood MP alluded to this in the House of Commons on Monday.

Tobias Elwood is a snake on the grass. When johnson is ousted we should be very worried if he gets close to power.

Yes, very much STILL a military man. Knows where his allegiances lie.

That’s why he should be charged with treason when this is all over. His attempts in sowing division between the armed forces and the people is despicable and must be resisted at all costs.

But they’re no longer people, they’re terrified sheep.

I believe 10 m might have d/l it out of curiosity…..

Had a bit of a play, realised how shit and battery drainy it is….

Then deleted it.

(Seriously I bet 5m have already deleted it)

Yes, running bluetooth constantly is a real no-no unless you keep your phone on the charger all the time. And then the app’s no use anyway. Not that it’s any use to begin with.

I’ll take that bet… when I look at compliance re masks etc, I have no doubt that the vast majority of those 10M downloads are being actively used.

Do tell them about the alternative
https://t.me/joinchat/MyCWKhzLK5GdK50PubfwLw

Crisis averted in the stock market – at least in the short term (anyone who can remember the Financial Crisis will remember the rescue rights issue of Royal Bank of Scotland failed). Rolls Royce attempt to stave off collapse:

‘Rolls-Royce Holdings plc (“Rolls-Royce” or the “Group” or the “Company”) today announces its intention to raise gross proceeds of approximately £2bn by way of a fully underwritten 10 for 3 Rights Issue. In conjunction with the Rights Issue, the Company intends to commence, in the near future, a Bond Offering to raise gross proceeds of at least £1bn. The Company has also agreed commitments for a new two year term loan facility of £1bn and received an indication of support in principle from UK Export Finance for an extension of its 80% guarantee to support a potential increase of the Company’s existing £2bn five year term loan of up to £1bn’

Will it work?

RR was also rescued in the 1970s I recall, right when they were developing the engines for the new Lockheed Tristar. Today they face a profound demand issue, there is not much flying going on. I am sure plenty of investors (sorry lenders) will buy up the bonds given the implicit government guarantee. The difference between RR and the banks is that RR is not systemically important, thought the jobs in Derby will be politically so…

RR is a one of the UK’s few manufacturing remaining successes. The gov would be crazy to let it fail, but I wouldn’t bet my life that they won’t. Which is why I wouldn’t buy their bonds…

Early 70s original RR going bust. Government took it over because it was so important.
RR aircraft engines were floated in 1987 and continue to today. .
Rolls Royce motors (i.e. cars) already sold off as a separate company which was then acquired by Vickers (who made tanks etc). They then sold the company to VW (but not the name) hence VW make Bentleys at Crewe and Mercedes who bought the name make RRs.
Meanwhile
The usual farce of british industry

BMW make RRs but yes good history

whoops basic mistake.. Dont know where mercedes came from

Yes, VW Phaeton the sensible man’s Bentley.

LOL seriously? More like the fat man’s Passat.

RR switched to a “pay for power by the hour” business model for their Trent engines.

That’s not looking like a smart move now.

According to BBC R4 news RR gets paid for their engines not as outright sale but for the time they are actually in use which, at the moment, is not a lot.

Partrick Heningsen has written a short series of helpful tweets, a kind of crib sheet for challenging the pandemic narrative in conversation.
It is really worthwhile having a quick read. The points could easily be converted into a leaflet by adding the sources to the four killer points.

https://mobile.twitter.com/21WIRE/status/1311451908146593796

Others are adding helpful info to the thread.

Reading through that list I am shocked that anyone wouldn’t be aware of these issues. Not the man in the street per say, but those opinionated individuals and especially MPs.

For those screaming it’s the plague, do they actually want to live in fear? I for one do not function well under fear or stress. I seek ways to get past that through information, educating myself about that thing I am fearful of. It’s the only thing that has got me from the China ‘bodies in the street’ fear in March to now, where its very much a case of shrugging the shoulders. The positive story is out there if they want it.

As for MPs, its criminal and they should never be allowed to forget how utterly useless they’ve been.

The list forms a fundamental basis against all in favour of the criminal fraud and associated measures, as you say. To keep in mind as we address these public officials who have chosen group think and/or chosen to damage our lives deliberately.

It’s useful but it could have been written months ago. People are intent on living in fear.

Grenn recovery. Today they/them are launching yet another psy-op to label all on an individual level. Littering is now being alliterated to Personal Pollution.

You won’t find a strong opponent of littering, it is and always has been personal responsibility – that is not my point. The introduction of a new specific term that demonises each person, putting out yet another sense of individual shame.

Personal pollution, just like the kind of personal pollution we are now guilty off by exuding our covids out of our disease-ridden bodies.

A very apt term from an anti-human agenda.

2 6 you put is exactly as I was trying to. Grubby little good for nothing beings we are.

next they will make farting a crime

strictly speaking only if you’re not wearing shorts!

what ? on the basis that shorts are as effective as masks. ???

new slogan -if you can smell it-you can catch it

Obviously. The Science has evidence.

Isn’t it?
I know some people whose farts should be!
Ah but that would penalise the majority because of the minority and we don’t do that in this country.
Do we?

Punishing the whole group for the ‘transgressions’ of the few is the standard M.O. of our society.

Its always baffling that those who say they’re pro-environment are always silent about littering. Even during the height of the hysteria over single use plastics and coffee cups, everytime I mention littering, I’m always greeted with silence.

Now with the proliferation of muzzles everywhere, still nowt a peep. Even if they’re more hazardous to the environment than single use plastics.

But we’re banning plastic straws and cotton buds while nonchalantly flinging face nappies everywhere.

Yeah odd innit?? The inconsistency is laughable.

Sorry for wasting all the oxygen Bill.

I searched for that term and all I found was “Good news! Plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds to be banned in the UK from today”

I’ve sited a source, how about you give us a hint about where you got this littering meme from?

Frankly sounds like a distraction from the topic of discussion on this site. Unless masks have been banned as part of this.

Many masks dropped….

Not first – but perhaps first with a question.

Do we know how many people Whitty, et al, fear may die in a second wave if nothing was done?

Johnson talks of “a huge loss of life” – could he be more precise?

It’s somewhere between 10,000 (20% to herd immunity) and 160,000 (80% to herd immunity), assuming the IFR is 0.4%.

I explain a bit more in an earlier post.

Much thanks for that. It is very helpful.

So well within the government’s own estimation of the cost in lives of lockdown: 75,000 recently, but (a more realistic?) 200,000 estimated in April.

Covid is much less deadly than Johnson, using the government’s own figures.

The cure is worse than the disease. I was saying this back in March.

I read with horror the article in Spiked about what students are having to put up with. Just one question : are they allowed out at all? I don’t mean to go to the pub or a party, but for a solitary walk in the hills for example?

As far as I understand it no.

They get things delivered. Some have been complaining not enough booze is being included. Totally fair point in my opinion

I just don’t understand why there aren’t any jailbreaks. If my kids were imprisoned i’d have sprung them by now and by force if necessary. What is wrong with people?

I agree – if this my daughter she would have been out immediately – even if it did mean turning up with solicitor ! I know there is a fee issue but frankly that must be contestable and the class actions type suits against universities must be starting

This is the silver lining on the big grey cloud. These conformist numpties are getting a good hard lesson in what happens when you rely on the government for everything.

Can someone please repost the link from late yesterday with hancick saying for the first time (?)he has no other strategy except lockdown until vaccine arrives. I’m out & about lacking skills and time.

https://mobile.twitter.com/MattHancock/status/1311563037279686656

Thank you Bumble

Power to isolate someone they believe may be infectious. That is the killer for me. Chilling stuff delivered with not a hint of remorse. Absolute madman.

In NZ they have the power not only to drag you out of your home and put you in an isolation prison, they also make you pay for the privilege.

Listening to a retired submarine officer on R4 advising people how to deal with extended periods of lockdown.
ARE THESE PEOPLE FOR REAL?

Extended penis-wound dressing drills.

That what they do in submarines when under the Arctic circle for protracted periods. It boosts moral, so does having purple jelly on Monday nights for desert.

So I heard anyway, I used to know a submariner.

“Extended” Quite how arousal would be maintained amid having such a wound I have no idea!!

Ah but the wound was asymptomatic.

Normalising the Madness by telling people how to cope with it. Resist! Don’t adapt, you morons!

The son of my dad’s best mate (both former RN) was Royal Navy surgeon. He says he was only allowed to serve 6 months in submarines “because then you start going loopy”.

We’ve done our time. Let us out!!!

Well, we are well and truly loopy, so obviously correct.

I’m posting something positive today, a small ray of hope for the performing arts sector.

Last night I went to my first Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra concert for 6 months. This shutdown is the longest in the orchestra’s 127 year history which spans 2 world wars and plenty of flu pandemics as well.

It was quite emotional as the CEO made a speech at the start of the concert. I was cheered that he refused to accept the ‘new normal’ of spaced orchestra and 40% capacity. ‘I will not stop fighting until we have full stages and full houses again”, acknowledging the suffering of freelancers who have no work at the moment.

The concert was shorter than normal, no interval and it was strange that we were all sitting in our own islands. However it was interesting to see the audience age. The BSO audience is normally much older than you see in London and it was great that lots of over 75s had decided that their weekly fix of music was important to them and worth the ‘risk’ (which has always been miniscule in Dorset even back in March).

It’s going to be a slow grind against the morons running this country but we will prevail and we will defeat the ‘new normal’.

Anyone who is in the performing arts should maybe look for gigs in Sweden, where you will soon be able to hold them!

Could a cruise ship be chartered and sail out to international waters, and then hold whatever concerts it likes?

Ooh we could all go and have a sort of sceptic convention! When this is all over I’d love to meet up with at least 5 of you.

There will be annual reunions of Old Sceptics.
Given the zombie attitude towards us, perhaps we should call ourselves The New Contemptibles.

Better to charter a ship, install the Cabinet, Sage, the advisors and … (insert your own suggestions, it’s a big ship), then pull the plug somewhere in international waters.

It’s what they are apparently planning to do with the illegal immigrants so they can hardly complain about it being inhuman.

Well done him!!! He’s done more than the supine characters we have here in London.

That’s fantastic to hear, musicians in all genres have suffered greatly under this regime for obvious reasons. Pleased to report that amateur orchestras are starting to get together again, using a technicality in the law which allows exemption from the rule of sicks.

I almost feel sorry for those that put their faith in Boris and Rees Mogg. Boris is fat and as such greedy, conniving and a liar, like all fat people. Rees Mogg is catholic and anyone who can believe that shit is a fucking lunatic. What kind of puny mind looks at these fellows and thinks “they’re the ones for me”. I’ll tell you, a victim of state education. They prove why we can’t have a system, why the only way is no government whatsoever. I, as a highly functioning adult on the artistic spectrum have to suffer rules laid down by people like fat Boris, a man who can’t even look after his own body, and Rees-Mogg a man who believes in the supernatural, and voted in by the kind of barely educated arsehole who believe in democracy and thinks just because they vote once every five years it gives the tyranny legitimacy.

Had to visit dentist yesterday for toothache. Surreal experience. Have to turn up 5 minutes before appointment, knock on door to enter, you are not allowed to touch any other part of door. Have your temperature taken, use hand sanitiser, sit on allocated social distancing seat. Not allowed to take your handbag into surgery, but leave by box at door. Return to reception to pay. Have to sign paper with their pen which is then sanitised. Offered sanitiser for hands when leaving which I refused and don’t approve of for regular use. 4 dentists in practice only one of whom working, one on maternity leave, one hygienist and two receptionists. Talk about risk averse. Cannot see that NHS dentistry will continue if this the attitude. Off to register with a private practice.

Don’t bother. I have a private dentist and she is doing absolute fuck all. Emergencies only. No routine check-up appointments. I haven’t had my teeth checked for almost a year now. On t’other hand, you might be lucky and find someone who will see you.

Indeed. Still waiting for six monthly checkup at private dentist postponed from March then June. Was told then that it might be December before they could see me and of course the lockdowns continue. Nothing at all heard from them.

