Categories
Opinion

I’ve signed death certificates during Covid-19. Here’s why you can’t trust any of the statistics on the number of victims – Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, RT

As an NHS doctor, I’ve seen people die and be listed as a victim of coronavirus without ever being tested for it. But unless we have accurate data, we won’t know which has killed more: the disease or the lockdown?

It matters greatly for two main reasons. First, if we vastly overestimate deaths from Covid-19, we will greatly underestimate the harm caused by the lockdown. This issue was looked at in a recent article published in the BMJ, The British Medical Journal.  It stated: “Only a third of the excess deaths seen in the community in England and Wales can be explained by Covid-19.

If Covid-19 killed 30,000, and lockdown killed the other 30,000, then the lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time. and should never happen again. The great fear is that this would be a message this government does not want to hear – so they will do everything possible not to hear it.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/490006-death-certificates-covid-19-do-not-trust/

Categories
Opinion

The lack of evidence lockdowns actually worked is a world scandal – The Telegraph

We have detonated the global economy to pursue a lockdown experiment that may not have worked, according to the latest evidence. This diabolical revelation should be a world scandal. It should also be a sobering moment of enlightenment for Britain, as we seek to salvage our economy while learning lessons on how to better protect the vulnerable. Instead the Covid narrative becomes ever more surreal.

The broadcast media is more interested in scalping lockdown flouters than questioning whether shutdowns have served any useful purpose. World-class studies that suggest lockdown did not alter the pandemic’s course are mysteriously vanishing into internet obscurity on first contact with the official narrative. Our greatest minds have resorted to unpicking the issue on offbeat YouTube webinars.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/28/lack-evidence-lockdowns-actually-worked-world-scandal/

Categories
Opinion

How Fear, Groupthink Drove Unnecessary Global Lockdowns – Real Clear Politics

That is the story of what may eventually be known as one of the biggest medical and economic blunders of all time. The collective failure of every Western nation, except one, to question groupthink will surely be studied by economists, doctors, and psychologists for decades to come.

  • The virus is now known to have an infection fatality rate for most people under 65 that is no more dangerous than driving 13 to 101 miles per day.
  • Even by conservative estimates, the odds of COVID-19 death are roughly in line with existing baseline odds of dying in any given year.
  • The virus that bears a survival rate of 99.99% if you are a healthy individual under 50 years old.
  • New York City reached over a 25% infection rate and yet 99.98% of all people in the city under 45 survived

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/21/how_fear_groupthink_drove_unnecessary_global_lockdowns_143253.html

Categories
Opinion

As an ITU doctor, I cannot clap for the NHS – Spiked

I can’t clap for the NHS because of a truth that all NHS staff come to learn – that the NHS runs only by exploiting its workers.

This unaccountability is not limited to hospital management. The failures of procurement departments and of Public Health England during this crisis are by now well-documented. As for how much time and money is wasted by countless other NHS bodies – including (but not limited to) NHS Digital, NHS Resolution and NHS Business Services Authority – I can only guess. No one seems interested in holding these bodies to account, either.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/26/as-an-itu-doctor-i-cannot-clap-for-the-nhs/

Categories
Opinion

How the BBC and ITV turned into full-on Tory propaganda mouthpieces – The Canary (2019)

As Boris Johnson’s government plunges the UK further into political chaos, a ‘No 10 source’ has been very busy. Some of the UK’s most influential political journalists seem to be repeating whatever this unnamed and unverified source says. But this isn’t journalism, it’s propaganda. And both the BBC and ITV‘s political editors have turned up the megaphone as full-on government mouthpieces.

Categories
Opinion

The public must lead us out of the lockdown – Spiked

Covid conformism must be confronted. In their echo chambers, where they’re all trying to outdo each other in their levels of commitment to smashing Covid, the political and media elites have become increasingly blinkered, dogmatic and intolerant on everything related to Covid-19. The lack of relaxed, freely stated opposition to their lockdown mania means they become madder and madder in their commitment to it. The corrosion of freedom of thought in relation to Covid-19 has deadly consequences, because it means the lockdown endures – nine weeks now – when many people know in their heart of hearts that it is wrong and deeply damaging to the future of this country.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/25/the-public-must-lead-us-out-of-the-lockdown/

Categories
Opinion

The new authoritarian State’s dream has come true thanks to the repulsive word ‘lockdown’: they’ve made us all prisoners – Peter Hitchens, The Mail on Sunday

I think I now understand why this period has come to be known by the repulsive word ‘lockdown’, an American term which describes the punishment of rioting convicts in a penitentiary, by confining them in their cells for long periods. 

We are learning, during this induction period, to do what we are told and to become obedient, servile citizens of a new authoritarian State. We are unlearning the old rules of freedom. 

..all the proper institutions of a civil society have grown so weak that the Strong State can now get its way.

