- The vaccine reduces symptoms; may prevent infection but this has not been proven.
- Mass testing is not the way out and could be very problematic.
- Around 1% of the population are infected and probably have no symptoms.
- If you are under 65, there is less risk than the regular flu.
- The number of people dying is the same as any other year.
- People of dying of respiratory diseases is about the same.
- Covid deaths will continue to go up.
- Hospitals are less full because they’ve increased their capacity; they’re not struggling to cope.
- Prevalence for the virus has plateaued.
- We should continue to be careful but COVID-19 is ‘not a major player’
COVID-19
COVID-19 is a disease defined by symptoms and is not a virus. It’s therefore not transmitted nor can you test for it using nasal or throat testing kits. SARS-CoV-2 is the coronavirus that prompted the worldwide pandemic response.
Browse the articles related to this topic below.
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- Government relaxed procurement rules to allow officials to award contracts
- PPE team of 450 staff handed out more than 6,900 contracts worth £12.3billion
- Officials paid £3.8million into the wrong bank account in one instance
- Sabi Mokeddem, 23, was given £880,000 to supply 55,000 coveralls
Our investigation – distinct from from today’s NAO report – uncovers how blundering officials paid £3.8million into the wrong bank account in one instance and handed an £880,000 contract to a 23-year-old with no relative experience in another.
Spending the equivalent of 77% of the NHS annual revenue budget on an unevaluated underdesigned national programme leading to a regressive, insufficiently supported intervention—in many cases for the wrong people—cannot be defended.
There is a case to be made that we as a country have been led by a conversation about the virus which has been unbalanced and disproportionate, writes Daniel McConnell
https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/arid-40081700.html
Pfizer’s vaccine “may be more than 90% effective.” (Mahase, BMJ 2020;371:m4347, November 9) Specific data are not given but it is easy enough to approximate the numbers involved, based on the 94 cases in a trial that has enrolled about 40,000 subjects: 8 cases in a vaccine group of 20,000 and 86 cases in a placebo group of 20,000. This yields a Covid-19 attack rate of 0.0004 in the vaccine group and 0.0043 in the placebo group. Relative risk (RR) for vaccination = 0.093, which translates into a “vaccine effectiveness” of 90.7% [100(1-0.093)]. This sounds impressive, but the absolute risk reduction for an individual is only about 0.4% (0.0043-0.0004=0.0039). The Number Needed To Vaccinate (NNTV) = 256 (1/0.0039), which means that to prevent just 1 Covid-19 case 256 individuals must get the vaccine; the other 255 individuals derive no benefit, but are subject to vaccine adverse effects, whatever they may be and whenever we learn about them……We’ve already heard that an early effect of the vaccine is “like a hangover or the flu.” Will vaccinees who are later exposed to coronaviruses have more severe illness as a result of antibody-dependent enhancement of infection (ADEI), a known hazard of coronavirus vaccines? Is there squalene in the Pfizer vaccine? If so, will vaccinees be subject to autoimmune diseases, like Gulf War Syndrome and narcolepsy that have been associated with the adjuvant?
Politicians and governments are suppressing science. They do so in the public interest, they say, to accelerate availability of diagnostics and treatments. They do so to support innovation, to bring products to market at unprecedented speed. Both of these reasons are partly plausible; the greatest deceptions are founded in a grain of truth. But the underlying behaviour is troubling.
Politicians and governments are suppressing science. They do so in the public interest, they say, to accelerate availability of diagnostics and treatments. They do so to support innovation, to bring products to market at unprecedented speed. Both of these reasons are partly plausible; the greatest deceptions are founded in a grain of truth. But the underlying behaviour is troubling.
Politicians and governments are suppressing science. They do so in the public interest, they say, to accelerate availability of diagnostics and treatments. They do so to support innovation, to bring products to market at unprecedented speed. Both of these reasons are partly plausible; the greatest deceptions are founded in a grain of truth. But the underlying behaviour is troubling.