Just been onto my dentist to ask when the next routine checkup is to happen. I said, “Why am I paying you £16 per month on Denplan?” Receptionist says “There is a pandemic on, you know!” “In that case, if you aren’t doing the work, I’ll cancel my Direct Debit, because you aren’t doing the work”. Instant panic, had an appointment with two weeks.

Funny how once you threaten to withdraw your custom, service is resumed.

That’s what I keep hearing ‘not allowed’ stand here, sit there, don’t do that. What happens if we say no??!!!

They throw you out. If you want medical care you have to play the game. Or remain in pain. Or die.

My dentist has a ‘fallow period’ of 60 minutes between appointments. Nuts. I have a routine appointment for December so I suppose I am lucky…

Their ‘guidelines’ state 60 minutes between appointments to allow time for aerosols (created during procedures) to disperse and to sanitise the surgery.

A fallow period on a library book is 72 hours is it not? I just wonder if denists aren’t overly brain celled. Thhe CMO of Scotland is a denist so I believe the may be a string case for low brain cell count amoung dentists.

That’s to allow them to do the mandatory deep clean between visits as per their trade association/insurers worried about getting sued because Covid Contagion.

Bingo. It’s ALL about the lawyers and the insurers.

Mine supposedly does too. But unless they’re using two rooms, there was no real time at all between me and the next person. Despite my dentist raving about how all this nonsense was “to keep us all safe”. I think he was just telling himself that to justify the money he’s losing because of the extra cost involved in running the practice inefficiently.

Please phone your denist immediately. That handbag box will be a veritable hive of covids. It is widely accepted by epidemeologists that boxed covids become very angry when contained. Better epidemeologists don’t accept this theory.

My dentist is a private one, they are mental too. I haven’t seen them December. I won’t go either until they stop being insane. Luckily my teeth are OK.

What is this bag thing about?, they treat them like they are bombs waiting to go off!. I now can’t stop myself shaking my head and laughing slightly hysterically. Anyone who still believes in all this crap really has helped create the dystopia we are living in. I have said before that if everyone refused to wear masks for instance, what could they do?, arrest millions of people?.

Dentistry is a racket. I haven’t visited one for 20 years. No toothache here.

Have you got a sweet tooth?

Our dentist is a shower of shite. Absolutely no contact since March and we were due checkups in May. Mum had an email to assure her “emergency treatment is still available”
My only consolation is he’s private, so will be losing a fortune in routine apt fees from his generally good-toothed middle class clientele

I went privately. Cost me over £300 for a filling. My appointment for 2.30pm was ‘brought forward’ due to a cancellation but when I arrived I had to sit muzzled in the waiting room for 30 minutes while they ‘sanitised the room’ so I suppose I was charged for the cleaning! I didn’t need to sit muzzled for half an hour so they could prove to me that they were cleaning the room! The whole procedure was horrible and like something from a sci fi film with the dentist in frightening protective gear. I also had my hip replacement cancelled indefinitely so I went to see a private specialist. He told me that the NHS has commandeered their surgical facilities even though they aren’t being used. I had to pay over £600 for a private steroid injection just to be able to walk, The specialist was livid over what is happening to the old and sick. His own opinion is that this is all a plan. All my cancer checks that were so very ‘vital’ last year have been cancelled. Imagine a disease so very deadly that the ‘cure’ is going to kill far more than the disease itself. I wrote a long letter to my MP, Sajid Javid, and his reply was a ‘cut and paste’ job (one paragraph was missing its beginning and made no sense) which didn’t answer a single question I had asked. His suggestion over the refusal of the NHS to treat people was to give me the NHS 111 number and the number of my own GP! The surgery has been closed except for phone consultations since March and it can take 2 weeks even for a GP to call you back. I hope he likes my furious reply.

I’ve had 6 appointments since May after having not much more than check ups for the first 50 years of my life. It is the most dystopian experience.

My private practice issued rules that were extremely silly.
My dentist is a very bright, sensible chap. The regulations have come from his parent company, possibly to satisfy insurance demands.
Clearly designed from a worst case doomsday scenario, conjured up by a medically ignorant H&S group and a desire to avoid being sued.

That’s an improvement, when they first reopened you had to sit in your car and phone to let them know you had arrived and then wait for permission to enter.

I’m with a private practice and your experience mirrors mine with only minor differences. I think the restrictions are on dentists in general, not whether they are NHS or private.

Don’t think we will be ordering these:

https://info.stressfreeprint.co.uk/41GA-16TPY-D7CDC722989365396W5RBX5C15D4A2BDF3D58E/cr.aspx

More money making crap for these parisitic companies and no doubt non recyclable not that that matters anymore.

Hey, if people want stuff, sell it to them! What about personalised “Pubs killed my granny” body bags?

Get your restaurant-killing stickers here folks

I need a badge which states-“If I fart you will smell it-trousers are no protection”

T-shirt slogan: “Trousers don’t work against farts. Masks don’t work against viruses.”

given the authorities are checking the sewage for traces of corona maybe we will soon see No Farting signs

A lot of fart talk today. Has everyone had beans for lunch?
Or is it a sign that, because the government treats us like infants, we are regressing and have already reached adolescence?

Ugh!

Keep the fight the guys.

Don’t give up and spread the message.

Our views are important and making a big difference. When I speak with people they tell me they were fooled in March/April and see what has happened in since especially

• NHS
• Sweden
• Carl Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta and Karol Sikora now making a big stand

Apart from Sky News. Sky is begging for hospital admissions (they have to use May footage!). They have been going all over the world for the next horror story, Mexico, Brazil.

Boris thinks 6 months – it won’t last 6 weeks.
People are already going others houses. My next door has people coming and going, will I ring the police? NO

Hang in there.

Well said. I actually got some hope from the propaganda broadcast last night. If seemed to me that they were on the backfoot and felt they had to repeatedly defend their position. E.g. NHS open for business, we can’t let it rip, numbers are going up steadily/rapidly, yeah , but, no, but etc

It’s going to get like the Standford Prison experiment from here on in. The Jailers are just going to double down for every infraction or glimpse of rebellion from the inmates and no one will be willing or able to stop it. I’ve been in the fight for 4 months and all I still see around me are masked morons.

Yeah totally agree. I felt that while yesterday was a battle lost, it really showed how weak they’ve become. Keep going, Stay Positive, Support good science.

I hope you’re right. This doesn’t reflect what I see where I live.

I think the best bit of news yesterday was the fact that lib dems and a few labour members voted against the bill ,also Caroline Lucas .What that means is the sceptic message is starting to get through to all parties and they are voting because they see the tide turning our way and don’t want to miss the boat .I would bet in most cases it’s not out of conviction but letters they have received from constituents ,which buts to death the idea everyone in a labour seat wan’t further lockdowns .I have no time for any of these polls of late and believe the majority of people in the country would dread another lockdown ,The BBC ,Youguv and most mainstream media are just peddling government lies .

As a frequenter of pubs I’m worried about the latest wheeze thought up to control the virus. The idea of pubs only serving drinks with food.
I can’t see how that would work or make sense. Ireland reopened the pubs months ago on this basis and infections have gradually risen. It’s only now that “wet” pubs are now open except Dublin

I remember saying back in March ” They’ll never close the pubs here, or in Ireland, there’ll be riots “. Oh well

A restaurant in Germany did that, when they were only allowed to stay open when serving “food”. Oh, actually, the food had to be the more expensive item. So they sold “packages”: a bag of peanuts for £8.50 with a cocktail for £0.80.
A bag of crisps for £4.50 with a pint for £0.30.

A pedantic point:-

Quoted above – Sir Patrick’s words:-

“doubling means things go very big very quickly. And when things double you see that exponential growth”

That’s not my understanding of “exponential growth”. It is growth to the power of 2 – which is exponential mathmatically – but I always thought the phrase implied an increasing rate of growth. (e.g. doubling and then more than doubling etc.)

Yea thus sayeth my computer’s dictionary:-

1 (of an increase) becoming more and more rapid:

I think he meant the Government Covid spend!

That’s the same thing? If cases keep doubling, the delta between two sampling points is larger than the preceding two.

I think I must own my understanding of “exponential growth” has been in error once I consider them there ‘deltas’ – much thanks.

correct .. exponential growth does mean an increase by a certain power or growth rate. This can be doubling, or a tripling etc . The other variable is the length of time it takes to increase. So something that doubles every day or something that triples every week are both exponential growths.
https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/0e7014c7fdfd5ffb6d953ca87a50efc5c2649b0a
So the example of exponential growth they have quoted has the variables of a growth rate r of x2 and a time period t of 7 days
and it is all bullsh*t

An exponent is the number of times a value it is multiplied by itself. 100 is 10*10 so the exponent for 10 is 2. To demonstrate this place a single rice grain on the first square of a chess board, 2 on the second, 4 on the third. Once the first row is completed the eighth square will have 128 grains on it. Once the second row is completed the 16 th square will have 32768 grains on it. By the time the 64th square is filled it will contain 2 multiplied by itself 63 times.
If the exponent is 0 then the result is 1, so 10 to the power 0 is 1.

This is also called logarithmic growth, exponential growth was IIRC originally associated with the mathematical constant e, 2.7182…

They are both logarithms. “e” is simply known as the natural logarithm. Logarithms are actually the inverse of the exponent.

Anyone else in a self enforced sceptical lockdown?

Apart from going to work and walking the dogs, I’m choosing to stay at home. I’d rather opt out of other stuff that I did befor than go along with masking, tracking, irrational zombie world.

Yes, although I’m meeting my pal for dinner tonight, he is going through a lockdown induced divorce. Can’t say I’m looking forward to it and can forsee me being refused entry.

After a few post on here this morning about being refused entry i checked the gov website:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/maintaining-records-of-staff-customers-and-visitors-to-support-nhs-test-and-trace

and it states “ In England, you do not have to request details from people who check in with the official NHS QR poster, and venues should not ask them to do both. Venues must not make the specific use of the NHS QR code a precondition of entry (as the individual has the right to choose to provide their contact details if they prefer). Should someone choose to check in with the official NHS QR poster, a venue should check their phone screen to ensure they have successfully checked in.”

Trouble is, venues just make up their own rules; they haven’t even seen the actual guidance, c.f. “You have to have a doctor’s note” etc.

Then it is important to know the rules. But why should we have to prove it?
My local sandwich shop asks for “Proof of exemption”.
What does that actually mean? Anyone can print themselves an exemption badge or wear a sunflower lanyard.

It means they’re lazy and idiots.

And don’t deserve your money.

As well if you are in a group of up to 6, only 1 person needs to check in, assuming if that person gets an alert, they will let the rest of the group know.
No surprise they have such a low uptake on isolation.

Besides, if people are privately informing friends and family they’ve tested positive, there can be no official record of the true self-isolation figures.
It’s nonsense!

Actually I thought de Piffle said last week that everyone in a party had to check in now. Interesting if that hasn’t been mandated after all.

So sorry to hear that for your friend.

Don’t be like that… I’d be excited for my friend’s opportunity to free himself from an oppressive marriage to an insufferable woman.

Yes, I am. I haven’t posted in here for quite a while as I’ve literally been trying to ignore it all. I have a smallholding where I spend all my days with my animals and land, and just go home to sleep. I don’t go anywhere else as it’s all too depressing. Everything is ordered online as the last time I went into a shop maskless I got shouted out by a nasty customer. But I simply won’t go along with any of this utter nonsense, so I’m making my own stand by refusing.

I have however decided that I must start speaking out again, even if I am not going anywhere, so here I am – back in the fold of lockdownsceptics!

Welcome back, fellow Carrie

Thank you – we Carries have to stick together!

You should Carrie on. <gets coat>

Try being a sceptical Karen. It has been decided (largely by older blokes) that we are haram! Lol

Yes, Carrie on Carrying!

that sounds so nice… a smallholding with animals . . You make me jealous!!

It is indeed lovely in good weather. Though think of me in winter up to my welly tops in clay mud, and covered in animal poo! Still, better than meandering round a shop acting like a sheep, muzzled and QR-coded!

Sound s like paradise compared to a trip to M&S!

