Many want there to be an easy answer to quelling the virus. The medics and scientists search for a vaccine but have to warn it could take a long time or even prove a fruitless quest. Some seek better treatments to lessen the death rate from severe cases of the disease. These are the only two solutions to defeating the pandemic.
Others hold to the view that there is some special way that will eliminate the virus as it circulates in any particular country. Many countries are suffering intense debates about whether their governments have done well or badly in controlling the virus whilst limiting the damage virus control methods do to economies and jobs. The bitter truth is looking around the world most governments have adopted central World Health Organisation tenets that increasing amounts of social and economic activity have to be closed down to squeeze down the prevalence of the virus. Only then can gradual relaxations test out how far they can go in restoring a bit more normal life before virus disaster strikes again. Practically all governments that have adopted versions of this approach have ended up with a second wave and the need to renew the abrasive medicine of full or partial lock down.
In the early days of the crisis the cry went out that a massive expansion of ventilators would see us through. This was tried, only to discover the death rate remained high.
A more sustained case has been made out that Test, track and trace will do the job. The theory is if you test enough people, especially those who might be carrying it or have symptoms, and then isolate enough of such people and their contacts quickly enough, you will cut the circulation of the virus. We now see quite a few countries with large test and trace systems have second waves to deal with.
There are five central weaknesses to test and trace. The first is the delay in getting a test whilst people are asymptomatic or unaware that they have the disease. The second is the number of false results from tests which disrupts the data. The third is the refusal of some people to self isolate for a fortnight to make sure the virus has passed them, as people have demands on their lives which makes fourteen days locked in at home difficult. The fourth is the unwillingness of many to self isolate just because they are told they have been in contact with someone with the disease. The fifth is the impossibility of knowing many of the people encountered by a busy person who has travelled or been to populous places.
The organisation of accountable government at national level for good reasons also means that if any country does have success in curtailing the virus it then needs to shut itself off from foreign visitors whilst the virus rages. This can also be difficult given the strong patterns of global business ,travel and trade. Given the lack of success so far by the World Health Organisation in producing ways to remove or tackle the virus there is no evidence world government would have cracked it to justify the lack of democratic accountability that would bring. The WHO of course does not have to balance curbing the virus with economic consequences in the way governments need to do.
September 26, 2020
Well, countries as diverse as Norway and Japan, New Zealand and Taiwan, China and Senegal all only have a tiny fraction of the deaths and other problems that the UK has, so vaccines and therapies are clearly not the only effective measures, are they?
However, none of those countries allowed the problem to grow to the enormity that did the UK, US, etc. in the fist place.
September 26, 2020
When you see the list of symptom compare to Flu, Cold, Hay Fever and Asthma its clear to see what an unremarkable disease this is.
Non I asked ever know anyone who has died of Covid
September 26, 2020
VM. I personally know nobody that even has the virus let alone died from it. I have heard friends of friends say they have had it but other than that nothing.
September 26, 2020
I know lots of people who said or thought they had it just to get time off work (all public servants / teachers)
September 26, 2020
The same here. I remarked on that to a nurse who was carrying out pre procedure tests, and she curtly responded that she had known 3 people who had died from it. However it is likely that she would come across someone as she works in a hospital.
September 26, 2020
And, as we know, the regulations on what is put on death certificates have been relaxed, so we do not know how many whose deaths are attributed to covid actually died of it and how many just died ‘with’ it, ie of other things.
September 26, 2020
Those who actually use their brains and realise that if this virus was so deadly you wouldn’t be saved homemade mask made out of an old T shirt
September 26, 2020
There is a credibility issue.
I get the feeling the government is just making it up as it goes along.
Government has chosen to place trust first in the Jonah figure of Neil Ferguson, who got things so wrong on Foot and Mouth and then blotted his copybook by getting caught breaking lockdown.
They then switched to Vallance and Whitty, who are at least better than Ferguson, but I am still not convinced.
As for the WHO, that is just another globalist organisation whose CEO is in the pocket of the Chinese, though I am sure many other parties have bought influence here too.
One thing I am certain of is that governments never let a good crisis go to waste. Covid is a great opportunity for the authorities to assume more control and interfere in the lives of individuals.
There was no lockdown for Spanish flu a hundred years ago and I don’t believe that the population had more damage (to either health or the economy) than we are about to suffer.
September 26, 2020
Good comment Peter.
September 26, 2020
Yes, indeed, Peter.
Our host’s comment: ”There are five central weaknesses to test and trace” forgets to mention the major ”weakness”: the outrageous invasion of privacy, when the VAST majority of people are in no danger whatsoever from this virus.
And those who are, can make their own arrangements for how they perceive ”safety”.
Care homes can protect those who can’t make such arrangements.
September 27, 2020
Yes, they are.
September 27, 2020
“Yes, they are.”
What?
September 26, 2020
Initially Japan did no testing, kept schools open and had no lockdown. You want that ? No, you want Japan’s death rate outcome. If that was due to a previous SARS outbreak in Asia conferring mass T Cell immunity how do you suggest we duplicate that ?
September 26, 2020
Born to Be Free · Van Morrison is now on You Tube
The lockdown was only for 3 weeks
BJ gave the EU “till July” “till the autumn” “till December” to agree a deal.
BJ domestic is pretty frightening …. billions on HS2, Hauwei 5G only (only?) until 2027 (Isn’t that like Churchill letting Germany control Britain’s radar until 1947), banning petrol cars by 2035, banning gas boilers, banning log burners. His policy of banning freedom predates the “pandemic”.
September 26, 2020
If the UK public were as civic-minded and diligent as the Japanese – who almost all wore masks, sterilised, and distanced right from the start – then they could probably have escaped the need for draconian measures.
People like you would not though, would you?
OK, as for your claimed T-cell immunity, how about Norway and New Zealand then?
September 26, 2020
Although you have never been to Japan you seem to know exactly how they have behaved during this pandemic.
How clever you are.
September 26, 2020
You liar,
Many have died in this country avoiding hospital treatment in order to save the NHS.
September 27, 2020
The Uk is not an homogenous nation since Blair opened the flood gates and turned it into a United Nations as can be witnessed in London with the desecration of the Cenotaph & Churchill’s statue. This is something Japanese politicians have not allowed in their country
PS I doubt you witnessed on Woke TV the thousands at the demo in Trafalgar Sq against the lockdown with the crowd chanting “Defund the BBC”
September 26, 2020
Japan’s death rate is likely low as they had fewer obese, body positive individuals in the population.
There is a way to replicate that.
September 26, 2020
The 2 key points that Japan got right were:
1. protecting its large elderly population; and
2. almost no Lockdown, so almost no Lockdown deaths.
September 26, 2020
Martin – the average age in Senegal is 18. How do you suggest we follow that as a policy to reduce COVID deaths ?
September 26, 2020
Andy frequently posts his solution to that.
September 26, 2020
yea they dont get all the sick people from miles around to go to centralised phlebotomy clinics to cross infect each other do they? and other obvious massive mistakes by our national religion the NHS. if I actually saw one politician asking obvious questions about stuff like this we may have a hope…
September 26, 2020
Martin, Not one single country in the world has “stamped out” the SARS-CV-2 virus. Not one. The very few countries that appear to have largely avoided it have either locked down their borders (New Zealand, Japan) – which you opposed here – or they have other extenuating circumstances such as a very young population (Vietnam) or a poor reporting/medical infrastructure (third world).
Then of course the figures depend on what is being reported. Since the standard here is to count any person who has had covid19 within the last 28 days, not to have a post mortem, and to use only one doctor’s judgement, it is clear that our death toll has been exaggerated.
It is true that this country has done badly – like Belgium, Italy, Spain, USA and France. But for the UK that is mostly due to the appalling NHS management. And, yes, that is confirmed by someone I know who worked in NHS management for a number of years. Much of the infection in care homes however came from infected care workers, rather than exclusively from NHS management clearing old people out of hospitals (shades of the common disregard of the elderly).
As usual you studiously ignore Sweden which has a comparable urban environment, but did not fully lockdown – schools were kept open and work carried on. And Sweden did better than many other countries which did lock down, including the UK.
September 27, 2020
Excellent post Nick
September 26, 2020
Pakistan, Egypt & particularly Haiti are 3 examples where Covid was allowed to run unchecked. Their healthcare spending is a tiny fraction of Western health costs.
Their good results probably result from:
1. Few Lockdown deaths;
2. Less Vitamin D deficiency; &
3. Less fiddling statistics as required by Coronavirus Act 2020.
September 26, 2020
Oh, and as for Sweden, you never hear the Telegraph or the Mail say that we need Swedish levels of sickness benefit to ensure that carriers stay at home and quarantine. Or Swedish levels of housing benefit to ensure that they aren’t evicted from those same homes. The knights of the suburbs do not insist that the hundreds of thousands who will be thrown on the dole in the coming months need Swedish levels of unemployment benefit – 80% of salary – and an interventionist Scandinavian state to retrain them.
That is what allows Sweden its successes without compulsory blunt instrument approaches.
They would have not an earthly here, would they?
September 26, 2020
No one has been evicted.
High levels of support has been offered millions of people.
You just cannot accept Sweden had done the opposite of your demands yet has similar results to us.
September 26, 2020
You tell lies, Martin.
Lies lies lies.
When do ALL nations get their compensation from the CCP ?
You who found BLM rioting during lockdown ‘exhilarating’.
September 26, 2020
You missed the sixth.
6. The irresponsible behaviour of those people (often young) who openly flout the rules, and congregate in large numbers, partying etc. and showing a wanton
disregard for the safety of others. They openly jeer at those of us who try to play by the rules. It seems to be futile to appeal to their better nature.
I know its not deemed acceptable to say, but in my opinion, this is where the second wave is coming from.
September 26, 2020
From the Government’s own website:
Deaths within 28 days of positive test
***************************************
Number of deaths of people who had had a positive test result for COVID-19 and died within 28 days of the first positive test.
The actual cause of death may not be COVID-19 in all cases.
September 26, 2020
Yesterday 34 covid attributed deaths. 98 cancer related deaths.
Whole country crippled by a bout of flue.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We’re being played.
September 26, 2020
With a pop. of 68million it just doesn’t make sense to have a lockdown
September 26, 2020
It is proving to be very difficult to stop the number of Covid attributable deaths largely due to the existing health condition.
The scandalous number of deaths to cancers can be addressed by early diagnosis and treatment, investment in diagnostic devices, more research into drug treatment, increased operating measures to restrict advance of the cancer etc.
This country lags behind others in tackling the dreadful loss, why is that? We spend £billions in all sorts of inefficient ways and projects.
September 26, 2020
The phantom “second wave” is coming from millions of tests with large numbers of false positives, as describe by Prof Carl Heneghan & Tom Jefferson several times.
Dr. Mike Yeadon, former Chief Science Officer for the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, says that half or even “almost all” of tests for COVID are false positives there is no science to suggest a second wave should happen.” You can see his interview with Julia Hartley Brewer, Talk Radio, online.
September 26, 2020
Hospital admissions remain low so what is going on?
September 26, 2020
true! The elderly and vulnerable have realised taking their own decisions about avoiding contact works! Care homes and hospitals are becoming wise to cross-infection.
The increasing positives of the younger rarely need hospital intervention.
September 26, 2020
fus- perhaps as it’s nearly impossible to contact or visit one’s GP so no referral to a hospital.
September 26, 2020
If you read the blurb on the manufacturers’ ( I found two) websites they clearly state that the tests are NOT for diagnosis.
September 26, 2020
It’s a bit like mask packaging that clearly state this mask won’t protect you againsy Covid 19 and other viruses.
September 26, 2020
JR,
Your govt. is beyond help. Strategy should be how we live with it and protecting the elderly and health vulnerable.
Project fear is being kept alive without reason or justification to the economic catastrophes fall of us it is causing also causing long term social, cultural and educational harm. This will cause conspiracy theories because there is no justifiable rationale for what Johnson and Co. are doing.
Death rate is negligible so the govt is trying to scare theough infection rate! Normally govt. would claim and spin success of testing. Andrew Cadman and others in Con Woman destroy your govt actions. Suggest you read it.
There is no evidence wearing majority of masks help at all. This is to keep fear alive and suppress challenges to govt gross incompetence.
Again, we read Johnson giving away our taxes to the WHO! Disgraceful. He is following EU policy! Is Trump the only true leader willing to stand up and say it as it is?
Johnson must go.
September 26, 2020
Good post, Hope. Unpalatable truths for some, but you are right.
September 26, 2020
I agree Hope.
September 26, 2020
Why is all the writing about low number of Covid deaths – if so not so bad. I read that the problem is surviving Covid
infection which can mess up your life very badly after. Is Bojo suffering somewhat from this now?
If this is the case then protection is desirable, no?
I have never read on this site any mention of after Covid infection problems.