The married family, the independent middle-class, able to make a decent living on the basis of hard-won qualifications, the political parties, Parliament itself, the Opposition, the Monarchy, the Armed Forces, the Church (pathetically anxious to close itself), the Civil Service, most of the media, the BBC, are just husks of what they were 50 years ago.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8351423/PETER-HITCHENS-new-authoritarian-States-dream-come-true.html

Categories
Opinion

We shouldn’t indulge this deluded two-metre social distancing rule any longer – The Telegraph

Social distancing is a fantasy…like it or not, every individual citizen is going to have make their own risk assessments, use their common sense and make their own decisions about how to live their lives. “Stay away from everyone” is a clear message but not credible.

During the surreal early weeks of the lockdown, the notion of long-term social distancing seemed logical and sensible, but as the weeks rolled by, the utter ludicrousness of it became apparent. Matt Hancock helped to emphasise the absurdity of it all when he said that it will not be possible to hug anyone outside of our household until the virus was “totally sorted”. 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/22/shouldnt-indulge-deluded-two-metre-social-distancing-rule-longer/

Categories
Opinion

Britain’s chilling slide into totalitarianism – Spiked

For the first time in my lifetime, a British government has drawn a utilitarian line in the sand and declared that no peaceful protest can be tolerated.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/22/britains-chilling-slide-into-totalitarianism/

Categories
Opinion

‘Nothing can justify this destruction of people’s lives’ – Professor Yoram Lass, Spiked

It is what is known in science as positive feedback or a snowball effect. The government is afraid of its constituents. Therefore, it implements draconian measures. The constituents look at the draconian measures and become even more hysterical. They feed each other and the snowball becomes larger and larger until you reach irrational territory. This is nothing more than a flu epidemic if you care to look at the numbers and the data, but people who are in a state of anxiety are blind. If I were making the decisions, I would try to give people the real numbers. And I would never destroy my country.

Compared to that rise, the draconian measures are of biblical proportions. Hundreds of millions of people are suffering. In developing countries many will die from starvation. In developed countries many will die from unemployment. Unemployment is mortality. More people will die from the measures than from the virus. And the people who die from the measures are the breadwinners. They are younger. Among the people who die from coronavirus, the median age is often higher than the life expectancy of the population. What has been done is not proportionate. But people are afraid. People are brainwashed. They do not listen to the data. And that includes governments.

Any reasonable expert – that is, anyone but Professor Ferguson from Imperial College who would have locked down everybody when we had swine flu – will tell you that lockdown cannot change the final number of infected people. It can only change the rate of infection. And people argue that by changing the rate of infection and ‘flattening the curve’, we prevented the collapse of hospitals. I have shown you the costs of lockdown, but this was the argument in favour of it. But look at Sweden. No lockdown and no collapse of hospitals. The argument for the lockdown collapses.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/22/nothing-can-justify-this-destruction-of-peoples-lives/

Categories
Opinion

The war on transport – Spiked

It is hard to know where to start with transport. One certainly shouldn’t start from home, if at all possible. In our age of lockdown, transport away from the home is considered anti-social, if not downright dangerous.

In this atmosphere, it is worth recalling that democratic rights relate not just to free speech, but also to freedom of movement and freedom of assembly. Some restrictions on travel have been lifted recently. But with every new official statement about how we can and cannot move around, the government confirms that the state and only the state holds the cards in relation to our basic freedoms.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/21/the-war-on-transport/

Categories
Opinion

No 10 is hiding behind secretive Sage pseudo-science – The Telegraph

There’s almost a whiff of superstition about No 10’s secretive “evidence-based” approach to lifting lockdown. Ministers are peddling an esoteric assortment of “precautionary” measures, from a scientifically baseless two-metre rule to a pointless 14-day holiday quarantine. They are obscure and enigmatic on risks and trade-offs. And, in the daily press conferences, they continue to bewitch an already hyper-paranoid public with lurid graphs and charts that propagate bogus science.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/21/no-10-hiding-behind-secretive-sage-pseudo-science/

Categories
Opinion

Why the government should not always ‘follow the science’ – Spiked

‘Evidence’ has been turned into a gospel truth and that’s bad for political decision-making.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/20/why-the-government-should-not-always-follow-the-science/

Categories
Opinion

Is the government blaming the scientists? – The Spectator

With ministers and officials involved with the country’s coronavirus strategy braced for an eventual public inquiry, this week we’re being given a glimpse of how it might play out. During a morning broadcast round on Tuesday, Work and Pensions Secretary Thérèse Coffey set the cat among the pigeons when she was asked about mistakes the government may have made. It’s clear that this is a row No. 10 does not wish to be having right now.

Coffey replied by saying ministers can ‘only make judgments based on the advice’ they are given. She went on to say that on issues such as testing capacity, if the scientific advice at the time was ‘wrong’, she would not be surprised if people think ‘we made the wrong decisions’. Those comments were quick to gain traction – with critics claiming Coffey was attempting to scapegoat scientists for the government’s U-turn on testing.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-the-government-blaming-the-scientists

Categories
Opinion

Under the Corona Act, Dr Shipman could have got away with more murders – The Critic

[O]ne thing the Coronavirus pandemic has shown us is that rather than turn away from experts plenty of people appear to ascribe almost supernatural powers to them.