Welcome back, CarrieAH!!!

Nice post – and a boost to the morale!

Yay! Welcome back.

welcome back!

I was an enthusiastic non-participant in what many people would call “life” now I am a super-opter-outer. Totally disengaged from EVERYTHING. Thankfully. I just hope I can stay disengaged until the mass-psychosis wears off.

What about food shopping?

Yeah, pretty much taking myself out of circulation now too. I only ventured into town for the pub or a meal on the weekends but I’m no longer going to bother. If I can’t get in the nearest local for a pint without using this stupid app it’ll be tins in the garden by firelight for my nights out.

Yes, I even hated working from home so much I decided to retire, I try and avoid anywhere now where the masked multitudes gather.

I’m a few years off “retirement” myself but resignation has crossed my mind more than once in the last six months.

Yes, generally. Went out walking in the Cotswolds day before yesterday. Avoided all the shops. It was a bit painful because Wotton under edge has some pretty craft shops that I would normally have gone into….but I resisted (easily). Mask wearers even out in the high street and not all of them elderly either. Apart from that, it’s local walks, a weekly trip to the farmshop (car-park collection) and the local “outdoor” shop up the road.
Shopping done online. Lots of hobbies; developing in-depth skills with one or two of them; no meals out, no pub visits (didnt do them very often anyway).
I do miss the fish and chip shop, though. The local demands masks, even just to step inside and pick up a pre-order.

Get them to throw the fish and chips at you. Nice and safe. My local chippy were OK, not sure how they will be now. Scared of a £10000 fine now probably.

Me, just walking, even my cafe on the beach has gone mad, little shed thing and they want to show you to the table and take my name!, refused and although its been a place of sanctuary for many years, now gone, just the walk left now. Online shopping, that’s it. Who would have thought, a year ago….

6 months ago!

Generally yes. Going out to work, meet a few people not 100% afraid of the virus, go for a walk, engage in a bit of hit and run visits to shops but apart from that my boycott of a lot of things still stand.

Yup, I go to the shops unmasked, my wife hasn’t been to a shop since 24.7 and now that you have to wear a mask in a cafe and do T&T she doesn’t want to do that and neither do I.

Well I go to the office every day (London Bridge area) so at least I can go on the walk by the Thames at lunchtime, my favorite sandwich shop does not care a jolt about masks, neither do any of the big high street cafes. I see a lot of people masked on the street, commuting in I’m normally the only one without a mask, I get a lot of angry looks. Other than that they have pretty much taken everything that kept me sane . Can’t play basketball, can’t go and see a football, rugby game live (something I loved!!),can’t go to a use my before I download an app ( I refuse too).The only time I eat out is when I go with my family as my wife does all the talking, downloads the app etc. Most days I wake up and think what is the point, when will this end if ever, how did we get here and I’m scared of the future for my daughter. It’s going to be grim , long winter and we have nothing to look forward too in the Spring either as the government will never let us out of this lockdown-not lockdown circle of hell..

Angry looks by masked people. I concluded they are angry as they themselves are not brave enough to go unmasked. They are angry at themselves.

I counter by giving angry looks to the people wearing masks on the street. Morons.

I just look them in the eye and demonstrate old normalcy.

I’ve pretty much withdrawn from society now,we still go for a weekly meal with our friends at a restaurant but the covid madness is rapidly closing in around that,I no longer go in shops,I can ignore the dirty looks and comments for being maskless but being surrounded by zombies at all times has become too much to bear.I said to my wife last night that from now on I can only bear to be around our family and friends,all of whom are sceptical,I just do not want to be with anyone else

Same here; I’m a virtual drop out. Solitary walks, early in the mornings when friendly dog walkers abound, few obligatory shopping trips and a lot of reading and watching whatever Amazon Prime offers which isn’t American pc junk.

Yep. More locked down now than I was in June/July before maskage came in.

I am singing in two church choirs. One musical director is interpreting the RSCM guidance the right way – ‘face coverings’ only while walking in and out of the church and not in the choir area because there are eight of us, two metres apart, and a covered face interferes with breath control – whilst the other, much younger one, is insisting on ‘masks’ at all times whilst not actually singing and wearing one as well as a visor himself. One silly woman actually ‘sang’ in a mask on Sunday, making a ridiculous muffled noise.
I will not compromise my integrity as a singer in that way and I think the second choir may have to go. It is interesting that it is the older people who are the most sceptical!

Keep singing.

School run, butcher and petrol station

Not so much locked down, rather I’m just being choosy about where I go. I go to my local supermarket everyday and I’m sad to report that the number of humans (i.e. the maskless) is diminishing. (I’ve been keeping a daily count of humans since the mask nonsense began and, for a while, the trend was upward. But now it’s flatlined, and I fear will start heading down). I go out walking, cycling, biking, driving etc wherever and whenever I please.

I’m only going into non-food shops when strictly necessary, and I’m avoiding the hospitality sector completely. Those enforcing the T&T need to understand that the wages of complicity in this venomous pantomime is bankruptcy. And well-earned at that.

I go everywhere maskless and I’ve not been challenged once, though my wife has. Maybe folk are wary about fronting up a grizzled old biker sporting a Gadsden flag T-shirt, and projecting a thousand yard stare like he might go postal at any minute. And who knows, I just might if I see too many more masked zombies. Such creatures are no longer human to me. After all, how can they be considered members of the species homo sapiens when they’re clearly not sapient? Stay sane fellow sceptics, stay sane.

Hi there ,I go out everyday working or when off out walking and meeting friends but have decided to not spend any money apart from food and basic other things i need.So no pubs,restaurants ,takeaways or unnecessary shopping .I feel the only way to make them drop all the nonsense is an economic boycott and i hope others will follow suit .I don’t think one has to lock ones self away to do this ,you can still go to friends or bring them to yours and eat and drink together or if you have kids theres many things you can do with them that don’t cost money and still have a great time like a pack of sandwiches and a walk .It’s a great time to remind ourselves that nature and freedom are more important than shopping .

I figured out quite quickly where I wanted to go and where to avoid.

There is a bit of loony stuff in varying degrees when arriving at work but I’m ‘unsupervised’ for the vast majority of the time I’m actually doing my job. With SE stuff generally I work to the principle of enquiring what my customers would feel comfortable with, and they generally request very nonintrusive measures I have no issues with.

With a very few exceptions I started shopping in smaller independant places when the queues and the grunts appeared in March and will keep this going. Apart from face nappies they have as normal an experience as possible, the price is not really more than the sterile and hostile supermarkets and the staff actually treat you like they want you to come back. Picked up a bit of Polish vocab as a bonus.

My main group of friends are all quite outdoorsy types and we’ve done walks and cycle rides all summer – or else played music and art sessions together outside and a bit inside. Most of us don’t mind a bit of rain either. So social life not really suffered luckily, especially as have also made friends with several people in my street (also a good precaution against snitching should one need to engage in civil disobedience).

Apart from two outside pub visits, both of which I sneaked in without giving contact details, been avoiding eateries and such places with regret. Also unavoidably had to go to library today which I won’t be doing again. If I can’t borrow a book from a friend will just buy from charity shops, a couple of pounds is worth it to avoid the utter stupidity and overkill.

Yes, absolutely. I’m going nowhere and spending nothing. My liberties have been removed and my government can’t be half truthful or balance covid risk vs all the knock-on neglect be misery in so many sectors.

My child is miserable at her half-an-education school, my job is likely to go, I’ll probably lose my home. Even if I keep my job, it involves international travel, so I’ll almost certainly have vaccination forced upon me if I wish to remain employed.

The sheer selfishness that seems inherent to so many British citizens is the nail in the coffin that has seen me remove myself from active participation in this excuse for a ‘society’.

One million women missed mammograms! Likely 18k-19k now with undiagnosed cancer. But all that criminal Boris wants to do is to ‘defeat the virus’. Looking after his own arse at the expense of those less privileged. It disgusts me to my core.

I still haven’t bumped into anybody who looks even remotely sick

Me neither but I must admit that I feel sick to the pit of my stomach today.

Me too. Our church is starting back this Sunday and my wife and I, and some others won’t go, for various reasons. One of the main ones is that the thought of seeing my friends wearing masks just makes me feel sick in the stomach.

You’re wise to stay away. Masked ghouls one and all, they don’t worship God, they worship Covid. Propitiate the Civid devil and he might, if he feels like it, save you from bodily death at his hands. All he wants in return us the death of your mind, spirit and soul.

I’ve just seen the front of a local bus with a mask painted across it! I simply can’t believe how low this country has sunk.

We are now the world leaders in psychological warfare.

Apparently Cummings has been interested and reading about it for years. Obviously started with Johnson and Hancock and progressed to the rest of us.

We are now the world leaders in paranoia, hysteria, brainwashing and bedwetting

Mavis, get me the bazooka…

Complete insanity, they don’t even know they’ve been/are being brainwashed.

It’s the job of those who recognise brainwashing to step in. The brainwashees are not able to recognise they have been worked on. Luckily the brain washing is flimsy in some, they are the people who dither between something is up vs I must just do my bit.

Isn’t that the point?

There are quite a few trains with masks painted on the front aswell,it makes me almost vomit.

There’s PsyOp and taking the p*ss!

This business of “exponential growth” and Patrick Ballache’s defence of it (or was it the other one I get them confused) is pure schientific shtick.

If you’ve been obsessively estimating R for six months and have found the value hovering stubbornly around 1 the whole time the conclusion should be obvious: that you’re in an endemic equilibrium.

Dozens of things in nature work like this. They are inherently exponential but limited by something.

Reminds me of the Ultraviolet Catastrophe

Yes although the reasons why there is no ultraviolet catastrophe are considerably more subtle.

Well, that’s a quantum of solace.

A bit like how bacteria doesn’t end covering the entire planet?

Not to mention rabbits.

But think how long my hair would be, if there were no limits! (though I think its growth is linear rather than exponential)

Yes hair is linear, probably because it’s only growing at the head end. To have a chance of being exponential it would need to grow all along its length at once.

The effect of exponential functions in nature is that you reach the equilibrium defined by the limits very quickly and efficiently. We see this with epidemics. It makes little difference how big the population is, once it gets going it’s all over in about three weeks. And nothing can stop it once it has got going.

If you change the limits you find the new equilibrium also in the space of a few weeks. This is the graph of other viruses in the US (I think people who saw doctors because of them):

https://syndromictrends.com/metric/panel/rp/percent_positivity/organism/main

If you look at December 2018 for example you can see a peak in all the viruses for the three weeks or so around Christmas. There’s another one almost exactly the same around December 2019. In both cases infections rapidly rise to a sharp peak (they overshoot a bit) and then drop back down again to a higher equilibrium.

These are the system responding to altered limits (behaviour changes around Thanksgiving and Christmas most likely). You can see that the last two winters had about three “waves” of viruses– one in September, one around Christmas, and another one in early spring.

Usually nobody cares but this winter there will be a great song and dance (only with no singing allowed of course) about each one. Our first autumn ripple will be over soon, probably already is, but the panic will start to ramp up again around Christmas.

Plenty of singing and dancing..on tiktok

Because hair knows when its time is up.

The R rate is a huge stinky red herring when used in the context of covid propaganda.

Yes although by staying so close to 1.0 all this time it is actually trying to tell us something. It’s just not what they want.

If we were really suppressing things according to the Fergie fantasy R would not be about 1.0 every time you tried to measure it. It would keep oscillating between about 0 and about 3. That’s what it’s doing in Australia.

Unwelcome development at Tescos this morning. Had an old guy on the door. He said “Good Morning” and I thought he was just going to let me in but he then added almost apologetically “Do you have a facemask?”. To be fair, he was fine when I said I was exempt but no doubt this will deter many objectors who will just cave in. About 2 weeks ago I think there were about 20% unmasked, now there was just me and one other.

This whole mask business is such a load of bs. Not only is there very little evidence they actually work (and some evidence they are actually counterproductive) but we have this convenient message that everyone must wear one to “protect others”. If it was just a matter of wearing one to protect yourself, no doubt there would be many who would just prefer to take their chances. After a while it would become apparent that the non-muzzled were not actually all dropping dead and the sham would become obvious.