September 28, 2020
So, Dennis, how do we deal with Long Covid, as they call it? Nothing we can. Nature is not in our control and it is arrogance to think otherwise.
Many other diseases cause long term distress, not least flu.
September 26, 2020
Well said, Hope.
But perhaps ”Johnson must change” might be more realistic. Anyone taking his place might be even worse.
September 26, 2020
Utterly impossible!
September 26, 2020
Hope, Much of the covid19 project fear appears to be promoted by those fanatical Remains who want this country to fail. Ridiculous lockdowns are one method of ensuring the UK does badly.
September 26, 2020
Some of the figures being quoted (e.g. 0.8%) for false positives are simply not possible given the real data to date.
FPR is essentially constant for an unchanging test, which means that as more tests are performed, more false positives will be reported in proportion to that increase in the number of tests, and the minimum number of positives reported for any given batch of tests run, even if there are no real positives detected, will be the false positives.
Therefore the false positives set a baseline minimum for what would be expected to be reported for the tests, and it is not possible for the number of actual positives reported to be less than the false positives.
As an example, if you run 100,000 tests and report 600 positives, the maximum possible value for the FPR, assuming no real positives, is 600/100,000 = 0.6%.
The real data from the last six months shows many days on which the actual number of positives reported was 0.6%, 0.5%, 0.4% and lower of the tests performed.
If the false positive rate is as high as 0.8%, as some are claiming, where are all the missing false positives on those days?
False positive reporting for the tests being run simply do not “yo yo” up and down enough to deliver that sort of variation.
Therefore, the only possible conclusion is that the FPR must be much lower than the 0.8% figure which is doing the rounds.
September 26, 2020
This must be the biggest reason not to use the new Contact tracing app.
If I use the app, I need to be very confident that a contact I am supposed to have been close to actually HAS been infected before I am asked to self-isolate, and at the moment the probability of someone who has tested positive actually being truly infected, is about 10%.
Until that problem is sorted, using the app is dangerous.
September 26, 2020
Dear Cheshire Girl,
You describe normal human nature of the young; they have been told that their risk level is very low, why should they worry? It’s simple natural replacement of the old by the young, it’s preprogrammed to take the risk.
NHS Track and Trace; this seems designed to destroy the economy. Instead of telling people to self isolate, after receiving notification of a POSSIBLE contact, it should pre-book you into testing station 3 or 4 days ahead, and only require isolation until testing result.
Oh wait, the testing is not sufficient!
Banksey got it right with his portrait of the Commons…
September 26, 2020
Yes the Government blames those who actually use their brains and realise that if this virus was so deadly you wouldn’t be saved homemade mask made out of an old T shirt.
Yes the Government blames those who go in holiday while Boris Johnson’s girlfriend ex girlfriend, wife? Carrie Symonds can go on holiday to Lombardy
Inside Grand Hotel Tremezzo, where Carrie Symonds has been on a luxury Italian escape – Daily Telegraph
Telegraph Travel/destinations/europe/italy/italian-lakes/articles/inside-grand-hotel-tremezzo-carrie-symonds-wilfred-holiday/
If she has to self isolate it will be in the squalor of chequers in the rolling Buckinghamshire Countryside.
September 26, 2020
She shouldn’t be allowed back – but serve monitored isolation in Italy – as required by all holiday makers – but it won’t happen, will it!
September 26, 2020
Peter,
Absolutely. Why should the healthy who are extremely unlikely to get severe illness or death be locked up? Those with underlying health issues need to take responsibility for their well being and take precautions. The rest carry on.
Bear in mind the Fake Tory Govt. We’re letting in millions of people (18 million according to some reports) without testing or tracing from virus hot spots during the initial lock down claiming it would make no difference!
Why are take aways shut at 10pm? Where is the evidence for this?
After terror incidents, which there are many through govt political correctness, govt. tells the population not to be cowed and go about their lawful business!
September 26, 2020
Hope – you’re spot on. I’m sick of the nannying of those who can take their own responsibility if they’re so worried about contracting virus, and thus ruining the lives of the overwhelming majority in the country.
Young people don’t suffer from it. Why shouldn’t they get on with their lives UNHINDERED? The rest (over 50) can keep away from them, if they’re believed to be that scarily infectious.. This whole policy has become outrageously unfair and indefensible. As well as ruinous to us ALL.
We most certainly ARE being cheated, insulted, manipulated and coerced. Sadly, even these words by Sir John today seem to be a reinforcing the message.
September 26, 2020
Extinction Rebellion and other ill concieved demos are no hep either.
September 26, 2020
But they prefer to arrest Piers Corbyn for his peaceful demonstration against lock down it seems.
September 26, 2020
A second a wave among the young might well be a good thing in developing more herd immunity. Also in helping the virus to mutate and become less dangerous. Covid deaths now running at about 20 per day in UK just under 2% of daily UK deaths. In Germany running at about 10 per day well under 1% of their daily deaths.
September 26, 2020
You need to subtract the deaths that the positive tested people would have undergone anyway falling under a bus etc. which are included in the deaths figure.
September 26, 2020
LL – Are we told where those 20 per day occur? And in what age group? And if they were ”with” the virus and not ”from” it?
No, we’re not. It might give us unhealthy ideas that, actually, just about all of us are safe from this fast-vanishing ”disease”.
September 26, 2020
I wouldn’t be surprised if you are correct. Cruising on the upper Thames 2 Sundays back in lovely weather, I saw a gathering of some 15-20 youngsters competing to see how many of them could get onto the roof of one of the WWII bunkers, all crowded together and clutching each other without any regard to distancing. They then no doubt dispersed to their homes, perhaps in different communities and if just one of them was a carrier or had the virus without symptoms, it would inevitably be spread further.
September 26, 2020
Martyn G, your argument simply doesn’t work, when you look at the facts. From May-June onwards ‘young people’ were congregating in all sorts of gatherings, on the beaches, raves, demos, and what you described on the Thames.
What happened to the positive PCR test rate after that? It fell consistently for many weeks. Same story for deaths and hospitalizations. Your theory might be plausible, but the evidence is against it.
September 26, 2020
Well said, Philip. People were hardly overwhelming hospitals in large numbers after gathering on beaches, at demos, etc, during the summer.
And no doubt, Martyn G will be amazed if he doesn’t hear about any ”spike” in a couple of weeks’ time.
(He forgets that these youngsters’ parents are probably only in their forties – ”safe” (another Newspeak ‘S’ word).
September 26, 2020
Philip
So what is your reason for the rise now, for the increasing admissions in Hospital that follow after a couple of weeks, and then deaths a few weeks after that.
I would suggest the spread is caused by a transference from one person to another, thus the more people you mix with, the more chance of anyone picking up the virus, your reason is ?
September 26, 2020
What evidence? If the youngsters do not have symptoms they would not be tested and so not effect the levl of PCR positives, but they could still transmit the virus.
September 26, 2020
it’s what young people do.
In 1968 I was with 99 other people in a nuclear submarine. We had Asian flu and survived.
September 26, 2020
Most of those diligently following the rules here seem to be the young.
It is the middle aged and older, who appear to be shunning the wearing of masks etc.
We have two big problems – government ineptitude and public stupidity.
September 26, 2020
Martin – you want to follow Japan’s approach of vastly less testing and shambolic lockdown changes. It’s hardly your place to call other people stupid.
September 26, 2020
Martin in Cardiff – so it’s ‘the middle aged and older’ who don’t always follow government diktats? Perhaps that’s because they have the experience to know that governments lie. The young will find out later.
September 26, 2020
Well said that man!
September 26, 2020
MIC. That’s not my experience at all.
September 26, 2020
Nor mine, the complete opposite, in fact.
September 26, 2020
And I’m just down the road from Caerdydd!
September 26, 2020
completely the opposite around Wokingham district. Why is CARDIFF having a form of lockdown and curfew? Maybe you and others are out late boozing?
September 26, 2020
Because THEY have a little Labour Lefty who enjoys bullying
September 26, 2020
I see the opposite pattern. The elderly are very careful – and probably frightened. Kiddies are good too – probably from fear of killing their parents. Twenty-somethings? Utterly selfish. Perhaps we should just face reality and increase the drinking age to 35 or so.
September 26, 2020
”Selfish” because perhaps they’ve done a bit of research and realise they are completely safe and know that their elders may not be, so are careful when they get home.
Not all the young are irresponsible. And why shouldn’t they live life normally? It’s up to the rest to protect themselves if they wish.
September 26, 2020
Martin where is ‘here’? Just your town in South Wales or are you travelling around monitoring this?
September 26, 2020
It’s his house surely?
September 26, 2020
Lies.
Lies lies lies.
Many older people are dying because they refuse to even go to hospital. This is now official data.
Stop telling lies.
You admitted recently that you found young BLM rioting ‘exhilarating.’
September 26, 2020
I think we should be allowed take more responsibility for our own safety, according to our assessment of the risk to ourselves and balanced by the risk or others. If this means the young gather in groups because they know they are extremely unlikely to die from Covid, then so be it. I believe they are relatively ineffective as transmitters of the disease.
I would rather see those at high risk, who do worry about catching Covid, take extraordinary measures to protect themselves ( self isolation, wearing proper respiratory masks and gloves if out for essential shopping etc). Perhaps with government aid to provide the high-level PPE for this specific group. The rest of us could then get on with life and work.
September 30, 2020
I agree.
And ironic how the SNP always championed itself as the party of the young, when Nicola Sturgeon is doing everything to alienate Scottish youth with her draconian measures.
We say the Swedes ‘sacrificed’ their elderly, but the rest of the world is equally ‘sacrificing’ the healthy.
September 26, 2020
I agree Cheshire girl. Too many youngsters don’t care that just because they are alright they spread it around and it affects others. What about their parents? If everyone was sensible we could all live a half normal life. I feel sorry for the people who will now lose their jobs. Perhaps if youngsters weren’t so selfish businesses would have managed. Still, I’m sure they will be the first to moan about losing their jobs when it happens. Alot better than someone losing their life.
September 26, 2020
fus – don’t you think they should go out and about and ”infect” others, as happened in Sweden? They don’t catch it, or suffer and everyone else who thinks they will can take their own precautions.
It’s GOT to be ”spread around” or we’ll never get out of this situation.
September 26, 2020
+1
September 30, 2020
So the rest of us should accept unemployment, mental illness, suicide and domestic abuse, as a ‘noble sacrifice’ for the 0.001% dying in the world.
And by the way, the vast majority of ‘rule breakers’ I’ve come across are not the youth, they’re baby boomers who don’t like being told what to do.
September 26, 2020
@Cheshire Girl, we actually want the younger people to catch it and increase community immunity, much like Chicken pox. The younger generation need to isolate from their elders so as not to pass it on.
I was delighted my daughters went back to school and are being exposed to germs once more. We can’t stop the world because we older generation are vulnerable.
September 26, 2020
There is also a seventh glaring weakness to Track and Trace, many people are simply either giving false personal information or are avoiding downloading the app to avoid being caught in its criteria or in its network sweeps…
September 27, 2020
There is no second wave. It is a creation of the testing regime. The number of new cases is solely based on the number of positive nasal swabs using the PCR test. It is not definitive nor specific, it can pick up minute strands of RNA, containing the viral DNA blueprint. Viral RNA can be detected long after the disappearance of infectious virus., but PCR does not distinguish between infectious virus and non-infectious nucleic acid, so some of those testing positive now could have been infected weeks ago.
The samples are processed and amplified in a lab to produce the original DNA molecule, even if no longer infective. The more amplifications, the greater the number of positives. If infection is low, more amplifications are needed to produce a positive test. With sufficient amplification, all samples can be made positive and there is no standard between the many commercial labs conducting tests for the government.
The only way to identify infection is to isolate the virus from those samples and grow it in cell culture, to see if it is capable of infecting other cells. It is known there are false positives and false negatives, but they are ignored in Covid reporting. The R number is impacted by recorded positives, it is not a gold standard prediction tool.
The only true measure of the infectiousness of a disease, is the number of people falling sick and ultimately dying. On April 1st, just a week after lockdown, there were 3564 admissions to UK hospitals. On 16th September there were 266 admissions, in spite of the surge in “cases” because of the surge in testing.
On April 8th, the peak of mortality, there were 1074 deaths recorded. On September 26th there were 34 recorded deaths.
At the current time, out of 170,548 hospital beds in the UK, there are 1,727 beds occupied by Covid-19 patients, just 1%. Of these, 262 are in ICU on ventilation. We were told tens of thousands of ventilators were needed, manufacturers retooled, contracts were signed. What happened to them?
Overall mortality in the UK is 0.062% of the population. Number of cases as a percentage of population is 0.62%. Globally, daily mortality is falling in spite of an increasing number of cases from testing, which is being falsely labelled as a surge in infections. This pandemic is over. No lockdown, or social distancing, or mask wearing, is going to make an iota of difference to how it now plays out.