The UK’s pandemic response provides at least four examples of suppression of science or scientists. First, the membership, research, and deliberations of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) were initially secret until a press leak forced transparency.2 The leak revealed inappropriate involvement of government advisers in SAGE, while exposing under-representation from public health, clinical care, women, and ethnic minorities. Indeed, the government was also recently ordered to release a 2016 report on deficiencies in pandemic preparedness, Operation Cygnus, following a verdict from the Information Commissioner’s Office.
The study is important because of the social structure of control here. It’s one thing to observe no effects from national lockdowns. There are countless variables here that could be invoked as cautionary notes: demographics, population density, preexisting immunities, degree of compliance, and so on. But with this Marine study, you have a near homogeneous group based on age, health, and densities of living. And even here, you see confirmed what so many other studies have shown: lockdowns are pointlessly destructive. They do not manage the disease. They crush human liberty and produce astonishing costs, such as 5.53 million years of lost life from the closing of schools alone.
https://www.aier.org/article/even-a-military-enforced-quarantine-cant-stop-the-virus-study-reveals/
The UK’s pandemic response relies too heavily on scientists and other government appointees with worrying competing interests, including shareholdings in companies that manufacture covid-19 diagnostic tests, treatments, and vaccines. Government appointees are able to ignore or cherry pick science—another form of misuse—and indulge in anti-competitive practices that favour their own products and those of friends and associates.
Professor Bhakdi’s videos have been censored in the past. A backup mirror can be viewed below if the YouTube video is offline.
Among Marine Corps recruits, approximately 2% who had previously had negative results for SARS-CoV-2 at the beginning of supervised quarantine, and less than 2% of recruits with unknown previous status, tested positive by day 14. Most recruits who tested positive were asymptomatic, and no infections were detected through daily symptom monitoring. Transmission clusters occurred within platoons.
A provocative study suggests that certain colds may leave antibodies against the new coronavirus, perhaps explaining why children are more protected than adults.
It’s been a big puzzle of the pandemic: Why are children so much less likely than adults to become infected with the new coronavirus and, if infected, less likely to become ill?
A possible reason may be that many children already have antibodies to other coronaviruses, according to researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London. About one in five of the colds that plague children are caused by viruses in this family. Antibodies to those viruses may also block SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus causing the pandemic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/health/coronavirus-children.html
A four week delay in cancer treatment increases the chance of dying by as much as 13 percent new “staggering and sobering” research reveals.
The research published last week online in the BMJ, was put together in the light of treatment delays resulting from the pandemic and have led to calls for more attention to be given to other deadly health conditions whose treatment is being put at risk by national measures to contain the virus.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1357434/Lockdown-latest-cancer-warning-treatment-coronavirus-news
This is an archive of a series of Tweets by Josef Kalf. It contains a summary of information that may be of interest to visitors.
Firstly, I am not going to be talking about cabals or any conspiracist stuff. I want to talk about power (based on what power has always done, in its own interests) & why we shouldn’t focus too much on on nations. Also “pretexts” and historical precedents. A common question is: “So Iran, along with South Korea & North Korea are all in on the conspiracy? They’re all in collusion? All governments of the world?” It’s not the way to look at it. It’s not like synchronised swimming. Can you think of a “pretext” where ALL governments of the world benefited (US, UK, Russia, Iran, China, Israel, France, etc)? One well-known pretext was “Terrorism”. Who started the “terrorism pretext” back then? It was the US who started it, and it got the support of the US power alliance (UK, France, Israel, etc).
Who benefited? EVERYONE! (Even the Russian, Iranian governments) The idea of the “War On Terror” being bogus and totally “manufactured” and a deliberate imperialist plot — for power to benefit from “creating more terror in the world” was unthinkable. It just didn’t make sense to ordinary people. Well now the whole world knows that “deliberately creating MORE terrorism” in the world made perfect sense and was hugely beneficial to ALL governments around the planet (not just the USA which created it). The opportunities to clampdown on citizens in the name of “security” and “protection” was a gift to ALL governments all over the world. This actually happened. Every government of every nation on the planet benefited from the US War On Terror. And guess what? It wasn’t a monolithic global co-ordinated plot. It wasn’t “synchronised swimming” — all nations executing some grand elaborate plan together. Is the new pretext “pandemics”? If so, who is behind the pandemic pretext?