Giving up on visiting the local supermarket after yesterday. Just going to set up online accounts with each of the majors and make sure I spread my money as widely as possibly when I can’t get things from the local mini market who ‘so far’ are not being aggressive with the mask BS.

It’s bonkers agree.

I’m still baffled as to why the retail sector seems hell bent on committing hara-kiri. Not too long ago you had the High Street whining that Amazon, et al were driving them away. Now with their survival at stake, they’ve simply keeled over, cravenly kowtowed to the government’s insane “safety” diktat and given carte blanche to their staff who have Hitler and Stalin tendencies.

And they’re surprised that people are staying away and simply going online?

I won’t be surprised if in the run up to Christmas, online traffic will grow while the physical shops remain empty.

They will reap what they sow.

Harder for them to resist now, as they can be prosecuted for not having the QR codes, and you can bet the covid marshalls will be checking up on them. On Talk radio the other day a restaurant owner in London was saying they had been visited by marshalls to check they were following the rules..

Hence why they should band together to resist this lunacy. United they stand divided they fall, if they show strength in numbers then this lunacy would either have ended ages ago or never gotten off the ground.

I think if more people realised that masking to protect others, increased their own risks a little, there’d be a lot more resistance.

This is the absolute crux of the matter.

The maskers I talk to acknowledge that masks might not work, but “They can’t hurt, right?”.

We need to focus on making people doubt the neutrality of wearing a mask.

Exactly. Also worth reposting this, as it really tackles the many mental health issues related to it..

https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/newsroom/2020/09/28/show-compassion-for-those-who-cannot-wear-face-coverings/

.

I felt like this at first. But then I thought “No. It’s not neutral. It’s complicit in the lunacy and I cannot be complicit”

Exactly. Worn by collaborators.

Not neutral. We don’t call them face nappies for nothing. Disgusting germ-incubators.

No longer a customer of Waitrose because of their intimidating door guard re masks – one even told me that the police will fine me (What? I am exempt). Been shopping with them for 16 years, never to go back again. Signed up with Ocado – what a pleasure and lots of specials.

did you tell them why? I gave the waitrose guard and evil stare and told him I was exempt and he said “ok then”, but maybe I got a particularly passive one.

I am thinking of making stickers saying “Exemptions apply” and sticking them all over the shop posters that say “No mask, no sale” etc

And don’t forget those who don’t even mention exemptions.

Not one trial has ever shown masks to be effective for the public. Not one. In fact, when the pandemic was severe in March and April the advice was not to wear them. The WHO said the same. Strangely, after the pandemic had ended the Govt suddenly changed their position. Based on what? No new trials. Nothing. They leant on the WHO to change their advice based on absolutely nothing. Masks are a visible sign of compliance and, my God, how the Stasi public love them. I wear an exemption and get pointed at and abused. If the Govt suggested kiss me quick hats and red noses I can imagine the rush to buy them! The old and sick are being culled and how the public love it and all in the name of ‘protecting’ them. All healthcare has ended. What the hell do they expect if the NHS is closed for business?

Just skimming the site now, I feel there’s little point in reading anything in detail after the first few sentences, just more Groundhog Day.

1. Politician, Media Pundit, Scientist claims we’re all going to die etc.
2. Toby reassures us it’s nonsense, points to evidence to the contrary like we didn’t know already.
3. Real Life tales of living under a Dictatorship

Rinse and repeat…

Seems Simon Dolan is the only game in town doesn’t it? I’m not sure Lozza Fox is going to take up the charge.

Cashing my lockdownsceptics chips in, it’s been informative for a while but reading the same old, same old every single day just makes me more and more angry and frustrated. Feels like Toby is waiting for someone wearing their underpants over their trousers to do the job for him rather than help get things going.

Good luck everyone, I think we’re going to need it and in spades too.

I feel the same to a large extent. I think we need to meet fellow sceptics in person and plan disruptive peaceful actions. What’s your plan?

Local KBF group – that’s exactly what they do.

Didn’t know about this orgainsation. How does one go about finding a local group? (I don’t do faceb00k)

Is Simon Dolan’s organisation.

https://www.keepbritainfree.com/

Go to community, then forum, then kbf local. Eventually you should find a group near you.

I find it hard to argue with you on this.

Before you depart, are there any ideas you feel like sharing on the “Psy ops for the greater good” thread in General Discussion? I’m feeling a little disheartened that nobody has replied, given the obvious strength of feeling on this forum.

Have felt the same on several occasions.
Resistance is a grind.
There is no question that resistance is growing as is dissent in the media.
This site has contributed by being a bastion and at one point one of very few dissenting voices.

I hardly think it’s fair to blame this site for creating feelings of Groundhog Day. That’s all around us and without the relentless pushback of sceptical opinion, I don’t know where we’d be.
Take a break, go for a walk or hang glide or something.

Well said PP.
This site is an important counter to the official narrative.

NC, I hope you find a group you can do something more active with because that’s clearly the point you’ve reached and you mustn’t lose momentum.

Find your local KBF group, NC.

With Hartlepool and Middlesborough about to go into lockdown, there is pretty clearly new fuel for the old North/South divide debate to be reignited. If I was from “up north” I would be pretty angry by now. Vote for the Tories for the first time and get shat on from a great height by southern toffs. I sense a righteous wrath fomenting.

I am extremely angry but Labour, the supposed party of the working class, adores lockdown and even asks for it.
Nick Forbes absolutely deserved Boris’s dig at him at PMQs. The sanctimonious prat has just bankrupted his city.

The much used phrase “Up North” just shows how we are thought of. The ‘Up’ suggests some ‘other’ place, that isn’t ‘like us’. About seven eighths of the UK population do not live in London, but we count for fuck all. Those ‘southern toffs’ don’t even know what it’s like to get rained on, let alone live a real life.

I’m a southerner (not a Londoner or a toff) but it’s true we don’t know what it’s like to be rained on (it’s great)! The train fares and house prices can fair make your eyes water though. Either way the “North” does seem to be being extra shafted at the moment although London has the wrath of Khan to deal with so swings and roundabouts.

Blame your Labour councils, I’ve got relatives up there and they are telling me their councils are asking for the lockdown’s.

Course they are council staff will be at home on full pay.

A lot of us don’t have Labour councils any more
But yes, you’re right. Leeds is most notable.

Yes, the local councils should be pilloried.

But “up north” don’t you say “down south”? I am vaguely middle and I say both!!

Apparently its the Labour councils asking for the lockdown’s, revenge on their inhabitants for voting Tory?

They’ve already lost the Red Wall again for sure, god knows who to, but even if they pull Brexit off people round here will tell them to fuck

Oh we’re angry all right!

Later this evening I think an e-mail to all the MPs who voted No yesterday will new written.

Looking at the list of them I did not think I would ever be thanking some of them for standing ups or me, how things change.

I even agreed, for they rest time ever, with some of the stuff in the Liberal’s political broadcast yesterday evening – shock horror.

Already written to mine, who was in agreement with the Brady amendment but now according to twitter thinks the ‘assurances’ from Hancock are enough. They are pathetic, all of them

Apple Store in Trafford centre closed due to Corona Virus cases

Health and safety measures put in place since reopening include mandatory face coverings , health and temperature checks for both employees and customers, new store operations to ensure 2m distancing and daily and nightly deep disinfection of its stores.

But all measures help!?

It’s all theatre.Apple has some of the most draconian “safety” policies and this goes to show that none of these measures work.

To quote from the Late Night Business Operator:

If the masks work, lockdowns work, and curfews work, why the hell are we here?

People won’t be able to upgrade their old iphones to use the magical new app!

This calls for…

This is no longer a health emergency; it is a culture war. The Shadow Education Secretary’s comment about not letting a good crisis go to waste said it all.
The hapless and incompetent Johnson and Hancock are being totally manipulated by the public sector unions, particularly the BMA. Its website sets out its priorities – patients don’t appear to feature! In effect, it is working to rule.
https://www.bma.org.uk/

The public sector unions, aided by a considerable proportion of the Labour Party, BLM, the Guardian and the BBC, are using the crisis as a way of bringing down the government and stopping Brexit. The deaths of so many BAME health workers early on gave them a huge weapon and the BLM protests gave them the means to use it. Starmer was talking sense about a lockdown exit strategy early on, but never mentioned it after his cringing knee-taking.

The working class people who are losing their jobs and small businesses as a result of lockdowns are collateral damage to the public sector middle class left. The more Cromwellian of them would like to close down working class activities, such as pubs, football and package holidays for ever – ‘so much better for the environment‘, and bring in the Universal Basic Handout. And the most obsessive Remainers have ceased to see the white working class as human.

It would be interesting to submit either Freedom of Information Requests (which take a long time) or Parliamentary Questions via one of the rebel MPs to ask some specific questions about the current working of the NHS; in particular the number of staff relocated from front line work because of the result of risk assessments and the number who have refused to work, over a given period, because of a perceived lack of PPE or other risk.

The railway unions used to practise ‘working to rule’ where the full BR safety instructions were carried out and, as a result, trains didn’t move. It would appear that the unions in the NHS, and in schools and universities, are doing the same. Patients and students are, like workers, collateral damage.

As far as I am aware my union, the Royal College of Nursing are not working to rule as you call it. I have been working throughout. I cannot be certain but I am sure that my colleagues in secondary care continued to work.

If that’s their plan (and I doubt it, not least as I don’t think they would know how to pull it off if it were) then they are going about it a funny way. Almost certainly the effect of all this will be to creat further division and alienation of the majority working and lower middle classes who still, for now at least, live in a democracy and hold the key to government. That’s why the Tories won the last election, and why they will now get rid of Boris and go more to the right and win the next one too.

Not great news either way, but that’s the way we (and the world) is heading. The left has abandoned its post in pursuit of an illiterate and divisive ideology and left the field to the right.

NHS’s problem is having to operate the insane social distancing rules introduced by this government, hence its reduced capacity. Your analysis is entirely misconceived.

Partly the problem. Doesn’t explain the surgeons consulting by phone, does it?
And it certainly doesn’t excuse the patient-phobic GPs when we know some of their colleagues are doing their job properly.

The working class are clearly collateral damage, but to much more sinister and powerful groups than the middle class.

Remember the Iraq body count project ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Body_Count_project )?

Is anyone keeping a lockdown death count?

When this comes to a public enquiry, trials for manslaughter and treason, and the rest, it might be useful.

Yesterday I received an email from Sheffield City Council to say that they have just opened a new Covid testing site in Burngreave, making five in total.

The testing sites are in Sharrow, Darnall, Meadowhall, Burngreave and Broomhall (all pretty deprived areas).

I take this to mean that they hoping to find an excuse to lockdown the city.

Completely agree, I read it the same way. Why oh why though do people keep going for tests?, can they not see what they are doing?. I don’t know why I keep asking these rhetorical questions, there I go again, using the word why. I seem to spend my whole time asking questions that no one can really answer, this country is now completely insane.

Like the meat processing place in Cornwall. All staff tested after 1 became “ill” as part of T&T. BBC reported most of them were not aware they had the virus as no symptoms. BECAUSE THEY DO NOT HAVE THE VIRUS!
How come it is always meat processing factories? When it happened in Germany for the first time, some doctors said Corona viruses are common in cattle, so it would be in the atmosphere.

Cold refrigerated unventilated atmosphere (virus survives longer on surfaces etc.).
High density workforce, working close together etc. – lots of contact with each other and surfaces/tools.

Basically it’s an extension of the noco….somial transfer thing.

Some are sent and have no choice.
Some see it as their “civic duty” – they’re idiots.
As for the others, they’ve literally been scared witless and lost their limited capacity for critical thinking.

Template since Leicester and the reason I changed my mind from cock up to conspiracy

I see Boris couldn’t even be bothered to vote for the extension of the Coronavirus Act, along with most of the Labour party:
https://votes.parliament.uk/Votes/Commons/Division/863#notrecorded

Credit to Lib Dems for actually standing up for liberal democracy.

