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Exclusive: Children being given vaccine as councils ‘go rogue’ – The Telegraph

Children are being vaccinated against Covid before an official decision on whether youngsters should be given the jab, The Telegraph can disclose.

Councils and GPs in virus hotspots are defying current government rules by giving the vaccine to 16- and 17-year-olds without underlying health conditions.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/02/children-vaccinated-councils-go-rogue/

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News

Flu and pneumonia deaths now 10 times higher than Covid – The Telegraph

The number of people dying with flu and pneumonia on their death certificate in England and Wales is now 10 times higher than those with Covid, figures show.

The latest weekly data on deaths from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that there were 84 deaths mentioning Covid in the week ending June 11. There were 1,163 involving flu and pneumonia.

Registered Covid deaths fell by 14 per cent since the last update, in the week ending June 4, when 98 deaths were recorded.

Covid deaths now make up just 0.8 per cent of all deaths – down from 1.3 per cent in the previous week, despite the fact that week included the late May bank holiday, meaning there were fewer death registrations.

…The figures are much lower than would usually be expected for respiratory disease at this time of year. The five-year average for deaths involving flu and pneumonia in the same week is 1,704.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/22/flu-pneumonia-deaths-now-ten-times-higher-covid/

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Five years before a vaccine can ‘hold the line’ against Covid variants, England’s medical chief says – CNBC

He said that Covid-19 “has not thrown its last surprise at us and there will be several more [variants] over the next period,” according to Sky News. He added that it would likely take five years before there are vaccines that could “hold the line” to a very large degree against a range of coronavirus variants.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/18/whitty-5-years-before-vaccine-can-hold-line-against-covid-variants.html

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Opinion

Fear over freedom: Here’s what the doom-laden government graphs didn’t show us – The Telegraph

The by now all-too-familiar vertiginous lines were intended to leave the public in no doubt about the consequences of not delaying freedom until July 19.

But take a closer look and the choice of graphs is arguably disingenuous: the slides are most revealing for what they failed to include.

Source: The Telegraph, 15th June 2021

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/15/fear-freedom-doom-laded-government-graphs-dont-show-us/

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News

Hospital admissions per year in England 2006-2021 – The Blogmire

Hospital admissions [in England] were down by 6.7 million (39%) on the year before, when we didn’t have a deadly pandemic.

Source: The Blogmore, 15 June 2021
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Opinion

As a GP in the NHS I witnessed first-hand the catastrophic way Matt Hancock failed the old and vulnerable in care homes – Dr Malcolm Kendrick, RT

The Health Secretary claims he “tried” to throw a protective ring around care homes but, from my experience in the early days of the pandemic, he couldn’t have come up with a more disastrous and deadly policy.

As a GP working mainly with elderly patients in care homes and intermediate care I witnessed, at first hand, the absolute disaster that was the government policy at the start of the Covid-19 outbreak. Elderly patients who were Covid-19 positive, or not tested, or perhaps even negative, were simply shovelled out of hospitals and into care homes. ‘The hospitals must be cleared out… nothing else matters.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/526539-catastrophic-care-homes-matt-hancock/

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Publications

Register your Type 1 Opt-out preference – NHS

If you do not want your patient data shared with NHS Digital, you can register a Type 1 Opt-out with your GP practice. You can register a Type 1 Opt-out at any time. You can also change your mind at any time and withdraw a Type 1 Opt-out.

Data sharing with NHS Digital will start on 1 September 2021.

The button will download a 42kB .docx file from the NHS website. If it is not available, you can download an archived copy from here.

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-collections-and-data-sets/data-collections/general-practice-data-for-planning-and-research/transparency-notice#opting-out-of-nhs-digital-collecting-your-data-type-1-opt-out-

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Opinion

The ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ horror shows we need to get out of lockdown to get back our humanity – The Telegraph

How many more patients were left to die as a result of this hidden prejudice? Office for National Statistics figures from last year show nearly six in 10 who died with coronavirus in England were disabled. These vulnerable people’s families have a right to know whether their beloved relatives were sacrificed on the altar of NHS capacity and so do we.