Who’s getting politicians, the media & the public to push it using 24/7 fear-mongering? The world’s ruling elites. Who benefits? The world’s ruling elites. Who are the world’s ruling elites? Who are the ones using the pretext of pandemics to shape the world in their own interests? I will tell you who they are. Anyone who reads the world’s leading political analysts (Chomsky et al) knows this. The ruling elites include the influential actors who are in the upper echelons of political/state power who are in favour of global governance (everyone from Emmanuel Macron, Tony Blair to Henry Kissinger, Prince Charles, Obama, the Clintons & the people behind Biden).
They also include the people connected to concentrations of private wealth & power — the world’s banking & financial institutions, digital tech corporations, pharmaceutical giants, energy industry, news media & entertainment industry etc. They also include the elite groups, bodies, institutions, think tanks, NGOs, UN, WHO, WEF, IMF — who are in bed with private wealth & power, who have been embroiled in corruption, bribery & corporate interference. And the corporate giants who have posted record profits while the economy has been destroyed & countless businesses & livelihoods have perished. $10.2 Trillion dollar profits for Gates, Bezos & the other giants since Covid. These are the ruling elites.
So… we shouldn’t be looking at power through the lens of “nations” (e.g. which nation or country has power). We should be looking at who are the richest and most influential actors who want to shape the world in their own interests (not the people, the masses). Look at this tweet. This guy is expressing a common reaction: “No one WANTS a pandemic”. It’s too unthinkable.
It sounds perfectly reasonable on the surface. Politicians, people in power — they are human beings. The idea of human beings wanting a pandemic sounds too unthinkable, outrageous, insane, psychopathic? With the manufactured “War On Terrorism”, even America’s own military intelligence warned: “If we go ahead & do this, we will create countless Al Qaedas & ISIS-style groups all over the planet” But they went ahead & did it anyway (Chomsky). Why?
Why create more terror in the world? More fear, more fighting & divisions among the people (racism against immigrants, islamaphobia, etc) The elites knew it would be the perfect opportunity to take power to the next level: Advance imperialist agendas (when you have more control of the Middle East oil region, you have more control of the world). It was also the perfect opportunity for governments to clampdown on citizens. Studying power, history, propaganda, etc tells us that all the major power grabs have been predicated on massive lies. Saddam’s WMDs was a monumental lie from those in power, who managed to get mass public consent for all the slaughter which ensued. How do you get mass public consent for terrible things? Ramping up fear, getting people panicked, stoking divisions among the masses helps enormously.
Do you know there are groups, programmes, operations exist to shape public opinion. That’s their job. Their job is to shape the opinion of the public. e.g. getting the public to give consent/approval/support to invade Iraq — for example — is not an easy thing to do. Sure, a million protested on the streets. But the propaganda obviously succeeded.
Today it’s not even controversial to discuss the actual conspiracy of Weapons Of Mass Destruction or deliberately creating more terror groups (& tensions in the world to fuel more terror) across the world. Why is it not controversial? Cos now we all know the truth about it. The bogus manufactured War On Terrorism is all known to everyone & admitted even by power. Therefore, how outlandish can it possibly be to suggest that all kinds of horror await citizens all over the world on this new theme of “global pandemics”? The opportunities here dwarf the War On Terrorism, right? That was nothing compared to this, right? As Chomsky pointed out about 9/11 & the “war on terror”, the opportunity to clamp down on citizens in the name of “security” & ramp up surveillance was a gift to all governments. How much of a “gift” is the pretext of deadly pandemics sweeping across the world? This is the mother of all opportunities to manufacture a “new normal” & to introduce the most intense, high-tech system of clamp down we could ever imagine, in our wildest dreams (nightmares).