But that will only be because they knew their votes would not affect the outcome!

They will have been paired. Standard practice.

Isn’t it common for the Cabinet not to vote on things?

Is it?

Significant that most of the Cabinet abstained.

I see Boris did it again:

BORIS Johnson told Brits tonight they can’t “throw in the sponge” in the fight against coronavirus now “no matter how impatient or fed up” we are with strict rules and restrictions.

I’m surprised more hasn’t been made of this. Boris is suggesting that in his mind, the consequences of his measures are likely to be nothing more than a feeling of ‘impatience’ and being ‘fed up’. So is this really what he wants to say to the person who has lost their job? Or the one whose operation is delayed? Or the student who has paid out £9000 to live in a prison? Etc.

That he could utter those words shows that he really has lost the plot. And of course, it is immediately reminiscent of this piece in LS:
https://lockdownsceptics.org/covid-19-and-the-infantilization-of-dissent/

Of course the irony is that it is Boris and his cronies who threw in the sponge (towel?) by running and hiding from the virus rather than dealing with it properly like intelligent grown-ups.

Yes, even I sometimes forget that: we get drawn onto their territory, arguing over details of The Science when we should not even be in this position to start with.

How can he have attended Eton and yet still get that wrong, ie say ‘sponge’ instead of ‘towel’????

It’s the same image in Swedish too, ‘kasta in handduken’..

Gordon Brown didn’t understand Moral Compass despite having attended Kirkcaldy High School and being a son of the manse.

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and run with patience the race that is set before us, …

It is exactly like fighting the Nazis. No different at all. Repel the invasion.

This is a Trump tactic and people are falling for it again. Throw in a malapropism and let everyone lose their minds about that rather than staying focused on the issue in hand.

Boris has a Winston Churchill Complex (like many politicians) but one based on a false analogy – comparing a virus (a tiny bit of genetic material) to evil humans like Hitler and the other Axis leaders (who have conscious intentions). So there’s “fight on the beaches” language to defeat an invisible enemy, etc. Constant comparisons to World War 2.

But a virus can’t be fought against or defeated like an army can. You can’t win the struggle against viruses because they constantly mutate. There’ll be new strains of coronavirus and related orders of viruses forever. Never will we “win”. The virus isn’t led by a corona-Hitler, who can eventually commit suicide to be replaced by a corona-Doenitz who’ll surrender! Analogies to human wars don’t apply at all.

If lockdown is justifiable in this “struggle” it’s justifiable forever because there will always be new strains of viruses. This winter a new flu strain will appear somewhat resistant to our vaccines, and SARS-COV-2 will mutate to be resistant to any vaccines currently under development. Viruses are something we have to live with, “fighting” them is always going to be an endless game of whac-a-mole.

The best way to live with them is to help the population become as healthy as possible. Boris started on that track by encouraging people to lose weight, yet now he’s going back to locking us down again in a futile struggle to “defeat” something which will be around as long as life exists.

Camus’s The Plage is an analogy of the various responses of people under the Vichy regime to the plague of Fascism. I’m sure, after reading it recently, that Cummings has read it recently too but (of course) taken the wrong message from it.

What’s natural is the microbe. All the rest health, integrity, purity (if you like) is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention.

All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.

Maybe the churchillian analogy is correct but not in the way Boris thinks.
Churchill was so single minded in his aim to defeat Germany that he bankrupted the country and made us America’s client state,a position we have been in ever since.

Reading your post puts me in mind of the constant mutating of the covid “guidelines”.

I have to go for a meal on Saturday (no choice) and I think I may need the app to get entry. So can someone tell me how I can get around this? Can I just put fake details in to the app or is it simply based on the location of the phone? In which case can I just delete the app as soon as I’ve gone in?

I don’t think the app is a requirement. Just say either you don’t have a smartphone or it is not compatible. I think they are still required to provide the manual T&T details some other way though.

Don’t have a phone.

I’m wondering how long it will be before Covid marshalls are given the right to search people to check that they are truly not carrying a phone on them?

Doubt there’ll be many of those (Covid marshals) until central govt give local govt the money to pay for them. Which they aren’t, at the moment.

Try never.

My phone won’t run the app anyway.

As said by others the downloading of the App is only one option. You are still entitled to write down details. Many people don’t have a smart phone. If they insist, point out that the Government Regulations are clear on this and they are wrong.

Insist on manual (paper) details. Only the ‘lead member’ of the group is required to provide them, anyway (pub may insist otherwise). So another member could use their phone on behalf of all of you, but I would avoid giving real details or being with someone who does – it can all lead back to you and then it’s 14 day isolation, £1000 fine etc.

False name. No phone. Pay cash.

Also block T&T phone number (0300…. Something). So if the lead member of your party was honest, they won’t be able to tell you to isolate anyway.

And if they can’t tell you, you never knew…..

Install the dummy app

Have you got a link?

It’s in today’s and yesterday’s comments somewhere.

https://www.covid1984.life/

Significant penalties apparently.

Where have you seen that?

I think one of the MPs published it on Twitter, saying it was not acceptable to change the law late at night so that businesses could in a matter of hours be in breach of laws they had no knowledge of – and get fined for this.

Mark Harper on Monday.
Quoted from Hansard:

The regulations, which came into force at midnight last night and which were only published, or made, at five o’clock yesterday, contain some very serious powers that were not in the statements made to Parliament last week. ….. There are duties that are put on employers that create criminal offences both for the company and for individual managers in that company. I do not know how many businesses in this country are aware of the fact that these duties have now just landed on them—I would hazard very few.

…. Those are all questions that no one in this House has been able to ask a Minister, because the regulations came into force last night. They have to be debated within 28 days, but that could be a month away and it could happen after they have been amended several times, as we have seen with other regulations. I do not think that is the right way to make the criminal law and introduce important sanctions in a democracy.

It’s the same as beeing caught giving false details.

Sounds like you will part of a group of up to 6. The person organising this has probably booked a table and given their details. The restaurant does not need to take the details of EVERY person in that group.
As long as they have 1 persons details, it is enough. It is expected the person who booked knows your contact details and will give your details to T&T if needed.

Or download the fake version
https://covid1984.life/

The law says that it’s still acceptable to give your details on paper. Not everyone has a suitable phone.

over the past months there have been many complaints on here about how officious the National Trust have been in enforcing petty guidelines to the point that many members on here have told them where to stick their memberships.
Just noticing this morning, they are obviously struggling now as they have started a tv advertising campaign soliciting donations
A lot of charities are struggling but for the NT it is self inflicted

Serves them right

Get woke, go broke.

Unfortunately, I think it’s a xanatos gambit. Either the woke fifth columnists succeed in brainwashing people or they collapse the institution they see as evil. It’s a no lose strategy.

The apolitical members of the trust will simply have to rue that they ignored the warnings.

Cancelled my long term membership and rang and told them why at great length.

No sympathy for them and shan’t shed any tears for them when they go bust.

So are they steady or are they rapid? You can’t have both. They are steady , of course, which is why he said it first, before realising he was supposed to be justifying extreme interventions so quickly added “rapid”.

You’re better than this. Why are you playing word games?
He said “steady and rapid pace”. They are not mutually exclusive. “Steady pace”: the pace is constant. “Rapid pace”: the pace is high. In other words: “A pace that is at a constant, fast value”.
They’re playing word games and are basing their entire strategy on confusion. Let’s not play the same game, shall we?

valid but also open to interpretation. If someone told me to walk at a steady pace i would interpret that as not walking too fast and not walking too slow. And if i was told to walk at a steady and rapid pace i would be confused. Like the initial comment i would also understand “steady” in this context as a description of speed
What you are talking about and you mention it yourself is a “constant pace”. I could quite understand if i was told to move at a constant and rapid pace.
The confusion is caused by looking at strict definitions and the difference between this and common usage

“Steady as she goes” is not “Full steam ahead”.

So according to Boris Johnson the measures aren’t working because we don’t follow the rules. And now he claims we are all a bunch of over-reacting, gloomsters dragging the economy down.

It’s not that his measures don’t do jack to “control” the virus. And it’s not that his measures are wrecking the economy. It’s all our fault actually.

This guy is unbelievable.

To simplify. Good News = governments success. Bad news = publics fault. This politics is easy innit?

Isn’t this a sign of psychopathy? Ruin the victim or victims’ life/lives and then blame them?

It’s called gaslighting.

I’ve been gaslighted on several occasions, but isn’t there an underlying psychopathic component?

Perhaps Alpine could enlighten us.

Definitely psychopathic. Which sums up several members of the Cabinet.

However, the Behavioural Insights Team are responsible for orchestrating the u-turn policies and confusing announcements. Surely you must be a psychopath to want to make that your speciality?

This is the start of the end of the conservatives

But I don’t think they have realised it yet!

Yes but where is the new party required to replace them? Is Dolan going to start one I wonder?

If you want an actual conservative party it has to be this one
https://www.heritageparty.org/manifesto/

The collective farm hasn’t produced its monthly output quota because of saboteurs.

Its like abuse isn’t it? The government blames the people and even insinuating that we’re responsible for what’s happening.

Time for the public to say enough is enough and that the government can go take a hike.

A strangely ambiguous report appears today in edinburghlive. NB ‘They’ is used in the article to refer to the singular person.

“Edinburgh student with kidney damage due to coronavirus crowdfunding to pay fees” [course fees]

“A student is raising money to pay fees and cover costs after being left with kidney damage from COVID caught while attending lessons at Edinburgh University, they said.”

“Kerry Rush previously spoke to Edinburgh Live about how they had been left with drastically reduced kidney function following a bout of suspected COVID which they got after attending lectures, despite voicing concerns that being make to attend would make them sick.”

“A bout of suspected COVID” – strangely uncertain language is it not?

“Now Kerry says the health issues have left them physically unable to cope, meanwhile university is pursuing them for unpaid fees, so fellow students have come together to started a crowdfunder to help meet those costs.”

“The doctors said to me in the hospital ‘when you were here in June we genuinely didn’t know if you were going to live or die’ because no one in the department has ever seen what happened to my kidneys before. They don’t have any more answers.”

Never seen before issues with kidneys.

In June? The universities all closed in March!

Baffling. I heard a story from a friend who attends a running club with a guy who tells a story also of that nature. The Man works in a care home. He was off work with some issue, bed bound for a time. So he went back to work and a couple of weeks later tested positive for Covid-19.

Now he is positing updates on social media saying that he never thought he’d be able to run again and it’s great he’s completed his first 10k since his ‘battle with COVID-19’

He was never tested when he said he had covid, only after he recovered and was back at work. He is tested every two weeks in work and results negative every time since.

Just an attention seeker. Have a neighbour who made a drama out of self isolating. He loved it but made it sound like he had just spent two weeks in the trenches

Attention seeking. The endless self dramatisation of soshul meeja.

Yeah it’s toxic stuff.

Is ‘they’ because ‘Kerry’ is a protected minority and can therefore not be criticised or challenged without the person doing the challenging being prosecuted for hate speech? Note it’s in Scotland…

Woke speak is strangling the language.

Kidney problems can be caused by a cytokine storm.
However, the article smells like complete bollox to me.

The ventilators sometimes damage kidneys which is why getting loads of them suddenly went out of fashion.

Whilst I have never regarded ambulance chasing solicitors or so-called claims farmers with much pleasure, I can see that the government might well have left itself open to an attack by these people.

Someone on the council in Preston made a remark some time ago, to the effect about young people killing their grannies by their irresponsible actions. Bearing in mind that by this governments actions (by putting the NHS on hold) death and serious injury to health will have been caused or exacerbated by the loss to the population of the NHS, I am now beginning to warm to the idea of causing maximum embarrassment to this government or at least to those making the decisions without listening to other voices, even though it’s us the taxpayer who will ultimately pick up the bill.

It seems to me that people will and have died as a result of this Covid centric NHS’s non-performance. Other people who have failed to receive medical treatment may well suffer for the rest of their lives. I would guess that a good lawyer with good expert medical backup might find this to be a new, very rewarding source of litigation.