For if they were effectively regarded as “collateral damage” during a national emergency, what does it say about the treatment of patients with learning disabilities or mental illness, in general?

The pressure of the pandemic has clearly been used as an excuse to explain away some of these decisions – but there can surely be no justification for refusing to resuscitate otherwise physically healthy patients, regardless of the state of their mental faculties. And in a world when everyone seems to be banging on about discrimination of one kind or another, where is the clarion call for equality for disabled people seemingly being treated like second class citizens in a health service that is supposed to care unequivocally for all?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/11/do-not-resuscitate-horror-shows-need-get-lockdown-get-back-humanity/

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News

NHS told to identify patients actually sick from Covid-19 separately to those testing positive – Independent

Hospitals have been told to change the way they collect data on patients infected with coronavirus to differentiate between those actually sick with symptoms and those who test positive while seeking treatment for something else.

The move would reduce the overall number of patients in hospital for coronavirus as until now data from hospitals has included all patients who tested positive for Covid-19, regardless of whether they had symptoms or not.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-hospitals-nhs-england-data-b1862804.html

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News

Britain DID simulate a coronavirus pandemic before Covid struck and didn’t just mock-up a flu outbreak… but health chiefs WON’T say how secret war-game went because it would damage national security – Daily Mail

British health chiefs did war-game a coronavirus pandemic before the nation was eventually hit by Covid but tried to keep it secret, it was revealed today.

Matt Hancock — who faced a grilling from MPs today about No10’s failures throughout the virus crisis — has only ever confessed to carrying out a mock-up of a flu crisis called Exercise Cygnus.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9671813/Covid-19-UK-Britain-DID-simulate-coronavirus-pandemic-health-chiefs-WONT-say-went.html

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News

People with mental illness and learning disabilities given ‘do not resuscitate’ orders during pandemic – The Telegraph

Patients with mental illness and learning disabilities were given “do not resuscitate” orders during the pandemic, The Telegraph can disclose.

Families, carers and doctors have said that medics decided that patients with these conditions should not be resuscitated if their heart stopped – a decision which in one case appears to have led to the patient’s death.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/09/patients-mental-illness-learning-disabilities-given-do-not-resuscitate/

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Opinion

The Innova lateral flow tests: another scandal in the making? – The Conservative Woman

This is the first instalment of my three-part investigative report on the Chinese-made Innova lateral flow test. Vast sums of UK taxpayers’ money have been paid to a California start-up for tests that have failed to stand up to scrutiny.

…Innova Medical Group, the company benefiting from the UK Government’s huge testing contract, is owned by the private equity group Pasaca Capital which was founded by a Chinese investment banker, the enigmatic Dr Charles Huang, in 2017. It has been revealed to be the single largest recipient of the Department of Health’s Covid contracts after signing a £496million deal to supply LFTs last year. An earlier contract with Innova cost the taxpayer £107million. 

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Opinion

Why relaxing freedoms on June 21 will not come close to overwhelming the NHS – The Telegraph

Do we risk swamping the NHS with Covid-19 cases if the government proceeds with Step 4 on time on June 21st?   In the Spring of 2020, there were about 22,000 Covid cases per week admitted to hospital, at the peak.

In January 2021 there were about 29,500 at that peak.  

Neither of those occasions produced any British equivalent of the distressing scenes we recently saw in India where hospitals ran out of resources and turned sick people away, with relatives forced to watch their loved-ones die, untreated, in hospital car parks.

The NHS was not swamped, in that sense, on those occasions. And we should not understate how important it was that it was not.

Source: The Telegraph, 5 June 2021

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/05/relaxing-freedoms-june-21-will-not-come-close-overwhelming-nhs/

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Opinion

History shows us why vaccines must be voluntary – Spiked

To this day, many commentators think that coercion is justified in defence of public health. Arguments over ‘vaccine passports’ and obligations to get vaccinated in contracts of employment are already raging. The voluntary principle, however, is a good one. It is what allowed Britain’s vaccination programme to move beyond the controversies of the 1880s, squaring the circle of vaccination and opposition by letting people opt out. Pointedly, the conscientious objection clause over time killed off Britain’s anti-vaccine campaigns by removing the causes célèbres of vaccine martyrdom.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/05/31/history-shows-us-why-vaccines-must-be-voluntary/

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Opinion

There is no reason why new variants should prevent us from reopening – Professor Robert Dingwall, The Telegraph

SARS-Cov-2 is a more stable virus than influenza. Trillions of replications have thrown up a handful of variants of concern, clustering around a small set of mutations. These variants are worth monitoring but the vaccines effectively prevent them causing serious illness. There is a theoretical risk of a more dangerous variant but it does not seem more likely than a shift in the influenza virus. If it were to occur, we could now manage it with short-term measures and rapid vaccine modification.

