Happy Boxing Day!
For the three days over Christmas – starting yesterday – we’re publishing a pared down version of Lockdown Sceptics so we can have a bit of time off over Christmas. Cartoonist Bob Moran has very kindly given us three original cartoons which we’re running on consecutive days and, below them, we’re including a round-up, as well as an And Finally…, but little else.
Happy Christmas to all our readers. Thanks for all your links, stories and suggestions, as well as your comments below the line and in the forums. Lockdown Sceptics is really a collaboration between our small team, the writers who contribute original material, and the readers who post comments or email us at lockdownsceptics@gmail.com. To date, we’ve had over 21,000 emails and we do our best to read them all.
Back in April, when I set up this blog, I imagined I’d be signing off about now. Turns out, that was a bit naive. God knows when this madness will end, but at least there are some comforts in this digital camaraderie. Readers often get in touch to say Lockdown Sceptics has kept them sane. The feeling’s mutual.
Trouble Down Lab
The Milton Keynes Lighthouse Lab has been hit by an outbreak of coronavirus, according to Sky News.
Positive cases have been reported in three of the four scientific teams at the Milton Keynes Lighthouse Laboratory, as well as among administrative and warehouse staff at the site.
It is not known how many people have been affected by the outbreak, but around 20 people in one 70-person lab team are currently isolating, according to a worker at the laboratory who asked to remain anonymous.
The outbreak has placed considerable strain on the lab, which has been asked to process 70,000 tests a day in order to keep up with rising demand.
The source said that 47,000 were processed on Tuesday, adding: “No chance we’ll ever hit 70,000 a day the way we’re going.”
The lab worker also raised concerns about the safety of the lab, saying that rules put in place to keep staff safe were being broken in order to meet targets – a claim the Department of Health and Social Care denied.
Sky News understands the Lighthouse Lab is supposed to have a bubble system in place in order to keep staff separate, following a recommendation from the Health and Safety Executive, which visited the site recently.
Yet according to the source, the bubble system is not being respected with workers at the short-staffed lab being moved between groups, risking further cross-contamination.
The lab worker said there had also been mixing in the building’s lobbies and at the canteen.
Staff at the laboratory have been offered an unlimited number of tests and new staff are tested when they arrive.
The lab worker said that new recruits had been sitting in the canteen while they waited for their test results.
According to the lab worker, one new warehouse staff member received a positive test result after they had sat in the canteen during a period when a whole lab team had been in there for a break.
“The whole thing’s a joke,” they said.
Worth reading in full.
This outbreak won’t come as news to readers of Lockdown Sceptics. Last month we ran a piece by Lighthouse Lab whistleblower Dr Julian Harris flagging up health and safety breaches at the Milton Keynes facility.
Read that piece again here.
The Queen Lifts Our Spirts
No, she didn’t say that. In fact, this year’s Christmas message from the Queen was another triumph. Robert Hardman in today’s Daily Mail has more.
Even for the most experienced monarch in history, this was a tall order: how do you sum up the worst year in living memory without leaving the nation in floods of tears or reaching for the Off switch?
The only solution, therefore, was to accentuate the positives. And that is what the Queen did yesterday in an exceptionally upbeat Christmas message – one which also turned out to be the most multicultural of all time.
From beginning to end, here was a montage of warm-hearted or inspirational scenes, many of them illustrated by images from the Duchess of Cambridge’s Hold Still photography campaign. The only mournful moment consisted of the Queen herself paying homage at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior.
What began with the magnificent sight of the Band of the Household Cavalry playing the National Anthem on horseback outside St George’s Chapel concluded with the Lewisham & Greenwich NHS Choir belting out one of the jauntiest numbers in their Christmas repertoire: “Joy To The World”.
Running through it all was the theme of selflessness, of what the Queen called ‘the kindness of strangers’.
Worth reading in full.
And in case you missed it, you can watch it again here.
A Hospital Worker Writes…
A hospital employee has sent us an email that contains an interesting detail about the PPE he and his colleagues are expected to wear.
I work at one of the main hospitals in Oxford, and the vast majority of the people that I work with just blindly believe everything they hear from the media. It’s so frustrating and annoying.
I along with everyone else who works at the hospital continued to work right through the peak of the pandemic (no social distancing, no face masks) with not so much as a sniffle.
I do know a couple of people who died during that time, whose deaths were almost certainly because of Covid. However, as you and others have pointed out, the vast majority of people either don’t know that they’ve had it, or, if they did have it, they lived to tell the tail. A few of my close work colleagues did have the virus, and the were knocked for six because of it, but they’re now back at work.
Anyway, aside from writing to you to say: thank you for all your hard work, I wanted to let you know if you didn’t already, that all of the masks, gloves and gowns that we are using and have been using for most of the pandemic come from… China 🇨🇳
Just thought how crazy it is that the very country where the virus came from is where so many millions of pounds of tax payers money is going to pay for the PPE.
As one of my Northern colleagues (who is also a fellow no masker) said, “They’re really rubbing our faces in it. Literally.”
Round-up
- “A very Covid Christmas: Six million MORE people move into tough Tier 4 restrictions TODAY – bringing the total to 24million” – MailOnline reminds us of today’s bad news
- “Happy Christmas, the Brexit war is over!” – Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail on the good Brexit news
- “The music that makes Christmas” – Douglas Murray in UnHerd on why cancelled services, or services without carol signing, won’t take away the beauty of Christmas music
- “Why my church doors are staying open” – Giles Fraser says he won’t be closing his church this Christmas
- “CDC to Require Negative COVID-19 Test for Air Travellers from the United Kingdom to the U.S.” – The CDC has said travellers from the U.K. will need a certificate showing they’ve tested negative within 72 hours of departure. Without the documentary proof you won’t be allowed to board the plane
- “Covid kicked us all off the featherbed of civilisation” – William Boyd in the Times says we’ve gone through Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief in 2020, but in reverse
- “Reasons to be cheerful at the end of this bleakest year” – Gerard Baker is remarkably upbeat after the terrible year we’ve had
- “You’ve been spotted at Gran’s, go directly to jail” – Giles Coren and his family are so bored this Christmas they’ve created a Covid version of Monopoly
- “Professor Neil Ferguson: People don’t agree with lockdown and try to undermine the scientists” – Professor Lockdown continues his comeback tour with an interview in today’s Times
- “The economics of unused gift cards” – Interesting article in the Hustle about who benefits when Christmas gift cards go unredeemed
- “Spiked’s heroes of 2020” – Spiked‘s heroes include J.K. Rowing, Nick Cave and Lord Sumption
- “A beacon of light in the gloom” – Michael Fahey in the Conservative Woman looks at the few bright points in a dark year
- “17 Remedies for 2021” – Psychologist Dr Hugh Willbourn has 17 tips for how to convert lockdown believers to scepticism
- “The drug that gives ‘instant immunity’ to coronavirus?” – MailOnline reports on a new superdrug being trialled by the NHS
naufrage/sauvetage 