If someone isn’t tested because testing has been put on hold, and they discover that they have say, n advanced breast or prostate cancer, then the NHS thanks to the governments actions, will be guilty of negligence – or so I would have thought. Similarly, if a bread winner in a family dies, then the family should, again I would gave thought, be compensated. Negligence by omission rather than commission?

This scenario might seem or even be far fetched but once we get to the end of this ridiculous situation in which the government has placed us, there will be a reckoning. A reckoning of actions which has placed this country into what might compare to the debt caused by WW2.

Because I am over a certain age, I am screened every two years for bowel cancer. It is my intention to write to the NHS screening service to enquire whether, if the result is positive, the NHS is geared up to treat me once the cancer has been discovered, or will I have to wait until the Covid scare

Great post!

I was done last year so the NHS wont need to take a faecal sample from me until next year ,

In the meantime they have spent this year taking the piss

Did they cover themselves in the Coronavirus Act, them and the medical profession?

If they did then any credibility that they have retained, and that isn’t much judging by this site’s cocommentators, would be completely lost.

Right all this lot’s CDs going on fleabay https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-jon-bon-jovi-says-200-000-covid-19-deaths-in-the-us-is-criminal-12085219

Current single rhymes “this cruel disease” with “bought PPE” or some such. Been turning radio off if it comes on.

Wait until they get the vaccine that will be some real Bad Medicine.

Never did like bon Jovi.

The CDC reduced the toll down to 9,000. This is some seriously snide fake propaganda.

Overall, a large majority of Britons say they are very likely or certain that they will follow government guidelines

If Covid restrictions are so well supported why do they need to be legally enforced?

Oh now don’t try reason or logic regarding these COVID shenanigans.

Propaganda

My daughter has a cold. Can everyone please stay indoors for a year? I suspect one of you broke lockdown and inflicted the horror of a runny nose on her.

I managed to get a cold from some of my students and have spent the last three days off (asthma kicked in). Many of them are sneezing and blowing their noses every couple of minutes. Six months away from school has diminished their immune systems (and mine). I am sure that wearing face masks in public (indoor) spaces in the school doesn’t help.

One student, in a different part of the school, was diagnosed with COVID, but was asymptomatic and had been tested as part of the Imperial College study. Outcome – the whole year group and teacher have been sent into isolation for 14 days.

Farcical!!

This corrupt worthless bag of womanizing plop can’t even get his metaphors right. You throw in the towell in boxing and MMA, not the sponge. A 56 year old man with a 32 year old XR arts grad posho liberal tree hugger.. she has his ear at night.. 56 and 32.. he’s somewhat retarded.. a man-child.. Bill Gates also has his ear and Prince Charles and Davos.. in their naive little world He and Giant Shitts (aka Sebastion Fox aka Michael Green) think they are going to be thanked for creating a green utopia…

Just returned from trip to Morrison’s; a truly dismal experience.

I’m now the sole bare faced person in the entire place, apart from a few till ladies.

The female half of a smartly dressed couple attempted a disapproving look as I approached her, but thought better of it when she saw my badge.

There is a surreal decidedly dysfunctional air about the place now; thoroughly disturbing and unsettling: an elderly bloke stood back to let me pass and when I thanked him,he just stared,totally expressionless..

What kind of a society is it where mass gagging destroys all normal day to day encounters and leaves the few who don’t mask up feeling like criminals?

Home deliveries are a bit too costly for my budget, so I’ll keep going.

Should anyone try to challenge me I’ll use the ‘hate crime’ warning; much as I despise it , it could come in useful.

Finally, my pal who does the weekly walk with me, is now worried that she might be reported because we shared a harmless cup of coffee in her home 2 days ago.

My sanity and my self control are on the edge.

Posted again form late entry on yesterday’s page.

Regarding home deliveries look at the supermarkets mid week slots or late in the day they are often cheaper and sometimes free.

Thank you

Also you can usually amend up to the day before

I do Tesco at 6am, another example of ‘mission-based shopping’ that is destroying retail. Anyway, at that time of the morning it’s just the staff unpacking boxes and a few tradesmen buying their Lucozades and crisps.

I usually do the 7am trip, but had to wait in for a delivery today.

7am from now on though.

Aldi at 7.30pm for me.

I’ve finally received a reply from my MP,it’s obviously a standard reply he sends to everyone and doesn’t answer my email to him,here it is in it’s full splendour part 1,

‘Thank you very much for contacting me about the emergency legislation relating to the Government’s response to coronavirus.

I know this is a matter that is very important to a number of people and understandably I have received a large number of emails and letters with a wide variety of views. As such, I will now seek to provide a detailed overview of what the Bill before the House is about.

It is easy to come to the conclusion by seeing what is coming out in the media, that the legislation being put forward is to solely impose further restrictions on our daily lives and while this forms a part of the legislation it is not the entire purpose of it.

It is important to recognise that one of the the key aspects of the Act is to ensure that sufficient staff are available for our health and social care workforce, and to ensure they are deployed where they are most needed. As well as supporting members of the public, containing and slowing the virus, and provisions for managing the deceased with respect and dignity.

To elaborate further on this, the Secretary of State highlighted that this legislation removes barriers to allow suitably experienced people, such as recently retired NHS staff and social workers to return to work. This can also include (but will not be limited to) students who are near the end of their training. Registered staff can then be used appropriately, with decisions made on a local basis.

It also allows the government to support agencies and services that contribute to, and/or are dependent on, the public health response. Some of the provisions, for example those that support the business assistance schemes, are vital to ensure the economic wellbeing of people affected by lockdown, which in turn contributes to people’s longer-term health. This includes (but will not be limited to) the power to temporarily suspend the rule that means Statuary Sick Pay (SSP) is not paid for the first 3 days and the power to establish a rebate scheme for employers to reclaim SSP paid for sickness absences relating to COVID-19 during the period of the pandemic. Others, in particular the highly successful changes to the ways of working of the Courts and Tribunal Service, have enabled vital public services to carry on in a Covid secure way.

These particular measures are still very much necessary to ensure we continue to have the means to combat this virus as evident by recent increases.

The areas of contention are of course surrounding the continuing of restrictions and interventions by the Government. As many of those who have contacted me previously about this will know, I am not an advocate of state control or interventions on our daily lives, but given the unprecedented nature of this crisis, I reluctantly supported the measures which did help bring the virus under control as well provided invaluable financial support to millions, particularly in our constituency.

As infection rates decreased, the Government began easing restrictions and this helped to boost our economy as businesses could once again open up. I strongly supported these measures, including the winding down of some of the financial support schemes. It should go without saying that while these financial support measures were helpful in a time of acute crisis, we must look to the long-term sustainability of our public finances and as such it is right that we draw down as quickly and as carefully as possible.

We are fortunate that the UK has a strong and resilient economy, which is why the Government was able to introduce the robust support packages that it did, but again, I do agree with many who have raised concerns about the long term impact of these measures.’

part 2 to follow

‘allow suitably experienced people, such as recently retired NHS staff and social workers to return to work. This can also include (but will not be limited to) students who are near the end of their training. Registered staff can then be used appropriately, with decisions made on a local basis’

You might be interested to know that Sweden did something similar to this.. Also to at least the first part of this (not sure about the second part, ie the reclaim part):

‘to temporarily suspend the rule that means Statuary Sick Pay (SSP) is not paid for the first 3 days and the power to establish a rebate scheme for employers to reclaim SSP paid for sickness absences relating to COVID-19 during the period of the pandemic’

“provisions for managing the deceased with respect and dignity.”

This sentence makes my blood boil. He speaks of respect and dignity in the same sentence as “managing”.
This is the comment of someone who has no humanity whatsoever. Someone’s death is not something to be “managed”.

I wish I could express something more eloquent but I’m struggling here…

Perhaps the phrase you’re looking for is “Fuck ’em !”, Ed ?

Part 2 of my MP’s reply,

‘As with any contentious decision this Government makes, there will always be a second opinion and it is important that the Government takes these views into account while also being able to act swiftly to preserve life.

While these measures in the Coronavirus Act are temporary, the Government has stated that they will only be used when strictly necessary, and only be in place for as long as required to respond to the situation. All measures in this Act are subject to review on a six monthly basis to ensure that they remain appropriate.

It is clear that the virus will be with us for some time, and so I am in agreement with a number of colleagues that we cannot simply hold out for a vaccine to come by any time soon, despite there being considerable and promising progress, we must take pragmatic steps to ensure we can continue on with our daily lives.

Nobody wants to go back to the scale of lockdown we had in March and the Government has consistently ruled this out. Arguably we are in a much better position than we were back in March. Treatment for the virus has improved considerably and as we have seen with recent figures, despite positive infections increasing, the number of hospitalisations have remained low, as have deaths. But of course it would not be right to simply let the virus take hold with greater prevalence.

I do not for one moment envy the Governments position on this and the fine balancing act it has to perform between those who want tougher restrictions (I have many contacting me about this) and those who want less restrictions.

However for the reasons outlined above, the Coronavirus Act is not just about restrictions, but a broad piece of legislation aimed at providing support for our health and social care sectors and ensure they continue to have the staff necessary to tackle this pandemic.

Rest assured though that I and other colleagues who have expressed concerns about the Government restrictions have been in regular contact with Ministers and our Whips. On Monday morning, I joined a number of MPs in a virtual meeting with the Health Secretary to discuss the Act. Contrary to how it appears in the media, Ministers are actively engaging with backbench MPs on this and have had regular meetings outside of the House of Commons chamber to allow members the chance to share their views on behalf of constituents.

I will continue to monitor this and scrutinise the steps the Government is taking. I appreciate you taking the time to contact me.

With best wishes,

Gareth

Gareth Davies MP
Member of Parliament
Grantham and Stamford’

What a load of bollocks….they are trolling you now!

Twice weekly trip to Tesco this morning. It seems their checkout staff have now been told they must wear masks despite being behind increasing loads of perspex. The lady was complaining bitterly that she couldn’t see a thing due to her glasses steaming. I would have thought it rather important that checkout staff can see what they are doing. I have been trying to wear a mask there simply to avoid confrontations but had huge problems with my glasses steaming. When waiting at the till the strap broke so that was that. Chap behind me in the queue was bare faced, seemed quite happy chatting to the girl next to him. So I guess I will be back to exemption lanyard next week.

To this day, none of my work colleagues have had the virus or know anyone who has had it much less died from it.

However I get the feeling that I will be seeing a raft of absences due to chest infections, bacterial infections, colds, impetigo, dermatitis, etc from having to be muzzled up for 6-7 hours.

My hairdresser had a customer who may have died of it in April. Our local press reported a 76 year old pub landlady with chronic diabetes died of it in July. That is literally the only erhum “cases” of Covid 19 death I personally know of, go figure?

That’s because you don’t hang around care homes or food processing factories.

Like most of us.

Apparently there is an increase in pleurisy as a result of mask wearing. I have yet to have one anywhere near my mouth. I hate going anywhere and seeing them on people, especially kids.

Cant stand looking at people with them on now, its getting to be physical thing where it actually makes me feel ill. Controlled Anger I think

same here

and here. Vomit rises in throat.

I have the same. I cannot stand even looking at them. Not even in pictures.

I think we could usefully work on publicising the dangers of mask-wearing (eg that one minute spanish video), and particularly the phenomenon dentists have mentioned, of ‘mask mouth’. This strategy might work, given just how hard it now is to get an appointment with a dentist…

I’ve had pleurisy. It was not pleasant. Wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

Do you have any links to reports of an increase?

Snap! Me too, I was off school for weeks and let off all games for the rest of the term (a result as far as I was concerned).
I would add that it was caused by the inexistent medical care at my boarding school in the first place with a cough that went untreated.

I was thinking that a bout of pleurisy is much nastier than the mild symptoms experienced by most genuine covid cases.

I had pleurisy, years ago. It’s painful, debilitating and dangerous.

That’s another condition I suspect my colleagues will have. Give it another week or so.