Blaming young people for “not following the rules” is diversionary and divisive, pitting age groups against each other. “Don’t Kill Your Gran” was an appalling message in the light of the NHS shipping out 25,000 elderly patients from hospitals to care homes, a few days before lockdown. Between April 10th and September 18th there were 14,264 deaths in care homes, involving Covid-19. That is 34% of all UK Covid deaths.
Most of them occurred in April and May, before the policy was revised. In just the 5 day period 4th-8th May, there were 1619 Covid deaths in Care Homes, out of a total 2410 deaths for the whole of the UK, some 67%. These are figures teased from ONS and coronavirus.data.gov.uk.
A vaccine will not be the panacea that people expect, we have had flu vaccines since 1944 and we still get flu pandemics. We will get other pandemics as time goes on, it is the natural order of things. We cannot shut down the country every time it happens.
September 28, 2020
Dennisa,
Congratulations for bringing THE science to the table.
To be applauded.
Kochs Postulates have been abandoned during the Plandemic, which thousands of doctors are shouting (and being silenced) about.
Some other points.. if I may be so bold.
1/ ********
The Robert Koch Institute confirmed they cannot isolate a virus.
Proven in court in Germany in Dr Lanka vs K.Krafeld, Dortmund, Germany, Jan 15 2001.
Now, leaving aside that little nugget for a moment…..
2/ ********
Kary Banks Mullis invented the PCR test.
His words ‘Do not use for diagnosis’.
It is a manufacturing technique.. not a diagnostic one.
(Ref: Kary Banks Mullis, American biochemist, 1993 Nobel for Chemistry)
3/ ********
The Anti-body test cannot differentiate between any of the 7+ Human Corona.
Corona virus covers about 7 Human ailments, including Cold, Sars and Mers.
(Ref: CDC website, ‘Guidance on Interpreting COVID-19 Test Results’)
4/ ********
DR Kaufman (usa) has highlighted that the sequence in the PCR test… ctccctttgttgtgttgt .. also appear in Human Chromosome 8.
So, what exactly are they looking for ?
***
So, in summary, we do NOT have an accurate test…
Great post you put up..
Tooley Stu
September 30, 2020
Blaming young people is a massive own-goal. The SNP always made a big deal about its youth vote, not sure how popular Sturgeon appears to Scottish youth now…
September 26, 2020
Please search for “Dr Ravi masks” on Youtube with a surgeon, a medical manager and a professional mask fitter. In the video they explain the type of surgical masks used by 90% of the public “give 0% protection against corona”. Zero percent. That’s NO protection.
So why are people being told to wear them? All I can think is that’s it’s political so people think they are being protected. When they are not. Same with all the contradictory rules. Simply political. It’s not about protecting the vulnerable or NHS or jobs is about protecting a few senior political and advisers jobs.
Minds have been lost. Replacements needed.
September 26, 2020
It might even be less than 0% – actually making matters worse perhaps. This was the government’s and scientific officers initially advice after all. UK deaths per positive case 10% the German deaths per case 3%. So what is so different about their health care system? Had the NHS matched Germany it would have saved 70% of all UK deaths. Have the NHS and Health England now learned the lessons? Why is the NHS so very poor in this and other respects?
So what is the Government plan with universities. Is it to send the students back to get infected and thus gain some immunity? If not why send them back at all as nearly all can work on line and probably will be doing so anyway. If the former as seems likely then why have all the restriction to prevent the spread.
If they really wanted to prevent the spread then they should not be going back at all. Clearly the universities what the fees and the rents (for their often rather worthless degrees). It cannot be much fun locked into a tiny student room and spending £25K PA on this incarceration.
September 26, 2020
Want not what.
The Government should let us know what their university agenda actually is. If it is herd immunity then they should get back to university and take their changes. But if they want to prevent the spread of the infection they should not be going back at all. Going back but not spreading the infection it is surely a rather confused approach. Especially where others are all being told to work from home where they can. Students clearly can in the main.
September 26, 2020
Agreed same with schools. Come clean on the plan.
September 26, 2020
Government? Plan?
September 26, 2020
The agenda is…
Do away with schools and Universities.
All to be online.
Do away with theatres, spectator sports ( all televised).
In order to do away with all travel.
Back to 1750 confined to the village.
But without any social or economic structures.
Those have already been taken away.
September 30, 2020
Speaking of 0%, bear in mind the number of covid deaths is around 0.001% of the UK, and 0.0001% of the total world population.
People are losing their jobs, committing suicide, falling prey to domestic abuse, poorer schoolkids struggling with online resources… as a “sacrifice” to the 0.001%.
September 26, 2020
Giuseppe Conte all’Onu: la pandemia è opportunità per un nuovo inizio – See more at: rainews
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to the UN: “the pandemic is an opportunity for a new beginning.”
He’s the one who started all this in Italy. This has been no opportunity for the Italian people.
September 26, 2020
+1
September 26, 2020
I understand that the mask idea ( or making them compulsory) came from Mindspace
which is a government body for ”Influencing behaviour through public policy“.
Mindspace.
If I put a link I expect it would be deleted. But it makes truly chilling reading.
These people…also known as “The Nudge Unit” seek to change our behaviour to suit the govt’s agendas.
September 26, 2020
Yes this is the ‘control centre’ of the Psychological War being waged against the British public.
They have certainly got control of their PMs mind.
September 26, 2020
as I said ages ago – Boris was got at while in a suggestive state. No longer capable of individual thought – mind controlled.
September 26, 2020
I’ve read that article about ‘nudge theory’. The government have been using it for years apparently.
I do believe there is more to this virus than it being a pandemic.
Quite clearly it’s being used for something else. When you read that Germans are also complaining that Cancer patients are not being treated, and some of the poorer countries’ populations are dying of hunger because of the breakdown in supply chains.
One can’t help but wonder if it’s an attempt at culling the world’s population. That’s likely what the Great Reset is about.
September 26, 2020
My findings too.
And spoken of for many years and dismissed as “conspiracy theories”.
Yet now arrived.
September 26, 2020
Look up ‘Mindspace’ a government study from 2010 which led to our own little Behavioural Insight Team aka ‘Nudge Unit’….
Trying to influence you to make decisions in their interest, it’s where you have the follow on with SPI-B and NERVTAG and make people scared who would otherwise not be scared.
We also have our own ‘Joint Biosecurity Centre’ looking after our bio security. How sweet and Orwellian….
Zorro
September 26, 2020
The mask doesn’t protect the wearer, but other people from infection carried in aerosol contamination.
That’s the theory, but I’ve yet to see the results of studies into proportion of infection via aerosols, direct contamination or infected surfaces. That must come under the “There’s a lot we still don’t know about this virus” category.
September 26, 2020
A “Biology Student” recently put a comparison on FB showing two Petri dishes with a jelly in each. One she breathed over without a mask, the other through a cloth mask. The former was then shown a little later with fungi starting, the other virtually clear. It was presented as evidence of the effectiveness of masks. Trouble is, fungal spores are up to 100,000 times bigger than virus particles. I don’t hold out much hope for the future career of this student!
September 26, 2020
As I understand it, it’s not that individual viruses are exhaled, but they teem inside small droplets of moisture that people exhale, which masks readily block. Once the droplets dry, the virus particles are exposed to corrosive oxygen and don’t last long.
I wonder too whether everyone breathing through their nose is just as effective as a mask.
September 26, 2020
Most expelled maybe all exhaled virus particles would be within droplets of moisture, so I would say a reasonable test.
But Government edict is just wear a face covering so all those basic cloth covering are surely a waste of time and consider that they would have the ability to store that moisture droplet to be expelled with the next breath.
September 26, 2020
probably got a PhD as a result!
September 26, 2020
She will be Chief Government Advisor!
September 26, 2020
That’s because there aren’t any peer reviewed/RCT studies which support the effectiveness of muzzles (particularly the cheap and nasty ones). All carried out in the last 15/20 years support this view. Absolutely zero credible evidence and certainly not enough to make them compulsory with a penalty fine…..
Zorro
September 26, 2020
There are two basic types of face mask. One for protecting other persons from your breathing, coughing wheezing. This is the type most people are wearing. The theory is that if everyone wore them, transmission from one person to many others would be reduced to near zero.
The second type that the high risk from patients medics wear, work the opposite way around. they protect the wearer from other peoples breathing, coughing and wheezing. Have a read of Dental Nursing at https://www.dental-nursing.co.uk/news/covid-19-a-guide-to-face-masks
September 26, 2020
Face masks are big business now!
Soon be galoshes and plastic visors.
And when it is law that we crawl along the ground on our knees…special virus-repellant knee pads? (Worn with the rest of the kit of course!)
September 26, 2020
Don’t forget the broom handle to minimize emissions from other points of entry/exit!
Zorro
September 26, 2020
Wouldn’t put it past them! Lol.
September 26, 2020
Acorn are you saying the type medics wear don’t protect the patients is that covid is spreading so widely in hospitals and care facilities?
September 26, 2020
…except, Acorn, that the virus size is 0.1 microns and the pores in the mask 0.3 microns in size. Yes it would stop larger particles escaping, but then a normal use of a handkerchief should suffice, and not the cowboy style. Apparently surgical masks and cloth masks work best for filtering out 0.5 microns. I will try to post the Youtube link for videoclip of the above info from American consultant in a new comment.
This information from the New England Medical Journal in a recent paper entitled is important:
Universal Masking in Hospitals in the Covid-19 Era
List of authors.Michael Klompas, M.D., M.P.H., Charles A. Morris, M.D., M.P.H., Julia Sinclair, M.B.A., Madelyn Pearson, D.N.P., R.N.,
and Erica S. Shenoy, M.D., Ph.D.
“…We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes). The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic…”
Yes, indeed, a government and media induced anxiety. Very irresponsible of them, and ultimately the cause of many deaths.
September 26, 2020
Tell that to the Peruvians – extreme muzzle wearers with very high infection rates….
Zorro
September 26, 2020
I wonder where all these masks / muzzles are made ? China perhaps ?
😉
September 27, 2020
Yes, Mark, and if you read the small print on the pack there is a warning on the pack which says that the mask does not protect you from Corona virus.
September 26, 2020
Minds have definitely been lost.
A flu-like illness that has an average survival rate of 99.96%.
The deaths didn’t even make the top 10 list of causes of death in August.
More people are dying of ‘ordinary’ flu, along with lockdown induced deaths, than this ‘disease’.
Yet, democracy & scrutiny have been suspended & (bad) law is being made by diktat without any sound science/medical EVIDENCE to support it.
118 of the ’emergency SIs’ have not complied with proper Parliamentary procedures, see https://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/publications/data/coronavirus-statutory-instruments-dashboard , yet all I hear is about ‘amendments’ to the legislation & nothing about repeal.
Emergency powers are just that. A short period to allow action, but 6 months later, nothing has been put in place for more considered, debated laws.
When has anyone in power, when granted powers removing the liberties of people, EVER returned them to the people themselves?
This has nothing to do with ‘controlling the virus’ (I repeat ave 99.96% survival rate ), but indicative of something far more sinister.
We need MPs to actually stand up & represent their constituents, the people, & ask questions.
Where is the risk assessment for mask wearing? There appears to be far more evidence of the harm & lack of efficacy?
Where is the supporting EVIDENCE for the increasingly bizarre, business & job destroying, regulations that are announced?
Why is the Govt increasing funding of the corrupt & politicised WHO?
Why are ‘cases’ being reported as happening on the day the result is published (much like the manipulation of earlier deaths) to make it worse?
Why is there no context of positive (with a huge percentage of false positives) tests vs the number of tests/retests?
Why are ‘cases’ of a faulty testing system being made synonymous & not compared to resultant hospitalisations & deaths – both are fairly negligible.
The test is for a generic coronavirus, not this ‘deadly disease’.
It is well past time for MPs to stand up & be counted, and not contribute to the current ‘rule by fear & threats’.
September 27, 2020
You make an extremely important point, Annette. The MPs should be fighting to repeal the Act, not just tweaking it. They should stand firm against this grab by the Left of our freedoms and rights, and against the agenda (which is well under way) to completely transform our lives/way of life.
Do not be fooled and think because Boris Johnson is labelled “Tory” that this takeover of our society is not happening, and, critically, that it is not planned. It is, and very swiftly, and we have got to take action. Write to MPs before Wednesday, as Hitchens in M o S article suggests.
It is very well worth reading his article: he states that Johnson should take advice from
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8776033/PETER-HITCHENS-Boris-great-idea-Burn-house-TWICE-rid-wasps-nest.html
“Johnson was never compelled to strangle the economy and turn daily life into a crime. He chose to do it….”
“His actions make nonsense of his words. It was the same when he said: ‘I am deeply, spiritually reluctant to make any of these impositions, or infringe anyone’s freedom.’