The terrorism pretext didn’t involve a monolithic global co-ordinated plot. If you read Chomsky who’s written many books “How Power Works”, “Understanding Power”, “Who Runs The World” etc you’ll see that it’s pointless to be fixated with viewing power through the prism of nations. You need to be looking at this in terms of “who are the ruling elites?” Who are the ones making sure the world runs in their interests? The Ruling elites are happy to be invisible because they want to remain unaccountable and unelected. That’s the beauty. They make whatever deals they want with governments. Governments love it too, cos they can do backdoor deals with them. We all know — despite all this talk of the decline of the US Empire — that America is still overwhelmingly the world’s nation superpower. And America has absorbed many other nations around the planet.
Let’s look at the nations which HAVEN’T been absorbed (Russia, China, Iran). These nations are surrounded by US military bases. Does Iran or China have military bases and ships surrounding the USA or Europe? No. America still calls the shots & has a large number of countries as pet poodles (the UK, etc). But focusing on nations misses the point anyway. In a world ruled by money, the real superpowers (with the real power to wield) are CORPORATIONS. Corporate power rules. It really does. We live in a “plutocracy masquerading as democracy”. What little crumbs of democracy we have now…just look how fast they are disappearing. Would you say I’m crazy if I said we are living under a dictatorship now? All over the world we’re seeing the police becoming more militarised. The point is to be more imposing & intimidating as we move closer & closer towards dictatorship. If you are living under “rule by diktat” (“Do what we say or face the consequences”) then you’re in a dictorship! Therefore we have every reason to believe armed forces involvement in this Covid programme is to provide an effective coercive intimidating presence. Of course people are going to make out that the armed forces are there as a helping hand or purely for administrative purposes.
Anyway, going back to the topic of power…
The US still calls the shots as the nation superpower. But in a world ruled by money, the real superpowers (with the real power to wield) are corporations. The concentrations of private wealth & power who are hidden, who have tentacles, connections & influence all over the planet. This is the New Empire, isn’t it? The ruling elites. As I mentioned, Chomsky et al. have books on this stuff. This is why I think it’s stupid the way people demand to see evidence of some Darth Vader overlord pulling the strings globally across the planet. The lizard thing — that’s just a slur to ridicule people as looney conspiracists.
20 YEARS AGO IT WAS TERRORISM “Yes please do everything you can to protect us from Saddam & Al Qaeda. Sure, invade country X, you have our approval. We also accept that security & surveillance now needs to be more intense.” NOW IT’S PANDEMICS “Tougher lockdown measures please!”
I started this thread answering the question “So explain how every governments of every country is in on this global plot”. The next question is: “All those doctors, nurses, hospital staff all over the world…so are you seriously saying they are all in on it?” It’s a facile point to make. Because they are all PEOPLE. Doesn’t matter if they are junior nurses or the most senior esteemed leading specialist doctors. They are people and capable of being corrupted, or pressured, or being susceptible to groupthink.
As we all know, millions upon millions of people adhere to the agenda of power or follow mainstream, establishment consensus. Does this mean THEY are part of the 1%? No. They are just gullible people who swallow mainstream narratives & follow mass groupthink. Thankfully there are also millions of people in the world (including bus drivers, roadsweepers, medical staff, MIT, Oxford, Harvard, Stanford scientists, experts, Nobel Prize winners, whistleblowers) who do NOT swallow the propaganda. It’s not right to say that the respected experts standing against the consent are a fringe group of wackos. Consider their qualifications and their standing in the scientific community. They have nothing to gain by opposing the consensus. That’s why we need to listen to experts who are blowing the whistle. What do they have to gain? They face ridicule, ostracisation, their careers destroyed.