I find it hard now to communicate with colleagues due to their muzzles. Perhaps I should change jobs and become a hermit in the desert like St Eusebius the Hermit:

https://citydesert.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/syrian-hermit-saints/

““The illustration was to point out that epidemics either double or halve, they’re either growing or shrinking,” he says. “

It is truly bizarre, but these people seem to genuinely believe in this fantastic proposition that government action has somehow preserved us on a knife edge of instability for all these months.

Given the generally shambolic nature of all government action, let alone this latest incarnation of busy-bodying buffoons, that requires a genuinely impressive effort of imagination and mental discipline. Clearly these are people who have practiced sufficiently that they can easily manage to believe six impossible things before breakfast.

But such effort requires motivation, and this seems above and beyond the kind of effort induced by mere ambition. Only the stark fear of getting the blame for the damage they’ve done can explain their desperate efforts to deny reality, to construct a self-justifying new one, and to force the rest of us to live in it, regardless the cost.

These are dangerous men, indeed.

Even Charles Walker, in his “angry” speech, said something about all wanting to “beat” the virus. Not every problem has a solution. This is the most pernicious notion, that the government by doing everything perfectly can somehow eliminate covid. Until we get it into people’s thick heads that this is a futile and dangerous exercise, we will always be on the back foot somewhat.

“ epidemics either double or halve, they’re either growing or shrinking”

A bit of a ‘Gotcha’ moment in terms of the ‘scientist’ Whitty. Nobody with any scientific credibility would come up with garbage like that.

hancock up and about to announce new restrictions

claims current measures may be ‘flattening the curve’

labour guy 1) begging for a lockdown for liverpool 2) wanting money sent

Its John Ashworth

‘why have the places with the harshest measures got the highest infections?’

I suspect it is because testing is ramped up in these areas.

He’s not very bright!

Someone ought to flatten him!

Handy cock is going to further restrict Liverpool. Good luck with that one

Perhaps he might like to go up there and tell them himself

Boris is roundly despised in Liverpool for his comments on that city’s attitude to the Hillsborough disaster. So, yes I imagine further restrictions will go down like the proverbial lead balloon.

The daft mayor wants it

That said their mayor is very keen on them

Sadly, I’m afraid most will just go along with it. The constant fear porn is having it’s effect and most people are complying, no matter how insane the measures.

I suspect that, even if they were starting to see through the virus scam, they’re now scared of draconian fines.
Result = perpetual brain freeze.

You’ve got to hand it to the Nudge Unit, they’re bloody good at what they do.

I don’t think it’s sensible to say this virus is “akin to the common cold”. Don’t get me wrong, the government response has been utterly hysterical and I believe lockdown measures cause far more harm than the virus itself. I can only think that Toby is trying to say that the majority of people who get Covid have symptoms similar to a common cold. But let’s not forgot that lots of people have died or been very unwell from Covid in ways very unlike the common cold. I bet there isn’t a single medical professional in the entire world who would agree that Covid is “akin to the common cold”! I know for sure if I said that to my doctor mate who works on the frontline he beat me to a pulp. I agree with the majority of sentiments on this site, but I think comparing Covid to the common cold is down playing it a bit too much.

You may have a point though I believe colds do sometimes affect people quite badly, especially the very ill

The common cold kills thousands of people every year. People in the last few months of life who are susceptible to the latest bugs going round. We just don’t count it as ‘dying of a cold’ because its so common.

If you repeatedly tested terminally ill people to see if they have a cold and counted it as ‘dying of a cold’ if they came back positive and later died you would have about 600,000 a year

It’s not the symptoms more the impact. The flu can cause real problems in a small subset of people but we take that as given

and about 40,000 people die every winter more than the surrounding months. This is excess winter mortality. ie colds and flu.

You’re right it’s more of a cough but the vast majority of people never show any symptoms at all

They just mean it’s a corona virus, like others which give you a cold (there are other non corona viruses that give you cold symptoms too, rhino viruses etc).

I agree, and my GP would also agree with you. Covid is a distinct virus with some unusual effects.
However, my GP also said she could see no reason to shut down the NHS and was desperately worried about her other patients.
This is a nuanced argument.

I also believe that is was transferred into the human population from bat viruses cultivated in a lab.

So it is a new virus, and one that we have not been exposed to before (even though it shares characteristics with other coronaviruses that normally circulate in the population)

By “characteristics” you mean 80% of its genome. Only 20% is novel, that’s why we have pre-existing immunity

The point is that the greater majority of people who died were either very old ( deaths yesterday included people in their nineties, one 98) or with other illnesses including terminal cases. A normal chest infection can be equally lethal to people in this category, even aspirating a small amount of fluids can result in a severe chest infection and death. So I guess the comparison to the cold could have been more to do with putting the risk to people into some perspective.

See the panel by the Florida gov DeSantis, which is linked to in the update. Levitt, without saying it out, effectively says this. It’s just another coronavirus.

Which is exactly what Giesecke said in his evidence to the Irish Covid committee…

It’s literally “akin” to the common cold in the sense of being caused by a virus of the same broad family (coronavirus) as some that cause many common colds. Seems likely once the human population has adjusted to its novelties that it will just become another of the circulating seasonal common cold coronaviruses that are only a danger to people particularly vulnerable to it or to complications arising from it.

Yes!
Normally children develop these coronavirus infections, get them very mildly, and then become immune as adults.
The danger from covid19 is that it is new and is circulating in adults with no previous exposure.

Indeed.

But the longer term danger is that the panic response is inducing changes in human societies that, to the extent that they have any effect at all, will tend to reduce our collective immune response resistance to all viruses (and perhaps diseases in general), by distancing and other measures that inhibit the rapid and regular exchange of viruses between people, especially children.

That’s a recipe for a really disastrous pandemic down the line.

and the repeated use of hand sanitiser is breeding the next superbacteria as we speak

I noticed a bottle of hand sanitizer cable tied to a fecking gate yesterday, in the middle of nowhere. Mental.

I have another theory (bound to be labelled conspiracy) and it is that children aren’t dying covid because its much more difficult to falsify the death certificate of a child.

Children are thankfully much less likely to die than the over-80s.

That was April.
Doesn’t really apply now, does it?

yes, there are 4 circulating coronaviruses that cause colds. now we have 5. we need to build up a bit of immunity to it. I imagine the other 4 took a toll on the frail before they settled down too

Yes. At around the time of the Norman Conquest for HN63.

NL63 But it was around the time of the Norman Conquest based on counting the number of neutral mutations, which is also why we think OC43 was about 1890.

Which is why all the mockdown shenanegans are highly suspect and completely unnecessary (from a public health point of view).

I thought Will said that mainly to illustrate the futility of trying to control or eradicate this virus. Could be wrong though.

I can down play it much more than that.
Its has never been isolated
Therefore has not passed the virus test Koch postulates test, because it has not yet been isolated.
um I think that means it doesn’t really exist …but luckily for the health authorities and politicians there are plenty others that can quietly surrogate for it.

I suggest you read the book I posted above CORONA FALSE ALARM

I suggest you read the many earlier post on this site which explain that Koch’s postulates were proposed in the late C19 before viruses had been discovered by the use of more powerful magnification, and so, because they are obligate intracellular parasites, cannot satisfy said postulates.

Were viruses discovered? Is that a given? How since they contain a replica or the genetic material of the host or are said to be ‘obligate intracellular parasites’ can anyone be absolutely sure that they are not some excreter of the host?
Its a theory!
There is a body of opinion that postulates another theory ; that a so called virus is a so called exosome or some kind of cell excreter.

Of course this particular theory would not be one that vaccine manufactures would like much. No big pharma. would prefer the virus theory and might promote and finance academics in this field, as opposed to those who study health matters from other perspectives; like healthy life styles for example.

Oh yes, I remember when I was working as a scientist in the 1970s we did not have to worry so much about this kind bias. But thats the olden days and olden day science must be WRONG.

But I don’t think this matters not at all because there are plenty of other illnesses that can quietly operate as a surrogate for a virus to perpetuate this SCAM

If people breathe out exosomes and other people breathe them in and then start making them themselves then that is a viral infection. This is what happens, it doesn’t matter what you call it.

Viruses are a similar phenomenon to exosomes but I don’t think the human body makes much use of exosomes. They’re more something bacteria do.

Theories only theories

It’s less deadly than flu. (Especially to young and children).

It’s a coronavirus.

Ergo……

It’s an interesting question how much C19 is worse than other HCoVs. A few years ago there was concern in a care home in Canada that there might have been a SARS1 outbreak. It turned to be “just” common cold coronavirus OC43, which has been endemic for over 100 years. But it had an 8% CFR in a care home. That’s very comparable to C19.

My suspicion is that once C19 has been around for a few years and there’s quite a lot of immunity to it (people will get reinfected a few times in their lives but usually more mildly) then it will have no higher fatality that any of the other HCoVs.

They were also pretty nasty when they were new. OC43 was probably the “Russian Flu” of 1890. The reason for this is a combination of less pre-existing immunity (there is some cross-immunity, but the situation is not as good as if that actual virus is a few years old) and probably also the viruses attenuating to become more infectious and milder.

Endemic C19 won’t be half as bad as pandemic C19 and even pandemic C19 wasn’t actually that bad as it turned out. Pandemic C19 was maybe only about twice as bad as endemic influenza. But excess deaths attributed to influenza may partly be due to coronaviruses as well– people don’t usually count it that carefully.

Re the Trafalgar Square demo, we still don’t know who gave the order to clear the square and to do it “robustly”, as suggested on this week’s London Calling from “a source close to the police”.

Who gave the order?

Khan or Patel would be my guess.

It would be nice of there were a hue and cry over this, but only people like Toby, Dolan or Hitchens, with media platforms, could get one started.

I’m sure Dick was very happy to organise it.

Some common purpose dick

Good video,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5dWbxwoCZI

Yesterday in the US 1 341 348 C-19 PCR tests were performed where 2.96% were positive. The amount of C-19 PCR tests for one day easily outperforms ALL PCR-tests for influenza in a year. This is almost a grotesque amount of testing. Many tests probably related to work etc but difficult to get an estimate. Some must have been done for CLI symptoms although the actual surveillance for people attending  ED for CLI is low now in the US.
How can we interpret results on such a massive expansion of testing? If we did this for influenza instead what would be the result?
UK is doing approximately 250000 tests per day.

Yesterday I published a very god article of the futility of testing in this phase of the pandemic. I think it appropriate to publish it again. The amount of information from these monster screening programmes just swamp us and makes it more difficult to select the essential information.

https://inference-review.com/article/on-the-futility-of-contact-tracing

“This is almost a grotesque amount of testing.”

The only thing that I would disagree with is the word ‘almost’ in that sentence.

An excellent, seminal reference, Swedenborg.

I totally agree and it’s why we don’t hear about flu rates very much at all in previous times. It is a media driven pandemic, not a viral one. Example.

Today they will announce lockdown measures in Northern Ireland. The quarterly death figures for the regions are out and the BBC go with the headline that 11% of all deaths this year were CV19. Scary for a new virus yeah?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-54365155

We know that the details are always were the truth is because context is everything. So if you read the NIISRA Quarterly Death report some things are able to add this context if the fearful care to look:

– For working age population (up to 69), 102 deaths were CV-19. This is out of a total 8050 deaths. 1.2%.

– Under 59 only 43 have died of/with CV-19. 0.5% of deaths. No mention of co-morbidities in these numbers.

Those of working age that have died, 102, up to a third come from the unemployed or permanently sick. Around 5% are in care related areas (7).

There doesn’t seem to be any significant difference in terms of deprivation measurements across all CV-19 deaths, but then why would there be? If you’re old and vulnerable to CV-19 you are probably limited in terms of your daily life anyway, as much as the next man, and the differences in daily activities between income groups even out much more significantly in this respect.

So, if you are under 69 and healthy. You absolutely should be able to live your life, work for a crumb and not be subjected the fear agenda. We are being held hostage by this. Those that claim to represent us are now complicit in this effort to destroy what sanctity we have for a normal life.

My last line there could not be more opposed to the BBC line of reporting. It says it all.

nisra.gov.uk/sites/nisra.gov.uk/files/publications

I would say a lot of those deaths under the age of 69 are also linked to obesity and heart conditions.