The bottom line is this: if Shipman were killing under the Coronavirus Act, he might have gotten away with even more murders. And if the safeguards held others back from killing their patients, well, they’re not anymore.

“What’s happening, exceptionally, with Covid is that not only do you not have to be an attending doctor to make a statement that someone has died of Covid, you don’t have to discuss it with anybody else, you don’t even have to be medical, you don’t have to have any test positivity – you can even deem a death to be due to Covid if it’s not mentioned on the death certificate and, say, you’re a care home provider and you think it ought to be mentioned.. and few of these cases are being autopsied. So we’re not building up any sort of knowledge about what this disease actually does to the body, or even whether it was present in the body of somebody who was said to have died of Covid. We actually know less about who’s dying of what now, particularly concerning Covid, than at any time in the past. So it really is a complete mess”.

https://thecritic.co.uk/under-the-corona-act-dr-shipman-could-have-got-away-with-more-murders/

Categories
Opinion

How Covid panic caused the carnage in care homes – Spiked


Shockingly, the UK government was not alone in pushing the crisis into care homes. In New York, the centre of the world’s worst outbreak, it is a similar story. Care homes were not only neglected for PPE and testing, but were also ordered to take in Covid patients. Homes could be fined $10,000 or lose their operating licence if they refused to comply with the rules. In Lombardy, the hardest-hit region of Italy, care homes were paid extra to take in Covid patients from hospitals.

The carnage in care homes ought to be the biggest scandal of the Covid crisis.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/19/how-covid-panic-caused-the-carnage-in-care-homes/

Categories
Opinion

The warped thinking behind the world’s lockdowns – Washington Examiner

It is becoming clear that the severity of a lockdown does not correlate significantly either with the spread of the coronavirus or the rate of deaths. I noted in this column a couple of weeks back that the states that had remained open had, if anything, fared better than the rest. We can now also see that the states that ended the closures early, such as Georgia, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, are not suffering any noticeable new surge. It is a similar picture in Europe, where Spain and Italy, with very harsh quarantines, suffered worse than the Netherlands and Germany, where the restrictions were moderate.

But none of that will alter the verdict. The counterexample of 1930s Britain does not dent the confidence of New Deal enthusiasts. The counterexample of Iceland, which refused to rescue its bankers and bounced back quickly from the financial crisis, does not dent the confidence of bailout enthusiasts. And the counterexample of Sweden, which left shops and businesses open and told people to use their common sense, will not change the minds of lockdown enthusiasts.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-warped-thinking-behind-the-worlds-lockdowns

Categories
News Opinion

Coronavirus will ‘settle into human population and become normal’, expert says – Professor David Robertson, Sky News

“It is so transmissible, it’s so successful, we’re so susceptible, that actually it’s a little bit of a red herring to worry about it getting worse, because it couldn’t be much worse at the moment in terms of the numbers of cases,” he told the House of Lords Science and Technology committee on Tuesday.

“If you contrast with Ebola, which has very high virulence, kills many, many people, it makes it very controllable and you can very readily identify the infected people.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-is-so-successful-it-will-never-be-eradicated-expert-claims-11991024

Categories
Opinion

The growing evidence on vitamin D and Covid – The Spectator

The argument that vitamin D deficiency may contribute to more severe cases of Covid is gaining ground. It is now reaching the point where it is surprising that we are not hearing from leading medical officials and politicians that people should consider taking supplements to ensure they have sufficient vitamin D.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-growing-evidence-on-vitamin-d-and-covid

Categories
Opinion Videos

Professor Karol Sikora: fear is more deadly than the virus – UnHerd

  • Professor Karol Sikora says that COVID-19 behaves like pandemics in the past.
  • Society is scarred all over the world.
  • The virus will go but the fear will do the damage.

Note: YouTube has taken down the video. Please go directly to UnHerd’s site:

https://unherd.com/thepost/professor-karol-sikora-fear-is-more-dangerous-than-the-virus/

Professor Karol Sikora has become something of a celebrity in the UK over the past months for his expert commentary on the pandemic, and his unusual tendency for optimism rather than pessimism.

Virus ‘getting tired’
– In the past two weeks, the virus is showing signs of petering out
– It’s as though the virus is ‘getting tired’, almost ‘getting bored’
– It’s happening across the world at the same time

Existing herd immunity
– The serology results around the world (and forthcoming in Britain) don’t necessarily reveal the percentage of people who have had the disease
– He estimates 25-30% of the UK population has had Covid-19, and higher in the group that is most susceptible
– Pockets of herd immunity help *already* explain the downturn
– Sweden’s end result will not be different to ours – lockdown versus no lockdown

Fear more deadly than the virus
– When the history books are written, the fear will have killed many more people than the virus, including large numbers of cancer and cardiological patients not being treated
– We should have got the machinery of the NHS for non-corona patients back open earlier

Masks and schools
– Evidence on masks is just not there either way so it should be an ‘individual decision’
– We should move to 1m social distancing which means restaurants and bars could reopen
– More schools should reopen in June as ‘children are not the transmitters of this virus’
– We should be getting back to the ‘old normal’ not a ‘new normal’