Regarding the line which pro-lockdown people make (“So you’re saying all hospital staff and doctors are in on it?”) We are all complicit and guilty of being “in on” all kinds of horror. Watch this short educational allegorical film:
Were the members of the public who were in favour of the invasion of Iraq, the Vietnam war, the rise of Hilter, etc “in on it”? Well, yes, of course they were — but they weren’t involved in the running of it, where they? They were “knowingly complicit” or following the herd. Millions upon millions of human beings “agree” with what power is doing. Just because they agree with power, and they may be nice, well-meaning people, does it make it right? It means that these millions of people have been successfully propagandised. How many millions supported Hitler and the Nazis? How many millions voted for Boris Johnson or Margaret Thatcher? Or supported wars or went along with terrible, inhumane policies? Millions upon millions of human beings (NHS staff, doctors/nurses, bus drivers, politicians, window cleaners, judges, engineers, waitresses, journalists) will simply swallow propaganda. But thankfully many are not so gullible.
You understand that the vast majority of journalists don’t do journalism, right? Because of the system-serving mindset which is endemic in that profession. Why do you think people who work in the medical profession are going to be any different? Most human beings are compliant and system-serving. We need to focus on how power works and educate people to get them out of this mindset. Are you happy to let our ‘betters’ take care of running society for us? You trust the consensus? Do you think it’s in our interests, not in the interests of those responsible for the consensus being pushed day in day out, 24 hours a day? What is happening to the general public in 2020 is very distressing. The cult mindset from the mainstream consensus is shameful. There is so much disregard for devastation of millions of lives, and refusal to fight for what makes life worth living.
This is BIG and getting out of hand (like an actual real virus which is deadly to humanity — not only has a huge section of the Left become totally de-lefted, human beings are being de-humanised en masse). Today we see a new form of left which is fake and anti-Left & which belittles citizens who are demonstrating the most elementary leftwing values (regardless of whether or not they consider themselves left). Some of these elementary values are:
- Behaving with real humanity (not fake humane caring for the sake of keeping up appearances)
- Giving equal regard to all lives and not relegating other causes of human death and suffering which eclipse the virus
- Being true to standing against authority which is illegitimate (like standing against this three-way marriage made in totalitarian heaven, a lethal cocktail which becomes self-reinforcing and invincible if you allow it to continue).
- Having a sense of urgency to push for getting enough grassroots people rise up and fight against the authoritarianism on the horizon.
- Pushing for comprehensive public inquiries, holding the ones leading the agendas to account, investigating their actions and behaviour.
- Pushing for balanced public debate and combatting the smearing and ridiculing
- Safeguarding all that makes life worth living
- Standing against the destruction of the economy and the prospects for a decent human existence for the sake of our children and future generations.
- Protecting marginalised, impoverished people, working classes.
- Shielding them from economic hardship, exploitation, oppression/control.
- Recognising that these ‘new normal’ policies are bringing the worst economic depressions in world history
- Recognising small businesses being swallowed up by multinational giants (which have gained tremendously from Covid, record profits, etc)
- Recognising that Newnormalism = the world being shaped in the interests of state power in bed with unelected, unaccountable private power & globalist elite institutions.
- Recognising that a new level of de-humanised mass consumerism and mass debt slavery to colossal online shopping giants like Amazon is just around the corner.
- The idea of believing in communities and meaningful human connections vanishing from society for good, as power seeks (like never before since Thatcher/Reagan) to break people up into atomised, lonely, weak, afraid, confused individuals controlled by division and fear.
For dictatorships to work, laws are not enough, as there are never enough police officers to enforce laws that a majority of the working population doesn’t believe in. Historically, totalitarian regimes have relied on the grudges of individuals, on the stoked prejudices of communities, & on the sense of duty of members of society to an abstract notion of a nation/people/religion to police the population.
Above all, they have relied on fear.