We all know there is a cheap, safe, effective treatment for Sars-Cov-2 infections. That is why this pandemic epidemic bout of Sars-Cov-2 should be of little danger to anyone.

Every man and woman is equal before the law except they are not.

In the South of England 6 people can group up for a sing in a pub. In the North East of England only one person can sing in a pub.

Two hours of radio show includes that summary from a human rights barrister at about, 9 mins in. The whole show worth a listen.

https://youtu.be/RRMj7U5-Ajg

When the rules are supposedly based on ‘the science’, yet are different in different parts of the UK, you know it is not really the science that is behind them…

Some weeks ago, I said “How do we arrive at the situation where one city has a different law from the rest of the country?”. Doesn’t seem to matter now.

Psychological warfare is a broad term, but in all documented cases, the concept uses actions intended to reduce an opponent’s morale or mental well being. The aim is to use manipulative tactics to intimidate or persuade a person or people. This process is usually employed through propaganda.

Is there any reason why we shouldn’t use the tools of psychological warfare to get our message across?

Hurrah, the R number has fallen. Imperial College says so. Presumably it has dropped by 500,000.

The MP’s going on about T&T seem as if they cant correlate that with having no workers, ie why the police have been told not to download

Earlier a poster put up an article that Max Hastings wrote about Mr. Johnson over a year ago. It was excoriating. I can’t locate it now but my thanks to the poster.

Here is a very prescient quote from that article.

>>>his premiership will almost certainly reveal a contempt for rules, precedent, order and stability<<

Liam beat me too it! I’ve posted a reply, below. MW

I won’t link to the original article as it’s from The Guardian, google it if you want to share the link.

“The Tory party is about to foist a tasteless joke upon the British people. He cares for nothing but his own fame and gratification

Six years ago, the Cambridge historian Christopher Clark published a study of the outbreak of the first world war, titled The Sleepwalkers. Though Clark is a fine scholar, I was unconvinced by his title, which suggested that the great powers stumbled mindlessly to disaster. On the contrary, the maddest aspect of 1914 was that each belligerent government convinced itself that it was acting rationally.
It would be fanciful to liken the ascent of Boris Johnson to the outbreak of global war, but similar forces are in play. There is room for debate about whether he is a scoundrel or mere rogue, but not much about his moral bankruptcy, rooted in a contempt for truth. Nonetheless, even before the Conservative national membership cheers him in as our prime minister – denied the option of Nigel Farage, whom some polls suggest they would prefer – Tory MPs have thronged to do just that.

I have known Johnson since the 1980s, when I edited the Daily Telegraph and he was our flamboyant Brussels correspondent. I have argued for a decade that, while he is a brilliant entertainer who made a popular maître d’ for London as its mayor, he is unfit for national office, because it seems he cares for no interest save his own fame and gratification.
Tory MPs have launched this country upon an experiment in celebrity government, matching that taking place in Ukraine and the US, and it is unlikely to be derailed by the latest headlines. The Washington Post columnist George Will observes that Donald Trump does what his political base wants “by breaking all the china”. We can’t predict what a Johnson government will do, because its prospective leader has not got around to thinking about this. But his premiership will almost certainly reveal a contempt for rules, precedent, order and stability.

A few admirers assert that, in office, Johnson will reveal an accession of wisdom and responsibility that have hitherto eluded him, not least as foreign secretary. This seems unlikely, as the weekend’s stories emphasised. Dignity still matters in public office, and Johnson will never have it. Yet his graver vice is cowardice, reflected in a willingness to tell any audience, whatever he thinks most likely to please, heedless of the inevitability of its contradiction an hour later.

Like many showy personalities, he is of weak character. I recently suggested to a radio audience that he supposes himself to be Winston Churchill, while in reality being closer to Alan Partridge. Churchill, for all his wit, was a profoundly serious human being. Far from perceiving anything glorious about standing alone in 1940, he knew that all difficult issues must be addressed with allies and partners.
Churchill’s self-obsession was tempered by a huge compassion for humanity, or at least white humanity, which Johnson confines to himself. He has long been considered a bully, prone to making cheap threats. My old friend Christopher Bland, when chairman of the BBC, once described to me how he received an angry phone call from Johnson, denouncing the corporation’s “gross intrusion upon my personal life” for its coverage of one of his love affairs.

“We know plenty about your personal life that you would not like to read in the Spectator,” the then editor of the magazine told the BBC’s chairman, while demanding he order the broadcaster to lay off his own dalliances.
Bland told me he replied: “Boris, think about what you have just said. There is a word for it, and it is not a pretty one.”
He said Johnson blustered into retreat, but in my own files I have handwritten notes from our possible next prime minister, threatening dire consequences in print if I continued to criticise him.

Johnson would not recognise truth, whether about his private or political life, if confronted by it in an identity parade. In a commonplace book the other day, I came across an observation made in 1750 by a contemporary savant, Bishop Berkeley: “It is impossible that a man who is false to his friends and neighbours should be true to the public.” Almost the only people who think Johnson a nice guy are those who do not know him.
There is, of course, a symmetry between himself and Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn is far more honest, but harbours his own extravagant delusions. He may yet prove to be the only possible Labour leader whom Johnson can defeat in a general election. If the opposition was led by anybody else, the Tories would be deservedly doomed, because we would all vote for it. As it is, the Johnson premiership could survive for three or four years, shambling from one embarrassment and debacle to another.”

Hi, it was Nsklent , on yesterday’s thread. It’s from the Graun but makes very interesting reading:

‘I was Boris Johnson’s boss: he is utterly unfit to be prime minister’ – Max Hastings

This prescient final paragraph leapt out at me, my emphasis at the end:

‘There is, of course, a symmetry between himself and Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn is far more honest, but harbours his own extravagant delusions. He may yet prove to be the only possible Labour leader whom Johnson can defeat in a general election. If the opposition was led by anybody else, the Tories would be deservedly doomed, because we would all vote for it. As it is, the Johnson premiership could survive for three or four years, shambling from one embarrassment and debacle to another, of which Brexit may prove the least.’

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/24/boris-johnson-prime-minister-tory-party-britain (I think Toby has asked us not to reproduce whole articles but, rather, provide links.) MW

Apologies, I’m clogging up the thread with such a long post. I’ll edit it down.

Well it was the Graun! MW

He’s only asked us not to reproduce copyrighted articles.

“Johnson would not recognise truth … if confronted by it in an identity parade.”

And sums up the entire thing.

Thanks to Nsklent then – what a lovely name!

Has everyone else missed the TV ad where Bunter says “ It’s a legal requirement to wear masks in many places, but do please remember that some people are exempt,and they shouldn’t be challenged or abused “. ?

I keep looknig out for it, but can’t seem to catch it…

We need a vaccine now! people are dropping dead by the 0.001s

To misquote Churchill; “The battle of the virus is over, the battle of the economy is about to begin’

The Dictator has racked up the government debt to two trillion

Thats 62K for each person who was working at the start of the shamdemic

For most households it will be at least 124k

52% of tax raised comes from income tax, national insurance, and VAT

The mass unemployment that is coming will see a huge drop in these revenues, and more people reliant on state handouts.

There will be massive defaults on mortgages and car leasing.

Raise more taxes? Print more money? Cut public services? Bail out the banks again?

No wonder they want us locked up

At 5pm each day handy cock will gleefully tell us how each of our 62k’s in rising in value

More people dependent on the state, just what they want, control

Forced labour coming soon and work camps. You will have “no right to turn down employment opportunities”, picking those turnips in Lincolnshire, digging those post holes for solar panels in Essex. Yes the accommodation is basic and covid safe. Food and travel will be provided.

We would do well to print this figures and posting copies through doors… 124K per household is a figure people can relate to and will hopefully react to!

“Thats 62K for each person who was working at the start of the shamdemic”

And also, by accounting identity, £62K of Gilt savings for each person who was working.

Why are you obsessing about one side of the balance sheet and ignoring the other side – which contains the very “store of value” that will settle the liability?

At the very least try to understand the accounting – otherwise you sound like a different form of the “masks: good, no-masks: bad” person who can’t see the wider picture.

But they’re not the same people, are they?

If I owe a bank £100k my liability is matched by assets of others totalling the same amount: I can’t just ignore the effect of my debt on me because the entries net to zero.

I’ve heard people argue against the case made by Michael Yeadon regarding false positives by saying that the false positive rate cannot possibly be higher than the lowest positive rate recorded by the ONS for the surveillance data. I am assuming that Michael Yeadon used the data from the ONS as an estimate of the ‘true’ level of infection within the general population because he knows that they have a more accurate way of determining actual infections in a way that the Pillar 2 tests don’t, But does anyone actually have any detailed knowledge on how the ONS testing is carried out compared to the Pillar 2 tests and how this would lead to a more realistic figure for the current infection rate?

I think that this is crucial :

“ We use current COVID-19 infections to mean testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, with or without having symptoms, on a swab taken from the nose and throat.”

i.e. it’s subject to the same bollocks as all the ‘case’=’infection’=’illness’ narrative.

They admit that sensitivity and specificity are unknowns – and I do think that they genuinely use statistical methods to try to compensate for this.

… but, of course, a methodology flawed at the base is a flawed methodology producing flawed results.

This is as good as testing gets – and it’s not a good enough basis for shaping policy.

As far as I can tell, FPR and FNR come from three distinct sources.
Firstly, the lab test itself. This has high specificity (low FPR) and high sensitivity (low FNR) when tested on pure cultures — which is of course exactly the way you assess these tests, but not exactly what you give them in practice. That’s what we’re seeing in these PHE assessments

Secondly, there are operational problems, such as mishandling, mislabelling, cross-contamination, improper storage, delays in testing and poor swabbing techniques. The operational problems are assessed in a GOS report to give an irreducible 2% or so FPR.

Thirdly there are issues about whether the virus is present in the part of the body that the sample is taken from (FNR) varying by date and area swabbed, to give FNR between 30% and 100% (yes!) and whether what’s detected is enough to show an active infection (FPR) dependent on cycle number, which I’m not competent to judge. See BMJ paper

Where are these ‘pure cultures’? When was the virus isolated and purified? Who has established the Gold Standard?
AG

As I understand the tests, they took swabs from a known positive source and a known negative source, and then subdivided them into 195 samples. So all test samples came from the same master sample and should have given the same result.

My understanding is the the ONS has its own programme of testing of random samples of people using, guess what, the same PCR test that throws up all the false positives everywhere so everybody is just comparing turds day after day. That doesn’t detract from Yeadon’s argument though – just read all the figures as ‘what ifs’ and the maths still works!
AG

That’s not quite fair to the ONS. They do followups on their positive tests to try and assess whether they are actual “cases” and to infer from that how many of their new positive tests results are actually “infections”. See ONS methodology and preprint

Hmmm:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/englandwalesandnorthernireland25september2020 MW

is that where they got their doubling from? noticed it went from 0.1 to 0.2

MW

A paramedic I work with in my sports medicine job had one of the home tests. He broke off the end of the swab and put it in the transport medium (all without it going anywhere near his nose or throat). Guess what? It came back positive! I think the pillar 2 (community) tests are all done by the private sector- Deloitte got the contract to organise this- and they are going to a Ct of up to 42 (Ct=cycle threshold, the point at which you decide the test is -ve or +ve). The european norm is 30. At a Ct of 42 you will get many more positives as it amplifies any stray DNA in the sample (“background noise”) and increase the percentage of positives, most of which will be false. The way round this, of course is to stop testing people without symptoms because if you are not ill, you are not a “case”!

Isn’t there a common standard across Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 tests for the number of Ct cycles?

Mwah ha ha ha. As if.

Yes, I asked the question dreading that that would be the case – that there is no common standard. Shouldn’t there at least be transparency about what threshold is being used? I wonder if the private labs which are conducting the Pillar 2 tests are subject to Freedom of Information?

The excuse is that they’re using kits from different manufacturers and they require different cycle numbers.
Shouldn’t be difficult to sort it out though – if they wanted to.