“No he is not. If he was, he would have listened to the many brilliant experts whose wise counsel he has ignored from the start, such as Sunetra Gupta, John Lee and Carl Heneghan….”
Hitchens is incandescent about the PM, his advisers, apparently inert Tory MPs, and really highlights the significance of what has been going on: the transformation of our society by the Left, in the person of Boris Johnson.
Many people have apparently been sleeping. Some Tory MPs may be slightly awake but their action to date to stop this huge power grab and suppression of our freedoms and way of life has been lamentable.
September 26, 2020
It is noticeable how all the “measures” including masks, all of which curtail human contact….also speed up commerce!
Deliveries with a frantic knock at the door…no chat. No sign of the delivery man actually. Not a second wasted!
Shop staff revelling in their new ability to be downright rude ( more so than before). And you can’t hang about or dawdle in a shop now.
How can one chat with a masked person? How can one chat wearing a mask?
Not only are our human rights being taken but also our commercial ones.
Take the customer’s money and run!
September 26, 2020
Supermarket deliveries no problem with the usual pleasantries, the normal non food deliveries by large carriers/delivery companies simply do not have the time to chat, as they get paid about 30 pence a delivery.
September 26, 2020
Yes, they have stopped the infuriating notes “You were out when we called….”, with rearrangements having to be made for redelivery.
September 26, 2020
Being deaf and normally lip reading is now out. Shop assistants get rather stroppy when i ask them to repeat what they say several times as I have no idea what they are on about, One yesterday ripped her muzzle off the shout the cost of my goodso
September 26, 2020
Apparently the plastic visors people are wearing are useless too. Still it keeps some businesses going!!
September 26, 2020
Well at least if someone sneezes with a mask and face shield on and they’re close to you cutting your hair or cutting your toe nails their sneeze germs aren’t going all over you. The biggest danger is people are going to like GPs and phlebotomists and dentists etc wearing face shields and won’t want them to stop.
When wearing a face shield they cant just wipe a drippy nose on their hand.
I wouldn’t like to visit my dentist without a face shield on now.
I also wonder if these new routines in hospitals are actually beneficial to stopping MRSA and other virus being spread. Perhaps we really need to be looking at creating much more efficient and comfortable PPE for all medical purposes and care homes moving forward, reusable, able to be sterilised, light weight, comfortable, and health workers not allowed to go home in clothes they work in.
September 26, 2020
Yes, it should be a ‘ Buzz Lightyear’ helmet for all , dont wait until Christmas!
September 27, 2020
To infinity and beyond!
September 26, 2020
The boxes for some of the most popular face masks say:
These do no protect the wearer from Coronavirus.
Perhaps another drawback of this government is that they cannot read? Alternatively they think we are too stupid to read the warning.
September 26, 2020
Masks have been introduced to give customers the confidence to go into shops.
September 26, 2020
Done the opposite.
September 28, 2020
For you maybe Lynn but the public are strangely comforted by this superficial measure.
September 26, 2020
To keep up the FEAR agenda. Power is not a means to an end. It is the end!
Zorro
September 26, 2020
One thing is management of those who are, in theory, able to circulate relatively freely in anything short of full lockdown.
Immediate attention needs to be given both to those obliged to stay in residential contact with those who would otherwise be strangers and those looking after them.
This means universities, residences for the elderly, prisons, hospitals themselves, private schools, barracks, etc.
Should those in charge of such residents have to live with them full time in a bubble with rotation of their numbers subject to quarantining? The trouble is there don’t appear to be the numbers to make this a realistic proposition in most cases.
Will this problem be addressed by a vaccine when it arrives?
Just look at Glasgow University to see how disastrous the effect on these communities is.
Decisions are needed. By yesterday it seems.
September 26, 2020
The cynics among us would suggest that the recent spike is solely due to the imposition of mask among people untrained to use them. It now looks like we will soon have a country 100% isolated anyway. A study needs to be done on how many of the several thousand university students are actually ill rather than locking down due to a small number who have weak versions of the virus picked up by an oversensitive test. This is not the way to run a university and the lives of those hopeful people will be harmed for life. As for track and trace, the biggest load of whatsit in the whole caboodle.
September 26, 2020
I think that everything that ever could be said about this ruddy virus has been said. Every number and statistic crunched to death. And we are destroyed.
The elephant in the room is that this is not how illness has EVER been dealt with and much of the hysteria is based on projections and predictions and models. If the latest “doubling every 7 days “ rot were true this country will be uninhabited by the New Year we are not to celebrate!
Very ill people need to be taken to hospital and taken care of and in the past always were. Less ill stay at home, in bed. The rest of the population avoid the sick and get on with life.
This virus is being used as an excuse to impose a dystopian future. And may those who are doing this not prosper.
September 26, 2020
They won’t prosper or succeed if President Trump has his way. This coming election will have enormous consequences for the future of the western world and will decide whether we are going to be subjugated into the New World Order, with the one world government of the globalists, run on Marxist principles, or whether we are going to be freed from the tyranny of the Left.
P Trump offers us all that freedom, and enough people in the USA have realised it to ensure a landslide in November (unless the attempts at mass voter fraud by the Democrats succeed).
September 26, 2020
Even the voter fraud will not narrow the gap enough. Trump will win. In 4 years I wonder if he would stand for Parliament? He’s Scottish after all.
September 26, 2020
The most important question is why was everything made secondary to this virus? Nothing else has mattered for 6 months. The consequences of many of the actions taken are far more damaging and longer term than the disease. Our personal freedom and liberty have been usurped by an obsessed government drunk on power and so far given carte blanche by parliament. The very future of our way of life and democracy is being undermined by those elected to represent us.
September 26, 2020
It is of corse essential to the zero carbon project to be able to ignore everything else in the pursuit of the economy destroying goal. This is simply the dress rehearsal.
September 26, 2020
I can’t speak for other countries but the political NHS is the reason in this country.
No government could have survived pictures of Covid patients on oxygen overspilling from wards in our NHS hospitals (the cry of a lack of funding would have gone up [remember Lifelogic and his desire for ventilators available for all, all the time]). They therefore shut us down and now want to keep us shut down because tanking the economy for a visible reason remains politically better than full hospitals.
September 27, 2020
Thousands died without even getting to hospital let alone a ventilator or ecmo machine so poor is the NHS as a system of health care. Free at the point of non delivery in many cases. The excess death bulge was about 70,000 earlier in the year.
Thousands also died as infected patient were pushed out of hospitals into care homes to infect thousands of others. Yet no one is seems is held to be responsible for this.
September 28, 2020
All true but go back and read your March posts where you begged for capacity for a potential pandemic to have been held in reserve.
September 26, 2020
Who funds WHO?
September 26, 2020
Gosh…now let’s have a think………🤫
I guess they’d have to be VERY rich……ummmmmm.
September 26, 2020
Inevitably the taxpayer.
September 26, 2020
No..look it up??
September 26, 2020
Boris has promised the British Taxpayer will be the biggest donor! Must be because they are doing such a great job (of destroying the capitalist world).
Boris must go before he messes up Brexit too.
September 26, 2020
A credible statement of the status quo, but what are the solutions.
I would like to see an accurate assessment of Covid’s killing power in comparison with all the other diseases we could die of. Lets have a risk assessment based on age groups and the knowledge we have acquired about covid19 to date. We would then know where we need to concentrate our preventive measures. We would also know where we could take the brakes off accompanied by an excess of personal hygene.
By law most businesses have to run hygenically, upping the level a percentage is not an imposition. Telling them they cannot run economically is a quick way to bankrupcy. Economic bankrupcy is the route we are on at present at all levels.
Even with the brakes off it will be an uphill task to get many businesses back to normal levels of trading. The level of fear generated in the last nine months will take a lot of damping down. For example at the outset my sisters family went into home food deliveries only. She has progressed to click and collect of late but is in effect bunkered down. All of which is no help to all the other businesses her family might be interacting with.
Lets have some solutions aimed at recovery from control. I am back to Spain tomorrow and will be able to offer comparisons, useful or otherwise.
September 26, 2020
I would like to see an accurate assessment of Covid’s killing power in comparison with all the other diseases we could die of.
…
cv19 is 24th
September 26, 2020
I read the other day that they think 8% have had it nationally and 17% in London. Let’s assume 10% which is 7 million people and lets assume that 500,000 have got it in the last 28 days so could potentially still die with it.
47,000 have died with Covid so the fatality rate is at worst 0.7%.
Let us further assume that most of those susceptible to succumbing to this virus have already had it and succumbed so the risk reduces by half.
0.35% of the remainder of the population is 220K. Worst case scenario if everyone gets it.
I think the left claimed that austerity had killed 150K people so it follows that the economy now takes precedence as a tanked economy will be worse than austerity which was fairly non-existent unless you were a tax payer.
September 26, 2020
So what you mean is, we have to learn to live with the virus as we’ve done with all other viruses etc in previous times?
With the determination of some to continue the virus at all costs; children’s wards are being closed and child patients refused admission, ‘in case’ of Covid patients…which seems to be the situation for a lot of illnesses – there seems a priority for Covid everywhere!
Deaths from Covid is 25th on the government list of causes of death in the country.
I read an account of life in Glasgow university written by a first year student for Spiked online . And with the hostage like situation and extraordinary measures in place, I was thinking that if he was my son, I’d have sent him a train ticket, told him to pick up any valuables and walk out as though going shopping in town and to get on a train home. Then I realised with the stringent measures in place to guarding the students; this action would seriously be akin to leaving Colditz!
There is something extremely old and worrying going on in the world and especially in Britain!!
It’s also been polled that people agree to the Lockdowns to the tune of 78% but 45% of people are flouting the rules….this would suggest people are lying in the polls?
And let’s be honest- most of the rules are silly and illogical and inconsistent!!
September 26, 2020
Should read extremely odd not old!
September 26, 2020
If it’s possible to eliminate a relatively infectious disease like Covid-19 by regulating human behaviour, then a not very infectious disease like HIV should be a doddle to eliminate.
September 26, 2020
😂😂 bullseye!
September 26, 2020
“If it’s possible to eliminate a relatively infectious disease like Covid-19 by regulating human behaviour, then a not very infectious disease like HIV should be a doddle to eliminate.”
Especially with practised social (ist) distancing of 2 metres.
September 26, 2020
” the rules are silly and illogical and inconsistent!!” – simple reason for that – whatever you do you will ALWAYS be doing something wrong.
September 26, 2020
One can only hope that the students will learn it us unwise to vote SNP.
September 26, 2020
@ Sharon … if he was my son, I’d have sent him a train ticket, told him to pick up any valuables and walk out as though going shopping in town and to get on a train home.”
In the hope, perhaps a vain one, of turning him into a man an alternative might be to introduce him to the neglected concept of moral fibre and to suggest he start exhibiting some.
(I have read Student Butcher’s Spiked article.)
September 26, 2020
I question the intentions of those UK based political players (State dependent) who proclaim their aim is human-focused in relation to this politically opportune virus. It is my belief that their focus is entirely political and view this clinical event through the prism of pure political opportunism
These State dependents (NHS, politicians, Police and all the other areas of State delivery like DVLA etc etc) care not one jot about the welfare of people. Their concern is primarily driven by self-interest, political power and reducing accountability and exposure to the end-user
The cynicism and cruelty of the above has still not be recognised by the public. Maybe the British public are simply naive and clueless which may explain why they are still wedded to the poison and malignancy of the two main parties.
After all the damage the two main parties have deliberately inflicted on the UK while diverting their attention away using a free-lunch culture spend-fest the British voter still cannot see the harm they do. Like a dependent drug addict, they keep injecting
I genuinely couldn’t care less if they find a cure or not. I know one thing. The poisoned, authoritarian British political class, the unions,. the public sector, Labour’s filthy client State, the main parties. Yes, they’re all determined to protect themselves from harm by destroying freedom and accountability
The downing of Thatcher was a pivotal moment in the development of the British State. It is on that day the State became our master, not our servant. Today, the master whips us hard with a hatred and contempt
Only a party that smashes the Tory-Labour understanding can save us from further brutal treatment and exposure to the poison of identity politics fascism
September 26, 2020
+++
I crave a new, REAL right of centre party that will indeed remove the liblabcon
September 26, 2020
Hear, hear Dom and Bryan!
September 26, 2020
Dom, you are totally wrong in paragraph two. Far too sweeping. I know lots of people who are genuinely doing their best to help people i.e. Nurses, radiologists teachers. Some are misguided by their unions and some actively use unions poor advice to promote laziness.
To claim they do not care one jot makes you foolish, bitter and, quite frankly, stupid to make such a remark. I agree with a lot of your blogs.