We shouldn’t give oxygen to the mainstream narrative that:
A. being for the Covid agenda (tougher lockdown measures) is a “leftwing” position
B. being against the Covid agenda is a “rightwing” capitalist position.
The ones who are more obsessed with playing stupid “culture war” games and making the debate (or lack thereof) about a “piece of cloth” are the pro-lockdown types. The opposers/dissenters are largely steering clear of this culture war nonsense. In fact, actively calling out stupid culture war and identity politics division & distractions is a prominent trait of those who oppose the consensus. The dissenters are more clear-headed, capable of critical thinking and are focusing on the wider threats and implications for human society. They are not selfish, petty mask moaners. When it comes to Covid, there’s a lack of rigorous interrogation from people calling themselves left. There’s even a lack of even the most non-committal, uncontroversial, thought-provoking discussion on some of the points made below.
It should be on every leftwing person’s radar. Power, oppression and propaganda are the basic staples for anyone with leftwing or socialist values. I simply don’t get progressive & intellectuals who refuse to even discuss the WEF (like they don’t even want to acknowledge their existence).
If the WEF really is a tinpot outfit of no consequence then progressives & intellectuals should explain why the WEF is of no consequence. There’s no excuse anymore. The Great Reset & Davos has made multiple TIME Magazine cover stories.
The world’s most powerful & influential actors seem to embrace the messages from elite groups, bodies, institutions, think tanks, NGOs, UN, WHO, WEF, IMF — who are in bed with private wealth & power, who have been embroiled in corruption & corporate interference.
The world’s most powerful & influential actors seem to embrace the messages from elite groups, bodies, institutions, think tanks, NGOs, UN, WHO, WEF, IMF — who are in bed with private wealth & power, who have been embroiled in corruption & corporate interference. It’s surely foolish to not pay attention to their brand for a world vision and future of human society gaining traction?
When all this stuff is in plain sight and you can get it from the horse’s mouth, there’s really no longer any excuse to claim it’s conspiracy theory nonsense.
Many people do indeed want to argue endlessly about the ins and outs of mask efficacy, statistics, technicalities, the actual nature of the virus and theorise about why the lockdown happened. However many people don’t get caught up in technicalities — they want to focus on the wider picture of what’s afoot, they want to talk about the horrific top-down tightening of controls which is making human existence unbearable.
If endless arguing on technicalities, the virus, reasons why it has happened, etc) isn’t the bag of people identifying as Left, then they can just focus on the fundamental INJUSTICE and INIQUITY of clampdown measures and the lies used to justify them. These horrific injustices and iniquities are all unchallenged by a huge number of so-called Leftwing people. It’s depressing. People rightly have been outraged over Assange injustices and manufactured Anti-Semitism injustices ✊ When it comes to these particular injustices, they simply cannot bear the deception and the dishonest, system-friendly mindset among people from top to bottom. But when it comes to Covid injustices, it’s the SAME DANGEROUS MINDSET but on steroids. It’s the same sneering and ridiculing of people as cranks and conspiracists. Yet, people who reckon they’re left/socialists aren’t calling it out. It’s bizarre.
If one is not visibly combatting the injustices & iniquities mentioned in this thread, or at least engaging in the various issues raised (which are all about power, oppression, propaganda, lies, corruption). How can one call oneself left? It’s insane. It doesn’t add up. No self-respecting leftist can reconcile it. It seems like utter hypocrisy. Especially for anarcho-socialist lefties & anti-establishment types who act like they are uncorrupted by the system-serving mindset of centrists, liberals, Guardian types.
I remember thinking in 2019 (and the years leading up) that this is THE worst period of lies & hypocrisy – not just among power, politicians & media but among ordinary people.
Now in 2020 it’s off the scale. 2019 seems like an “honesty paradise” compared to today.