…Vaccination protects the vaccinated. It helps protect others but it means that we take no greater risk in the autumn of 2020 than in the autumn of 2019. Interventions should be proportionate to that – which means that most cannot be justified.

Some are worth retaining, like improved hygiene in public places or greater readiness to stay at home with respiratory symptoms. It is probably a good idea to invest further in the search for effective antiviral therapies. Promoting better population health through diet and exercise is always a good thing. But it is time for a bonfire of face masks and the despatch of lateral flow tests to landfill.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/29/no-reason-new-variants-should-prevent-us-reopening/

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Opinion

This is what we do about anti-vaxxers: No job. No entry. No NHS access – Independent

But the time has come when the hard choices are looming closer. If we don’t want this Covid crisis to last forever, we need some new simple, guidelines: No jab, no job; no jab, no access to NHS healthcare; no jab, no state education for your kids. No jab, no access to pubs, restaurants, theatres, cinemas, stadiums. No jab, no entry to the UK, and much else.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/antivaxxers-vaccine-coronavirus-nhs-b1849437.html

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Opinion

James talks to the receptionist of a large NHS medical practice about adverse reactions to the ‘jab’ – James Delingpole

James talks to the receptionist of a large NHS medical practice. She tells him the true shocking story about adverse reactions to the ‘jab’.

Please note – Nina’s name has been changed and her voice has been altered to protect her identity

https://delingpole.podbean.com/e/nina-1621086702/

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Opinion

We really need an inquiry into how Sage forced Britain into lockdown – The Telegraph

The case for the prosecution of Johnson is likely to be heard in a parliamentary inquiry (with Dominic Cummings as the star witness) which should bring scrutiny of the Imperial College cliff-edge hypothesis. This suggests that Covid cases surged every day until lockdown, so Prime Ministerial dither cost thousands of lives. Only when he eventually agreed to lock down on March 23, says Imperial, did cases collapse. This theory is one of the most influential ever deployed in government – and now looks as if it could be bunkum.

We don’t have to guess anymore, given how much Covid data exists. The ONS, Zoe/King’s College, the React-2 study run by a different team at Imperial: none support Neil Ferguson’s cliff-edge theory. All show Covid cases falling before lockdowns. So what forced the virus into retreat, if not stay-at-home orders? We can look at another form of contagion: news, spread digitally. People saw how things were getting dangerous and stayed home of their own accord. This is more than theory. Mobile phone data offers rich detail of this worldwide trend.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/13/really-need-inquiry-sage-forced-britain-lockdown/

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News

Exclusive: GPs told to stop seeing patients face-to-face – The Telegraph

GPs have been told to refuse patients face-to-face appointments, in order to force the use of virtual consultations, under new NHS guidance.

…The updated NHS guidance now instructs practices to make this the default permanently.

…It continues: “Discourage patients from attending the practice to book appointments. If they do attend in person, demonstrate the process using a smartphone or kiosk”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/12/exclusive-gps-told-stop-seeing-patients-face-to-face/

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News

There’s a reason you’ve not seen your GP recently – and frankly it’s a scandal – The Telegraph

Back in November, Nick Stokes emailed the Planet Normal podcast to protest that the NHS was being turned into the “National Covid Service”, and misinformation was being spread about hospitals being overwhelmed. “If there is a shortage of beds, that happens every single year – it is not due to Covid! I can remember several years of black alerts, ambulances unable to unload etc due to flu cases, but I don’t remember everything else being cancelled or people being told to stay at home.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2021/05/04/reason-youvenot-seen-gp-recently-frankly-scandal/