September 26, 2020
DOM
All the time we have FPTP nothing will change. At the moment the country is between rocks and a hard place, what have the electorate got to lose by voting for a new order ? Maybe it is what the country really needs to become successful and secure again. REAL CHANGE IS DESPERATELY NEEDED, AND NOW
September 26, 2020
PLEASE turboterrier
Let’s not have that discussion again — PR will not make for better governments – it will split the vote so that the very people we don’t want in parliament squeeze in.
Just look at how paralyzed countries like Italy have been using PR — I want s strong government, not 1 that has to continually compromise which is what you get with PR.
September 26, 2020
Byran Harris .
You are right of course you are. But all the time it is in place it in reality only favours two parties..
The problem is how do you convince the electorate to throw caution to the wind and look for another way of doing things? The press and media are well practised over the years ensuring that eventually the status quo will remain in place because it is in their best interest to do so.
September 27, 2020
@turboterrier — Yes
We desperately need to get out of the 2 party system – it is killing us as a nation
Even though people think they can vote for an alternative party to labour, SNP, libdem, and the Greens are just a variation on labour – all socialists.
WE so badly need a real right of centre party to break the liblabcon, to correct the leanings to the left by the Tories, and to stop the slide into marxism.
The Tories of course refuse to support a new right of centre party, which shows where their loyalties lie, because it would do them so much good, as well as us to have 2 real right of centre parties running Westminster.
September 26, 2020
You can’t change anything with an electoral system which gives the Tories an unfair advantage. If Liverpool started every game with a 3-0 head start and got to be the referee too they would never lose. The Tories have a 3-0 head start and are the referee. They also want to change the rules to work more in their favour.
At some point the majority will simply not put up with government by the minority. And it is either changed willingly or we enforce change on them. If your voice is consistently not heard at the ballot box then there are other ways to change governments.
September 26, 2020
Presumably when Blair and Brown rules for three terms you were all excited by their electoral success.
I like your “take to the barricades comrades” challenge Martin.
Very Dave Spart.
September 26, 2020
I meant to say Andy but no worries, I’ve always thought they are the same person.
September 26, 2020
Andy the Tories have a massively UNFAIR DISADVANTAGE. In fact I would go so far as to say that the electoral system is gerrymandered against them. They require huge numbers more per seat than the opposition. This needs to be put right ASAP.
September 26, 2020
… Huge numbers of votes per seat …
September 26, 2020
You preferred the Lib/Con Government?
September 26, 2020
Lyn Atkinson.
No to your question at that time I wanted real change and the pact gave nothing of the sort
Likea lot of the nation I wished for real change and what the hell Farage had a mystery, energy and charisma that fired the imagination. For all of that I still voted for the Tories albeit I did not trust CMD as far as I could spit.
A lot of what the man warned could happen is. Why is he to be perceived to be the only one concerned over the dingy travellers and gets castigated for it. Boris should have listened and learnt and created a job for him just as he should have done for our host and some of his esteemed back bench colleagues.
September 26, 2020
Farage is not a member of Parliament.
September 26, 2020
Harsh, but I fear very true.
September 26, 2020
Why do you think straight-talking FARAGE is media/Government scorned so much!
September 26, 2020
Farage was promoted by the BBC because he is the weakest proponent of our politics, not the strongest. Think about that….
September 26, 2020
+1
September 26, 2020
Another idiotic discussion on radio four yesterday about the gender pay gap. All BBC discussions on this topic seem to consist of various ‘BBC think’ women who seem to be too thick to realise the real reasons for this gender pay gap. No one explains reality to them. Perhaps the BBC want us to think all women are a bit daft as they only seem to consult rather dim ones.
The reasons are simply the work life balance choices they take (particularly once they have children), the career choices they take, the subjects they choose to study at school (just look at A levels by gender) and at university, the career gaps they take, a preference not to commute far and to work shorter hours closer to home. In short it is largely their choice. Many sensible women understand this perfectly well but not on the BBC.
September 26, 2020
They have these idiotic types on Woman’s hour to discuss this about once a month too. Actively demanding anti-male discrimination – which is the only way you could get equal gender pay given the above.
September 26, 2020
Good morning.
As others have noted, those that are directing policies are not the ones being affected by said policies. Consequently, there is little or no feedback loop(s) and, what feedback loop(s) there may be, are either being ignored or misinterpreted. They are, like the number of deaths directly as a result of the virus, historical. Add to this that national and devolved governments seems to be moving both the goal posts and sending mixed and conflicting messages is not helping. To that I say, this site is quite valuable as those who are affected, not just here in the UK but throughout the world, can give their point of view in real time. Of course this must be tempered by that the views of the contributors are of a Right Wing bias but, one can make that the views, not news, of the MSM is clearly of a Left wing bias and not trustworthy.
Parliament needs to get back to work. It really, really REALLY, needs to start asking the government some tough questions as it is increasingly looking, even to those that have been studiously following government advice, like it is just making it all up as it is going along.
The WHO is the problem. Governments need to look at their nations and make plans that suit them rather than a one size fits all. Sweden followed a different path because it has a lower population density. The UK should have applied selective lockdowns with more rural areas having fewer restrictions. Travel into the UK from infected areas should have been stopped and screening of new arrivals made. Proper segregation of those deemed high risk made. Life should have continued once it was clear that the NHS would not be overloaded.
I argued right from the start that the governments response should have been to keep matters calm. If anything, it is ramping things up a just making things worse. When in a hole, for pity sakes, STOP DIGGING !!!
September 26, 2020
When the British state has problems looking after the interests of its own people, today we learn that Boris is going to make us one of the largest contributors to the WHO, while at the same time withholding some money because of the WHO’s poor record on investigating Covid. If I have got this right the message from the Government is that we are giving loads of money to a rotten organisation.
Worse we are also going to bung some organisation half a billion pounds to make sure British people don’t get to benefit first when a vaccine comes available. In the twisted thinking in the corridors of the British establishment, giving British people an advantage is to be frowned on and everything done to ensure this doesn’t happen.
If the British establishment hate us so much, which has become pretty obvious to all, why do they hang around making us miserable, why don’t they just go, go somewhere else? I suppose they don’t because they are addicted to our money.
September 26, 2020
Mark, spot on.
Trump called out the WHO this week and has already withdrew funding. Only leader to act like a leader and act in his country’s best interest.
Jelly fish Johnson does what he is told by left wing advisors.
September 26, 2020
+1 Boris stepping to to replace the US funding if the WHO out of our pockets.
He gets everything 100% wrong.
September 26, 2020
Every day the BBC fulminates against what it calls “vaccine nationalism”, a nasty little phrase used by left wing doctors and scientists to shame governments out of looking after their own populations.
September 26, 2020
Vaccine nationalism is clearly dangerous. Maybe we will be the first country to develop a vaccine, but then maybe we won’t.
What we do not want is a situation where whichever country develops it looks only after their own people. That would be outrageous.
Firstly the method of producing any vaccine must immediately be shared – so it can be reproduced at speed everywhere.
Secondly, it goes to the most at risk first – wherever they are. And it might not be here.
Thirdly, it must not be used to make obscene profit. Nobody would deny that the successful vaccine developer should benefit. But we must not accept them holding humanity hostage for billions.
Caring about what happens in the rest of the world does not make you anti-British. It just makes you a decent human being.
September 26, 2020
Andy,
Are you prepared to accept a vaccine shot from ANY country in the World?
September 26, 2020
What a wonderful human being you are Andy.
Obviously old people would get the vaccine first, being statistically most at risk of dying,
September 26, 2020
…and that guff coming from someone who hates his own.
September 26, 2020
Iain – an absolutely spot on comment – every single word. The people who create this chaos don’t live in it. Rules are for those not in govt. Make the poor English even poorer while importing the 3rd World by the thousands to be a financial burden, and in a lot of cases – -a danger to us all.
The govt want us gone – replaced by the 3rd world imports. Nothing will change my mind on that. The govt really DO hate us.
September 26, 2020
Maybe you are just miserable without the help of any ‘establishment?’
September 26, 2020
1. There have been two global pandemics this year: Covid19 and MediaHysteria.
2. Most societies have governments that attempt to persuade or insist upon safety rules when undergoing potentially dangerous activities, whether at work or play: safety belts in vehicles, hard hats on building sites, hazmat suits, anyone?
3. Most societies contain individuals – at all levels – who consciously or unconsciously ignore the rules, putting other people’s lives at risk every day.
4. We all have our own ideas on what the rules should be, and how their enforcement should be administered, but it is Government’s responsibility to juggle differing demands and priorities, and no matter what decisions are taken, probably 50% of voters will think they were the wrong ones.
5. It’s at precarious times like these that I am so glad I twice refused, 30 years ago, invitations to become a Parliamentary candidate!
September 26, 2020
Yes SM but most governments don’t stop people altogether from rock climbing; riding a motorbike; riding a horse; dangerous sports. Most governments allow free will to make dangerous decisions even with the implication to the Health System because we PAYE workers all pay 25.8% national insurance over the lower earnings level of £9500 not an insubstantial cost.
September 26, 2020
I read your carefully-worded blog this morning with interest.
We know that serious mistakes were made in the begining of the Chinese plague viris crisis as the government insisted that the economy came first, over protecting the public. The inexplicable decision to move elderly hospital patients into care homes without being tested, to make room for younger BAME patients on the respirators. The refusal to stop flights from Italy when it would have made a difference. Giving up and stopping the tracing of contacts after the first cases of community transmission. Starting the lockdown two weeks too late. Failing to prevent noscomial spread of the virus within the NHS by not testing staff. The constant spinning of the fatality numbers. The mixed messaging over shopping in Durham.
I’m sure other mistakes that we could learn from would come to light if Johnson allowed the independent enquiry that many want
On a day where Jenny Mikakos, the health minister of the state of Victoria in Australia has accepted responsibility for their second wave and resigned, it is worth noting that that both Australia and New Zealand did bring their epidemics under control by agressive lockdowns. The fact that their organisational failures of enforced hotel quarantine and re-infection from travellers returning from overseas shows how infectious this virus is; there were reports in the scientific press this week that the virus has mutated and has become even more so.
Overwhelmingly, it is the failure of our “world-beating” test and trace scheme that has resulted in the current exponential growth of cases and it will not be long before another wave of fatalities amoung the vulnerable increases the numbers in the UK, already the worst in Europe.
Hancock and Harding should accept responsibility, follow Ms Mikakos’ example, do the honourable thing and resign. I’m sure they both need a rest after all their hard work.
September 26, 2020
Sakara. there were reports in the scientific press this week that the virus has mutated and has become even more so.
I think maybe the virus is more contagious but that it has mutated (as many scientists say it will) into something less dangerous and this is why hospital admissions are still low.
September 26, 2020
I noted the local politicians were delighted that Mikakos accepted the role of scapegoat, when it should have been clear that it was the policy they imposed that “failed”. It is an attempt to deflect from their Orwellian shutdown, which is perhaps the most authoritarian in the Western world.
September 26, 2020
the “cure” is costing more lives than the virus, and destroying everyone’s ability to earn money and enjoy their time on this planet.
the cure is also exposing the big state, command & control, Stalinist rationing & allocation, “some are more equal than others” and curtain twitching approaches of most of those at the top of the NHS, public sector and police.
we are a free country and will not put up with this sheer incompetence much longer.
there are some blomming obvious measures that should be taken, like stopping incoming flights from virus hotspots, and there are many measures being taken which are clearly nonsense.
we need to stop all this central command & control nonsense, for instance testing should be decentralised and individual schools, businesses, and councils should be encouraged to run their own testing (as many are doing anyway as they find out the centralised approach cannot deliver tests). longer term we want individual test machines that everyone can have, like blood sugar testing machines for diabetics – we most certainly do not want big brother telling us where and when to get tested, or which VIP group is more important than us in the queue.
Our current situation of trying to suppress the virus is doomed to failure. The consequences of our actions far outweigh the risks. We must now accept that it is here to stay and learn to live with it, like we have had to do with almost all other infections.
September 26, 2020
Iain Gill
+1…well said
September 26, 2020
” we are a free country” – -WERE – -not ARE. We are the most watched nation on the planet. More CCTV per person than anywhere else – all on the basis of lies that it would cut crime. People put their own CCTV system up, from their own cash, profits from the sales sent more cash to the govt, and if anything happens, the police go and get the evidence collected by the public.
Also look at your “freedom” – Mobile phone positions tracked, numbers called are tracked and for how long – next will be the whole conversations) ANPR tracks your vehicle, New cars sold in the EU for the last few years HAD to have some system to call 999 automatically ( i.e. tracking again. System made so if you turn it off – your car won’t run ) – Bank cards are tracked, any electronic record (loyalty cards) of your purchases is kept so you are tracked and can be bombarded with adverts.
ALL told to us that it is purely to make our lives better.
September 26, 2020
You have explained the difficulties Sir John, what would you suggest ?
September 26, 2020
dismantle most of the rules? Let the people be the judge of acceptable protection/behaviour!