The 2020 Covid scandal is a pretext/vehicle which puts all historical precedents & puts all other pretexts/vehicles to shame! It is being used to institute authoritarian horror, and those de-lefted lefties have turned into the cruelest, nastiest enforcement officers. Time is running out. We need to encourage people to stand up against THIS. If we don’t do everything we can, it will be too late. The power-versus-the-people will have reached a whole new level. It will become more self-reinforcing and invincible than ever before. We need to wake people up to the fact that going along with this scandal is not in anyone’s interests but those in power. We need to wake people up to the fact that those in power only have power over us because we — the people — give it to them. It’s an illusion. We need to take away their power by not being COMPLIANT. For if you are compliant, then you are COMPLICIT. State power, in bed with unaccountable, unelected private power wants a controlled demolition of the global economy for it to be rebuilt again — more than ever before — in the interests of 21st century capitalism.
The dominant power structures wants us further reduced to fearful, isolated, obedient and dependent cattle owned and exploited by a ruthless and truthless financial elite. It’s society shaped in their interests — not ours — to a whole new level. The effects of what is happening is essentially resulting in the de-humanising of humanity. We need to do everything to stop people being compliant and complicit in this crime against humanity before it’s too late.
THE Treasury must form its own advisory group to counterbalance the “Covid-19 only” approach of Sage, experts say.
England was placed into lockdown following advice from the Government’s scientific advisers, despite warnings that it would lead to mass unemployment and cause huge economic damage. Much of the data relied on by Sage, including the “4,000 a day” death figures, has been challenged, with experts saying too much weight was being given to the doomsday scenarios. One accused the group of using “eye-wateringly wrong modelling data to inform government policy” akin to “crystal ball gazing”.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1357547/coronavirus-latest-sage-advisors-lockdown-economy
At times, the argument about lockdown has been described as a choice between saving lives or saving money. But this is a false equivalence. A weak economy leads to weakened citizens: it means less tax revenue, less money for the NHS, and poorer families – wealth and health are all too-closely linked. Just look at the difference in height between Koreans, depending on which side of the 38th parallel their grandparents happened to be caught on.
It’s easy to measure money, but it’s far harder to measure the indirect results of a richer or poorer economy. It’s also hard to work out how much money you should spend to save a life. Ban cars, and you’ll end road deaths. But you’d also hit the economy. So a balance has to be struck somewhere.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-the-cost-of-another-lockdown-too-high-
So we’re in another lockdown – which will surely do so much more harm than good.
That’s a view also taken by nearly 70 GPs, led by high-profile names such as Dr Ellie Cannon and Dr Phil Hammond.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/saira-khan-continuous-lockdowns-human-22973982
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why PCR positive cases are a very poor indicator of how prevalent covid is in the population, and why we should instead be basing decisions on the rates of hospitalization, ICU admission, and death. If we just look at the PCR tests, we will continue to believe that the disease is widespread in the population indefinitely, even as it becomes less and less common in reality. And that is assuming the rate of testing doesn’t increase. If we combine this built-in problem with accuracy, with a massive increase in testing (as has happened in most countries over the course of the pandemic), then we can create the impression of a disease that is continuing to spread wildly through a population, even when it isn’t.
https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/11/06/how-accurate-are-the-covid-tests/
The increase in coronavirus infections appears to be slowing around the UK, latest data from the Office for National Statistics show.
Although the number of people with Covid continues to rise, the growth is levelling off.
In the week to 30 October, ONS says new daily infections in England stabilised at around 50,000.
The government has been criticised by the official statistics watchdog for the way it presented data to justify England’s second lockdown.
The UK Statistics Authority highlighted the use of modelling at Saturday’s TV briefing showing the possible death toll from Covid this winter.
It said there needed to be more transparency about data and how predictions were being made.
The projections were out of date and over-estimated deaths, it has emerged…
It is understood the graph was used by the two senior advisers in meetings last week where the decision to impose a nationwide lockdown in England was made.
Johnson’s speech announcing a new lockdown on Saturday reminded me of how Tony Blair deployed fear to justify drastic state action over foot and mouth disease, and – warning that Saddam Hussein’s arsenal put the UK “45 minutes from doom” – in support of the Iraq war. It is the same blind fear exploited in every debate on immigration, crime and prisons.