September 26, 2020
I remember those days when people would carried a hankerchief and if symptoms got bad isolated at home for 2 weeks
September 26, 2020
ALL the ‘rules’.
September 26, 2020
There are plenty of people who say that CV-19 was a manufactured virus – A Chinese whistleblower doctor is just the latest — given that the WHO worked with China to suppress information regarding the CV outbreak, can someone tell me how we can trust the WHO in any shape or form.
The WHO are part of the UN, which has already told us that they will use this disaster to bring in their new world order …. but those in authority ignore this power play.
I criticize the government for following lemming-like what has been ‘tried’ elsewhere, and yet they ignore the simple things that could be done to help people fight off the virus. Government is also becoming too ready to punish people and dramatize other oppressive states. They have the power to call in the army… and even though they have no real answers, they WILL impose their authority on us anyway!
Talk about unfocused – When will the government wake up to the fact that their advisers have failed, and a new approach is required?
The only real solution, as more and more real doctors are stating, is to increase the ability of people to survive or shrug off the virus, and allow it to take it’s course…. IF we do not do this then we can say goodbye to our economy and our way of life!
September 26, 2020
Well said. No one should listen to the WHO let alone to give hundreds of millions of taxpayers money to carry on as before! Utter stupidity.
September 26, 2020
+++
September 26, 2020
Well said Hope
September 26, 2020
The stupidest thing of all was when some policemen forbade sunbathing, of their own accord. It didn’t say anything about sunbathing in the guidelines. Also, the media disapproval of people of people on the beach, taking up sun, sea, and pure air for goodness sake. (While approving of BLM.) It must have been that with so few police, they decided we must only be out a very short time (except BLM and Ex R) and then back in our burrows so they could manage the situation.
September 26, 2020
+++
September 26, 2020
” say goodbye to our economy and our way of life! ” – -I already have done. It is clear that the destruction of this nation is ongoing and our culture/race is to be wiped out, with govt approval. Thousands of single young male immigrants are being waved in, living off our taxes – looked after in hotels – and now being put in Army barracks ?? Might as well give them weapons to finish the job !! They are treated better than the taxpayers who have to fund this lunacy. Free tvs and no license to pay for a start, free NHS, free accommodation etc etc – -all while WE are locked up under threat of arrest/fine/jail and criminal record.
September 26, 2020
Boris clearly believes in ‘ the climate emergency ‘,’ the COVID lockdown’ , ‘ black lives matter , but not white ‘ and most of the consequences of following these policies.which are all Marxist and expensive ,denying us our history and pride in ourselves .
He has fallen for all the hoaxes and scams at work in the world today
I despair for our future with such a person in control of so much .
September 26, 2020
The simple solution is to limit direct contact with as few a people as possible, and try to keep a safe distance from them when you do..
Aware it is not possible for many, but too many just seem to not want to bother at all, it really is not difficult or complicated to understand.
It is simple mathematics, the more people you see and get close to, the higher the chance of getting an infection.
September 26, 2020
Alan, Absolutely. You said it before and I think most people agree. It really is not that hard a concept. Learn to live with it not lock down. The govts catastrophic economic self harm is astonishing. The dope Johnson giving away hundreds of millions more to the WHO that has not recognized its failings. Again, only Trump prepared to stand up and say it as it is.
Jelly fish Johnson must go.
September 26, 2020
Just why is he increasing our contributions by 30%?
zorro
September 26, 2020
But you also need to balance the cost of infection against all the myriad of costs of limiting direct contact – between family members, between neighbours, between young and old, between doctor and patient, between teacher and pupil, between police officers and members of the public, between adolescents growing up, between people who bump into each other on the market square.
By limiting direct contact to the extent that you feel may be necessary, and by enforcing this through a system of increasing fines and military force, you sow resentment, distrust, fear, suspicion, mental ill-health, physical ill-health, disunity and economic collapse.
September 26, 2020
The better you look after your immune system the less chance you have of getting an infection
September 26, 2020
how do I ‘look after my immune system?’
– just asking.
September 27, 2020
Eat real food. Avoid chemicals. Would be a good start.
September 27, 2020
zero to do with immunology.
Try again.
(I’ll give you a clue – catching and surviving something every week for a year might help).
September 26, 2020
Yep. It’s the defence God designed for us.
September 26, 2020
It is enlightening to find that the experts who say that the reason we have a second wave is due to test, track and trace not being implemented early enough. They have no answer to the fact that other nations who implemented test, track and trace as the experts insist is the answer have a similar issue with a second wave no better at best than the UK. I never did understand how testing would prevent the spread of the infection, social distancing, cleanliness yes, masks hum, testing ? always too late – you have it if you are positive and have done the damage.
September 26, 2020
the British supposed “experts” would not even pass a Science O level with the standard of nonsense they have been trotting out to the British public.
September 26, 2020
It was politics not science. This is not a projection they said so what was it?
Clearly just part of project fear!
September 26, 2020
I remember a German saying they had no idea why they had done better and that a second wave was coming.
September 26, 2020
Germany has done better because it has a competent government and a competent leader.
There really is no surprise that Trump, Johnson, Bolsanaro all lead failed governments which have done badly tackling Coronavirus.
It is also no surprise that Merkel, Jacinda Ardern and others lead good governments which have succeeded.
Whilst I did not much like Mrs May it is the country’s misfortune that we did not have her steady hand in charge at this time, rather than the failed oaf who is outraged to be only earning £150k. I know he has a lot of children to support but surely even he can scrape by on that sort of salary.
September 26, 2020
Childish nonsense.
September 26, 2020
£150k in modern Britain where you have to support a lot of people before having breakfast yourself, is not much Andy. Remember our marginal tax rate is over 90%.
September 26, 2020
Whilst walking the dog around 5pm yesterday in Joel Park in Wokingham I responded to a call for help from a lad who had been beaten and robbed, and was extremely distressed. The police and an ambulance were called. Half an hour later they had not turned up. I did my best to comfort and calm the lad but eventually he left to walk to the station where he could shelter and wait for help in relative safety. It was bitterly cold. I felt helpless and very let down by our emergency services. No doubt they were busy elsewhere enforcing lockdown rules.
September 26, 2020
Police? – -deskbound in Lower Earley. Ambulance? – – queued up in Royal Berks waiting to offload their occupant. On the beat? – non existant.
September 26, 2020
Fred
Probably as simple as not enough Police on shift at any one time, because we simply do not have enough Police for what we would all like them to do anymore.
No not in the force myself, never have been, but have been to many Neighbourhood Action Group meetings over the years to know this is the reality of the situation.
You would be even more concerned yourself if you knew the actual numbers on each shift each day, given the huge area they have to cover.
September 26, 2020
Fred H
“Police? – -deskbound in Lower Earley. Ambulance? – – queued up in Royal Berks waiting to offload their occupant. On the beat? – non existant.”
To be fair Fred not all the Lower Earley police are desk bound. Some are out on Rushey Way waiting to pounce on anyone who’s rear brake bulb has just blown.
September 26, 2020
and reloading cameras with film etc.
September 26, 2020
Same up and down the country – this government has failed on crime
September 26, 2020
+1 and justice is not an add on extra!
September 26, 2020
Robert McDonald
“It is enlightening to find that the experts who say that the reason we have a second wave is due to test, track and trace not being implemented early enough.”
In the main the second wave is due to people who don’t give a bugger for anyone except themselves. Which includes those who won’t do as they’re told because they don’t like a conservative government. Many of them prepared to watch the entire country become infected just so they could pull the tories down.
Then you get those who don’t wash after visiting the lavatory.
September 26, 2020
What second wave ???
September 26, 2020
Like Boris? He got the virus, sings too fast does he?
September 26, 2020
Constituent.
“No doubt they were busy elsewhere enforcing lockdown rules.”
Err…no.
September 26, 2020
Whilst it is true that many countries are now having second waves it is also true that England’s response to the virus has been amongst the worst in the world.
Initially government ignored it – it was too busy with Brexit. Then Johnson dismissed it. We were not going to cower away he said. We would be like Clark Kent changing into Superman and would fight it head on.
Then the public started locking down anyway, despite government, and Johnson eventually caught up – but only when the damage was already done and the virus had spread across the country.
The government’s response since has been a car crash. A scandal in our care homes. PPE mess. App fiasco. School meals. A level results. Quarantine. Test and trace. All this goes wrong when you have a useless government and a useless prime minister.
It is a cruel irony that old people – who put him in Number 10 – are the ones who are most at risk of death from the virus he has failed to tackle.
But now the young are suffering too because their lives are being curtailed to protect old people – and many young people are rightly now saying no to that. The Baby Boomers started an intergenerational war with their attacks on younger people over climate change, Brexit, and the economy. As a result I think many young people now have no desire to help out now. It’s not them at risk from this glorified cold.
It’s time to remove all restrictions and let everyone take their chances. We had one chance to tackle the virus and Johnson’s government failed. Some of us are not surprised that a government of failures could make such a mess of things.
I still wonder how these clowns plan to enforce the new Kent border you all voted for.
September 26, 2020
Rewriting history is typical with extreme lefties.
We locked down around the same time as many other nations.
PS
Dont mention Sweden.
September 27, 2020
I love talking about Sweden – can’t speak for Andy though.
It has a completely different public, who elect utterly different governments from the UK’s.
They also assiduously self-imposed many of the measures voluntarily that the English won’t do even when required.
Nor are they burdened by seventeen-million self-certified wastes-of-space.
That said, they are now moving towards local lock downs too.
September 27, 2020
Wrong
Sweden has far more in common with European nations.
Big cities with high density.
Yet a very different policy to the one you demand us to have followed.
And good results.
I see by your response that Sweden and its approach and its results still really annoys you.
As it runs your theory.
September 27, 2020
we are often unsure who pulls the puppet strings.
September 26, 2020
I see the police have student halls of residence surrounded in Manchester and are preventing the students from leaving, all in the name of the virus measures.
This cannot but cannot go on.
Who on earth is letting this nonsense happen?
September 26, 2020
Who on earth is letting this nonsense happen?
….
the govt is controlled by satanists working for the pope.
it will get worse
September 26, 2020
Yes we will all understand the Protestant Irish soon.
September 26, 2020
Just like Victoria, Australia – absolute insanity. Some people need to swing for the death and destruction which has been caused.
Zorro
September 26, 2020
Iain Gill
“Who on earth is letting this nonsense happen?”
…….but we do know who caused it.
September 26, 2020
I can think of a few laws that the Police appear to be breaking there. The Police should expect to be sued.
September 26, 2020
Glad you’re on this subject today Sir John. Maybe you can address what is in my eyes, rather nonsensical – High Consequence Infectious Diseases (HCID) in the which, according to Gov.UK, Covid19 was removed from the list back in January. So Covid19 is not of high consequence, it’s therefore medium, little, or of no consequence. There are growing numbers of people who clearly see this and the measures taken to mitigate Covid19 are and have been looking far too damaging to the masses and see it as unsustainable for much longer. I haven’t seen or heard any government or health official explain HCID as stated on gov.UK and then relate it to our actual Covid19 response. The masses are seeing we are in a complete hysterical situation in our country. Please get us some sense back John.
September 26, 2020
It was removed from the HCID list on 19/03, four days before the lockdown…. Fancy that…
Zorro
September 26, 2020
Hear! Hear!
September 26, 2020
I agree pretty much with all said by Mr Redwood. Trouble is, few in government are listening to the facts. Man always thinks he can control Nature, but in reality there are limitations. Nature is a powerful beast; she has twists and turns in her behaviour that we cannot even guess at. The obsession over getting a vaccine is ludicrous, when other treatments are known to be available but seemingly snubbed. Equally, the notion of total elimination. We already know that cv19 is likely to mutate, therefore any vaccine has to be repeated annually, just like the flu jab….a real money-maker for the pharmas, while having unknown long-term effects on those vaccinated with a “rushed job”. Well I never, who’d have thought it?
Lockdowns and draconian physical restrictions on people only slow the transmission down, once restrictions are relaxed the virus will still be around and will just carry on. Therefore yes, we must just live with it. Yes it can be nasty for many, but so can flu….and so is the untreated cancer, dental problems, tumours, and so on that our world-beating NHS has dumped on us. Cowardly people demanding permanent lockdown will reap a whirlwind that they will wish they’d never seen.
September 26, 2020
I couldn’t have put it better myself Chris Dark
September 26, 2020
The “Nudge” Unit might imagine that lockdowns etc will make people very keen to have the money-spinning vaccine.
Or maybe we will never be allowed out again without being vaccinated?
September 26, 2020
There is surely a sixth weakness? That the test, even if correct, is only a snapshot in time, and could be out of date very soon.
September 26, 2020
…and it isn’t a cure
September 27, 2020
it becomes pointless 3 days later. We will never be able to check daily so forget that frequency.
September 26, 2020
I watched the BBC News last night, for the first time in ages (mea culpa).
Clive and the Team were horrified at the 6,000+ cases (34 deaths) reported that day, for the UK.
No mention of the 15,000+ cases, and 150 deaths, in their EU paradise, that is France.
It’s almost as if the BBC wishes to create the illusion that the UK/Boris/The Tories are alone in really struggling to contain the virus.
September 26, 2020
To the BBC Anything bad is due to Brexit, Trump, Boris, the Conservatives, the private sector or climate change!
September 26, 2020
It is a UK news programme for a UK audience.
In the same way that the local radio station in Cardiff doesn’t dwell on the face that there is a new lockdown in Leeds.
At some point you need just to get over the notion that everyone else is a member of some mythical liberal metropolitan elite that is out to get you.
This is a Brexit government. It is a failed government. And it is the fault of people like you.
September 26, 2020
You are in a tiny minority who think the BBC isn’t biased.
September 26, 2020
Tackling the virus?
Why not tackling knife crime and paedophile rings?
No “lockdown” for all that.
No mask wearing for that?
Don’t remember any “lockdowns“ for terrorist attacks.
No “lockdowns” in Eastern France where young, white women are being attacked for “immodest dress”.
No..we have to live with the risk of all those dangers.
The economic and social cost of locking down for them would be too great.
So WHY? WHY? for a virus.
And still the boats arrive!
September 26, 2020
” And still the boats arrive! ”
– One hotel chain has said they are losing loads of jobs due to a “fall in demand” – I actually burst out laughing in disbelief.
And from another angle – how many unused barracks do we have left ? Then where? Spare rooms anyone? – Make sure everything is “culturally sensitive” for your permanent “guests” – or else. It already seems that the MoD is wanting empty houses – I wonder who for?
September 26, 2020
Yes. MOD must be kicking itself for selling off so many houses and barracks. ( Good!)
September 26, 2020
Cruise ships, in international waters. Seriously.
September 26, 2020
Everhopeful
Because 99.9% of us are unlikely to ever suffer a knife crime.
Are unlike to have to suffer from paedophile rings.
Are unlikely to ever experience a terrorist attack.
Or have our daughters attacked for wearing a mini skirt.
September 26, 2020
Covid is 24th on the list of UK killers even after the rigged figures.
September 26, 2020
If the government had the political will to eradicate the crimes I mentioned it would be easy for them to do so. But it does nothing.
Yet the government is quite happy to sacrifice everything to “combat” a virus which has proved to be little worse than the flu.
The former situation suggests that the government has little care for our safety making the latter response a nonsense. Or something more sinister.
Your lefty comment regarding mini skirts was duly noted.
Shame on you!
September 26, 2020
you obviously have no idea of life in London districts!
A remote Scottish island, wasn’t it?
September 26, 2020
MH but then most of us are unlikely to get Covid either.
September 26, 2020
Hi John
I’ve been posting to your blog with the question of what is the chance of having Covid19 if you test positive for Covid19.
The government (your pal Matt) should be able to tell us the answer to that question. However, I found an answer of sorts from Professor Norman Fenton who gives a short youtube explanation of how to calculate the answer to the question.
He tells us that the chance of having Covid19 after testing positive for it is 16.7%.
But this 1 in 6 chance is still under dispute and is likely to be smaller since it was based upon Professor Fenton’s conservative assumptions.
The other failing from the government is that they are not presenting evidence that the first lock down worked. There should be a discontinuity in the number of deaths a week or so after lock down was implemented. Can you ask the government to show us that the previous lock down worked.
It looks to me like the government is presenting cases as though they were of people who were ill rather than of people who merely tested positive for Covid19 with a less than 20% chance of actually having the disease. Can you get your pal Matt to clarify, please?
September 26, 2020
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2020/09/26/tackling-the-virus/#comment-1158150
September 26, 2020
Currently doing the rounds in Sweden: “Because of low infection rates we have decided to drop the 2 metre spacing rule and go back to our usual 5”.
September 26, 2020
More information is surfacing about the early discussions on how to handle the virus. One senior boffin is now reported to have strongly said the obvious that there are only two options: vaccination or controlled herd immunity. Because no plan was made for a SARS pandemic the country was very ill prepared e.g. PPE and care homes, again both pretty obvious. It puts our gratuitous 0.7% foreign aid into real prospective.
Project fear took over and an extreme lockdown with overgenerous support packages have left us with little room for manoeuvre. The u turns and silly errors continue e.g. home working good/bad?, 10pm curfews, students trapped in digs, masks?
Whilst genuine Covid deaths, not amongst other causes (heart failure is responsible for 100% of deaths) and hospital/Nightingale? admissions remain low or manageable then we should be very cautious about causing alarm, despondency, depression, low morale and mood.
September 26, 2020
INDEED
September 26, 2020
Good morning Sir John and all .
If only our leader had stuck to his guns and gone for herd immunity we would be coming out the other side of this Covid nightmare . Instead he followed the advice of the Sage and WHO club , so back into the nightmare we go , and will continue to do , looping round and around .
No matter what you try to do now, it will be herd immunity that will save the day because its a virus , and a virus can not be controlled as we are finding out , again !
It will prove near impossible to reverse the fear instilled by the Sage clowns along with the government , so say goodbye to the economy as we continue to hide under a rock with a pointless mask on pretending all is going to be well .
I would work on better treatments for a start. A vaccine is nowhere near yet , so treatments are the way forward for now .
.Finally stop fiddling with the facts and data and start telling the real truth . Hospitalization and deaths by Covid 19 only will give a clear picture , not the baffling waffle we have to listen to . Infection numbers are irreverent .
Sir John , we reap what we sow . Unfortunately the government got this wildly wrong .
As my late father would say ” You got yourself into this mess , you get yourself out of it ”
Good luck .
September 26, 2020
Consider Zimbabwe, the former bread-basket of Africa. On top of all the political disruption, a trusted charity reports that with 2019, came the worst drought for decades. Then in 2020, “A brutally enforced coronavirus lockdown and night curfew….causing extreme hardship. Jobs ceased, wages disappeared overnight, and subsistence farmers were cut off from their fields. Even the much-feared army and police are now thin with hunger. It is estimated that two-thirds of the population will need food aid by Christmas.”
Herd immunity should be the aim. You do more testing, you discover more cases – good: evidence that the virus is smouldering through the host population, and will reach a natural equilibrium. All that governments have to do is protect the vulnerable, and facilitate the prompt and effective treatment of those who become ill.
There’s something eerie about the way governments have reacted to this virus. Yes, there is a problem, but they seem set on making it ten time worse.
September 26, 2020
I want to see evidence of immediate profiling of the September deaths with Covid for the following trusts (ordered alphabetically by region then Trust not by performance, but they been selected from the data for obvious reasons).
London
BARTS HEALTH NHS TRUST
BARKING, HAVERING AND REDBRIDGE UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS NHS TRUST
Midlands
UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS BIRMINGHAM NHS FOUNDATION TRUST
UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS OF DERBY AND BURTON NHS FOUNDATION TRUST
North East and Yorkshire
SOUTH TYNESIDE AND SUNDERLAND NHS FOUNDATION TRUST
BRADFORD TEACHING HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST
NORTHUMBRIA HEALTHCARE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST
North West
MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY NHS FOUNDATION TRUST
LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST
SALFORD ROYAL NHS FOUNDATION TRUST
BOLTON NHS FOUNDATION TRUST
TAMESIDE AND GLOSSOP INTEGRATED CARE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST
South East
WESTERN SUSSEX HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST
These deaths have happened, they are not forecasts and they should help to understand what is happening not just accept the dumb-ass proportionate number of elderly/vulnerable deaths if the virus spread as before through the community.
On the face of it, the dumb-ass acceptance is what the Govt and its advisors are doing. Without understanding these deaths (how infected , where infected, when infected, how/when/what treated), the Govt cannot claim it has learned and responded to the data. We know the groups where the hazard is highest. A question is whether the where and how to most effectively apply the resource has been identified?
September 26, 2020
So many good posts on today’s diary item…. and so spot on.
Can you feel the anger building up at the inept way the government is imposing it’s will on us, while doing nothing that actually works for us, the people of this nation?
September 26, 2020
I think compulsory face masks could be major spreaders of this disease and many other respiratory infections. I’ve just been reading the WHO guidance on how to wear a non-medical face mask safely.
On the “Do’s” list it says ‘Clean your hands before touching the mask’, ‘Inspect the mask for damage or if dirty’, ‘Adjust the mask to your face without leaving gaps at the sides’, ‘Avoid touching the mask’, ‘Clean your hands before removing the mask’, ‘Remove the mask by the straps’, ‘Store the mask in a clean plastic bag if not dirty or wet’, ‘Clean your hands after removing the mask’.
Hands up everyone who does all that each time they go shopping! Watching my fellow shoppers none of them follow this advice, or even seem aware of it.
They also have a list of “Don’ts” and I’m afraid I match more of those than from the “Do’s” list, especially ‘Don’t wear a dirty or wet mask’, the mask is always wet after about five minutes, and ‘Don’t use a mask that is difficult to breath through’, they are all difficult to breath through especially when wet!
The only way to stay safe from mask infections is to either to claim exemption or avoid all the locations where the use of masks is required. My shopping is limited to a dash round the supermarket once a week and will remain that way until the mask rule is removed.
The WHO advice can easily be found by Googling “ WHO how to wear a mask”. It’s worth reading if only for amusement!
September 26, 2020
Which tribe are you in?
– the false positives
– the graph fetishists
– the snoops
– the Covidiot savants
– the eco death cult
– the freelance epidemiologists
– the ‘I had it in November’ clan
– the pragmatists
– the unrewarded heroes
– the existentialists (Thanks to Suzanne Moore, The Guardian, 26/09)
– …
– the ‘I so need this blog to show I still exist’ group
Choose your pick.
September 26, 2020
How about you in the pompous lefty group hef?
September 26, 2020
well – – being white, male, heterosexual, still married to my first and only wife, fully limbed, OAP, sometime protest voter, sometime Sir John voter, owning home, possibly with full faculties, volunteer worker…..
I do feel part of a very small, and getting smaller every day group (tribe being very English – just to enrage certain people).
September 26, 2020
and grandfather to 4.
September 26, 2020
I see you have posted again…
September 27, 2020
Sorry, but I am not on your list, so cannot answer.
Try, “Someone who is capable of independent thought ?”
September 26, 2020
Yesterday the Govt again allowed fear to be spread by the misrepresentation of inappropriate numbers. Again the headlines were highest number of daily infections in a day. The Govt needs to stop the bogey-man stories to which it is subjecting the population and ensure transparency. The actual story from yesterday should have been positive tests by date remain a similar percentage of tests processed by date
22/9 4,926/188,865 2.61%
23/9 6,178/218,360 2.83%
24/9 6,634/232,268 2.86%
25/9 6,874/245,363 2.80%
And I again repeat for transparency we need to see
(i) new cases and new cases as percentage by specimen date, broken down to pillar 1&2 and asymptomatics & symptomatics (assessed by region)
(ii) the historic and present implied infected fatality ratios as a function of age and comorbidities with method of calculation
(iii) the where and how of the new elderly cases
(iv) the socio-economic costs
The conservative (cautious in simply not including everything) estimates of the lives cost through the Govt’s policies of cure are looking similar in scale to the reasonable worst cases of lives saved. This should be sufficient for the Govt to change course i.e. develop a live with it policy e.g. increase the efficiency of protecting the vulnerable, sensible behaviour by agreement (through public information and education) and consider directing resources to improve QALYs elsewhere (i.e. offset).
The Govt also has an opportunity to not renew the Coronavirus Act. This would allow responsibility of actions taken to shared over the HoC, giving a path to escape for the Govt and hopefully saving a little bit of any remaining democracy.
September 26, 2020
Governments across the world have rightly tested “the science” for answers, but it’s clear that the scientific conclusions (and data) are now considered flawed by a key component of their “experiment”, i.e. the human labrats. Our role in the process requires us to adopt an unquestioning belief in a scientific view that even other scientists doubt and it can only be considered successful if it actually produces the desired outcomes. It hasn’t, and there’s now far too much scepticism for governments to win this battle, so why are they so keen to act as the scientists’ fall guys?
The government needs to take people with the them on this journey, so they must work with the foibles of human nature to mitigate the risks, not inflict unreasonable and unworkable measures on them. If it translates into our government rationalising (aka ignoring) these self-appointed “experts” nestling in their ivory towers, so be it.
September 26, 2020
There are plenty of people who say that CV-19 was a manufactured virus – A Chinese whistleblower doctor is just the latest — given that the WHO worked with China to suppress information regarding the CV outbreak, can someone tell me how we can trust the WHO in any shape or form.
….
when did the intel agencies ever tell us the truth?
CV19 is a hoax, just a regular seasonal corona virus.
September 26, 2020
At some point in the future a country will be the first to declare that the covid-19 must be treated as a flu
I just hope that it would be the UK ….alas we are followers not leaders
September 26, 2020
Please check my use of conditional probabilities [i infected, ui uninfected, + positive test, – negative test]
P(i/+) =P(+/i)P(i)/[ P(+/i)P(i) + P(+/ui)P(ui)]
The result then depend on the pool be tested i.e P(i) is itself conditioned on the pool being tested e.g. P(i) for the U.K. population would presumably be much lower than P(i) for those being tested.
By way of example, assuming P(+/i) =1 i.e. no false negatives and P(+/ui) = 0.01 (1% false positives, literature indicates smaller and much higher values) then in the order P(i) , P(i/+) , P(+) we have,
0.1% , 9%, 1%
1%, 50%, 2%
2%, 67%, 3%
4%, 81%, 5%
The problem is that P(+/i) can change due to an increased fraction of the population viral shedding but recovered being tested, and contamination throughout the process. The lab contribution the latter can be monitored by putting blind known positive and negative samples through the process (i.e. quality assessment). There is no indication from the Govt that this is happening.
I think the viral shedding is important as it typically continues for several weeks after recovery with zero infectiousness. When contacts of identified positives are tracked and tested, they could have had the virus recently i.e. before the identified positive. They can then show positive even though they are recovered. This is one reason that reported test data should include whether the testee is symptomatic or asymptomatic.
September 26, 2020
Sorry Sir John, that was meant to be a reply to gyges
September 26, 2020
The problem is that P(+/ui) can change …
September 26, 2020
Watch the Dr Chris Martenson videos for an easy to understand explanation of false positives and why Hancock is so wrong. Our Government is destroying our economy out of sheer ignorance.
September 26, 2020
Sir John – an excellent precis (para 5) of the problems. Point 3 and 4 need to be addressed somehow differently.
September 26, 2020
world government would have cracked it to justify the lack of democratic accountability that would bring
….
They want world government Chinese style. This is the pope and his minions pushing for global marxism while EU politicians have a vaccine/ID drive. The Left and Greens have been promised a Great Reset of capitalism via marxist chaos and destruction and they love the collectivism.
September 26, 2020
world government would have cracked it to justify the lack of democratic accountability that would bring
….
They want world government Chinese style, pushing for global marxism while EU politicians have a vaccine/ID drive. The Left and Greens have been promised a Great Reset of capitalism via marxist chaos and destruction and they love the collectivism.
September 26, 2020
If we had a real pandemic what would do then, by crying wolf every five minutes they just making things worst for the future and as you all know now they the gov and their scientists are useless.
September 26, 2020
Quarantine, isolation, and antisocial distancing will obviously be effective for Robinson Crusoe, New Zealand, South Georgia, if the concern is to avoid death by sharks, alligators, or trampling by elephants.
As the death-dealing agent becomes smaller the isolation becomes more difficult, as with rat and textiles carrying fleas carrying micro-organisms.
Further reduction in size to viruses, invisibly borne across borders by no end of carrier modes begins to reveal the fatuous nonsense of employing 17th Century ‘controlling’ strategies.
Smaller still, and having no substance whatever, is the dangerous irrational FEAR that has encircled the world. No surprise that equally insubstantial but dangerous political ideas are being unleashed and little challenged as they also encircle the world, snake oil remedies for fears real and imagined. Borders, barriers, masks and metres of separation are ineffectual vanities when fear and malign ideologies are rampant.
September 26, 2020
Further weaknesses are
a) covid can be found in the gut and affect the person without any upper respiratory symptoms and therefore would produce a negative swab and
b) People do no automatically develop antibodies to a pathogen . It is often the second exposure or in some; never.
September 26, 2020
There is always Covid in the gut. What we are talking about is Covid 19, which is respiratory.
September 26, 2020
”…to lessen the death rate from severe cases of the disease….”
It has lessened.
”…solutions to defeating the pandemic….”?
It doesn’t require ”defeating”. It isn’t a dangerous disease to the overwhelming majority.
How much longer will this fabricated ”be afraid” message be ramped up, figures dodgily inflated, privacy invaded, hyperbolic headlines be screamed at us every day? And all in the name of a usually mild virus, and all so that government control can be maintained at any price.
September 26, 2020
Pleased to see the amendment to the coronavirus legislation you supported appears to be provoking a government rethink on rule by decree. Well done.
September 26, 2020
What is clear is no one has the answer, not WHO, not Sage, and so on, so a Government relying on these organizations, and spouting their unfounded unprovable offerings as a doctrine is a Government putting itself at risk of being the sole body responsible for the outbreak of Corvid-19..
So far all we have a good idea on is that it is transmitted by humans. So for the most part individual separation is a defence. A vaccine wont kill or cure just minimise the effect in some people at best. Take reference from the vaccine for the common cold and seasonal flu. No one has ever managed to create a vaccine that cures and defeats these viruses. Logic is we have to find a way of living with it.
What Government is doing that is seriously wrong is laying down the Law, threatening people when in reality it needs the help of all the people. Government in a free democracy should offer advice and guidance, and leave Draconian Dictates to others.
The point this government misses time and time again is those that are not following their rules have never followed their rules so are not going to start now. In essence they(The Government) have set out to punish the all the people just because a few aren’t listening and cant hear them and never will. The up and down of this childish tantrum by the Government they are loosing the support of those most able to help.
This Government is to WOKE and inept, to easily manipulated by the MSM with no direction of its own. Take Brexit we voted for a ‘Clean Break’ so why is Government negotiating something else. Again it would appear they made spurious claims in their manifesto just to gain power. They are certainly not a government of the UK People, with the trust and support of the People. Bring on the revolution!
September 26, 2020
The nutters are out – At least 15,000 protesters have descended on Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park in London as part of an anti-lockdown demonstration. Attendees of the ‘We Do Not Consent’
A case in point, left wing nutters, Yes. But we all understand how stupid those that should know better(The Government) are not listening and hearing as their support and power slips away. Were was the threat of the Army? it didn’t happen. So the threats of Law, Fines etc mean nothing to the masses. 15,000 is more that 6. Not a face covering in sight, no social distancing.
September 26, 2020
JR gives five reasons why test and trace lacks efficacy. He might ave added “in England” because we know that whilst Germany faces identical difficulties, it has been far more successful in controlling the spread of the disease. The problems with England as opposed to Germany are many and various. The first problem is the centralised state as opposed to a country of many lander, so in England, we have a national track and trace solution whereas in Germany track and trace is localised by default. The second is the lack of respect for science in this country by politicians who almost exclusively have Arts degrees, particularly PPE, so instead of having a knowledgeable scientist in charge of a national solution, we get a know-nothing PPE graduate who was in charge of TalkTalk when I lost internet access and found myself discussing this with a sub-continental armed with a script which failed to address my situation in any way whatsoever but wasted an inordinate amount of time.
Test and Trace must be operated at a local level, exclusively. If people are contacted by someone from their local area they are more likely to respond positively than if they are spoken to by someone from miles away armed with a script. In addition, people should not be expected to travel very far to get a test if they develop symptoms and should avoid public transport. As to compliance, other countries have found it necessary to have checks on this as well as penalties for non-compliance.
There is little point in comparing our experience with other equally badly run countries when there are examples in the world of countries mitigating the effects of the disease with far greater efficacy. We should be attempting to emulate them, despite the inadequies of the British state which in many respects is now third world as is its world’s best national health service.
September 26, 2020
There is a good article over on Spiked, ‘The making of Britain’s Covid catastrophe’ which I think sums up the situation rather well.
September 26, 2020
Wind in the Channel today, the country’s only defence.
September 26, 2020
Correct
September 27, 2020
Winter, please come early, and stay late 😉
September 26, 2020
I want to see the emergency powers stripped from Johnson, Hancock etc; all Covid-19 related decisions to be to scrutinised by Parliament and voted on; there should be a review of the restrictions already imposed on England by this bunch of science illiterates. Also accept submissions from the wider science community not just the civil servants time servers in SAGE.
Carry on as you are, expect to lose the next election.
September 26, 2020
Correct
September 26, 2020
+1 absolutely VITAL!
September 26, 2020
The Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab told Sky News on 23 September that 93% of tests are a false positive – with only 7% being accurate.
So, when the MSM reports: “6000 people tested positive today”, what they mean is: “around 5580 people had a ‘false positive’ test today, with only 420 (7%) being accurate”.
Dominic Raab’s 93% is very close to the 91% false positives that Dr Mike Yeadon calculated.
So why hasn’t Mr Hancock disclosed this and how does this justify all of these draconian measures??
September 26, 2020
Lockdowns don’t work and there was never any science showing that they do work. But they are very effective in spreading fear and confusion – hence the continued threat of a future national lockdown. All of these measures – collectively called ‘the new normal’ – are designed to usher in the new AI society. They literally want to connect our brains to the internet which will ultimately control our lives. A social credit system, vaccine passports, increased surveillance, new administrative regions and travel restrictions will be phased in over the next decade. Eventually the state will control the banking system and cash won’t exist. A lot of these things have already started.
September 26, 2020
Can you tell Martin and Andy.
They keep claiming if only we had locked down two weeks earlier.
No mention of your conspiracy theories.
September 27, 2020
Edward
No need to. Martin and Andy are sensible people not likely to be taken in by conspiracy theories (fairy stories).
September 27, 2020
a good laugh early in the morning, for me anyway.
Thank you!
September 27, 2020
They believe only lockdowns will get us to zero Covid.
Which can be currently seen in other nations current experience to be wrong.
September 28, 2020
If you really think that these draconian measures will just go away and we’ll live happily ever after in the ‘old normal’, then it’s you who believes in fairy tales. A social credit system is just a digital way of enforcing the kind of ‘responsible citizen’ laws that this gov’t has brought in. The technology is already there. And as billions have been spent on using the brain within AI systems, do you think it won’t be tried out?
September 26, 2020
Just in case, ‘Social credit’ as used by China in 2020 is not the same as Douglas ‘social credit’ of early twentieth century.
September 26, 2020
The nub of the problem is that the NHS has far too much money. In 1959 it’s budget was £585m compared to £170billion 2020.
We need to wind the funding down. Then they will have to engage their brains and use their resources, and even charge aliens for using the service.
September 27, 2020
Lynn
Aliens? I didn’t know they had landed. I thought those flying saucer creatures only existed in ‘eccentric’ peoples’ imagination like David Ickes.
Or do you refer to people who don’t live or hail from this country? I should hate to be regarded an ‘alien’ as soon as I set foot in another country. Wouldn’t you next time you go on holiday in Benidorm and the local people called you an ‘alien’?
September 27, 2020
picking a fight over alien or resident alien – is that all you’ve got to offer?
September 27, 2020
Words are weapons to PC obsessed lefties.
September 27, 2020
It is called the National Heath Service not the International Health Service.
September 27, 2020
+1
Its also a health service – not a welbeing service
September 26, 2020
Compensation.
When do all nations get compensation from the CCP ?
September 26, 2020
Is it true that the Conservatives are more heavy handed (via the police) with anti Lockdown protesters than BLM protesters ?
It bloody well seem like it.
Well. Good luck with that when full unemployment hits, sans Socialist Sunak.
You can’t even provide panem et circenses now, so how do you think this is going to look in six months ?
September 26, 2020
Burn down the house TWICE to get rid of a wasps nest. And then blame the inhabitants for the ensuing catastrophe.
THAT’s what Boris has done.
(Peter Hitchens today.)
September 26, 2020
I’ve just had the grim experience of visiting my local, clearly on its last legs. A previously vibrant pub.
Perspex every where. Everyone in masks. Masks on until sitting down. Service at table – left forgotten. No music allowed. Just hand dryers from the toilet providing the ambient sound.
This is shit, John. We can’t even drown our sorrows. You have terrified people over nothing.
The Tories have destroyed the British pub. You will not be forgiven and nor do you deserve to be.)
(We are not allowed to blame the CCP so there is no-one else to blame but the Tory party.)
September 27, 2020
Scanning down the comments to this piece, you do seem to have a large number of reasoned thinkers here that have seen the folly of this government’s, in my view, rather panicked and illogical actions.
The fact that few of these have ever been tried in the past, let alone tested or proven, and yet some people are still convinced of their efficacy is astounding. All the while, the damage done is increasingly obvious.
MPs are clamoring for furlough extensions. Kier Starmer is still hammering the wild goose chase that is “test and trace”, when the real answer is to quell the fear, get the country back to work, and advise those that are vulnerable to this, relatively mild virus, to protect themselves appropriately.
Put an end to the dictatorial mandates.
September 27, 2020
Hear hear.
September 27, 2020
Are MPs under some sort of mind control?