Lockdown sceptics:Health Secretary Sajid Javid Tests Positive for Covid-et varia
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Health Secretary Sajid Javid Tests Positive for Covid
By Michael Curzon
Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who has had two doses of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine, is self-isolating with his family after he tested positive for the virus. Javid says his symptoms are “very mild” and has urged unvaccinated Brits to get ‘jabbed’ “as soon as you can”.
BBC News has the story.
Mr Javid, who became Health Secretary in June, said he had taken a lateral flow test after feeling a “bit groggy” on Friday night and it was positive.
He said he was now self-isolating until he got the results of a PCR test. …
In a video posted on his Twitter feed, Mr Javid said: “I was feeling a bit groggy last night, so I took a lateral flow test this morning and it’s come out positive, so I’m now self-isolating at home with my family until I get the results of a PCR test.”
“I’m grateful that I’ve had two jabs of the vaccine and so far my symptoms are very mild.”
He urged people who had not been vaccinated yet to “get out there and get them as soon as you can”.
Mr Javid also said people who feel groggy or come into contact with someone who is positive should take a lateral flow test.
“If everyone plays their part, you’re not only protecting yourself and your loved ones but you’re also safeguarding the NHS and helping to preserve our way of life,” the Health Secretary added.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Half the Cabinet could be pinged within a few days, according to MailOnline, including Boris.
CommentsIs it ‘Freedom Day’ Already?
By Toby Young
Sun-starved Britons flocked to beaches and parks today causing miles-long tailbacks on the hottest day of the year so far as temperatures hit 88F (31C), making parts of the U.K. warmer than the Caribbean. MailOnline has more.
The warmest parts of England today were Yorkshire, the Midlands and Bristol – and conditions could be even hotter tomorrow with the Met Office warning of 91F (33C) highs as the summer heatwave continues.
The balmy weather, driven by a blast of warm air coming in from the Azores in the North Atlantic, has prompted health officials to issue warnings about the dangers of extreme heat – especially to the elderly and vulnerable.
The sunshine is due to last until so-called ‘Freedom Day’ on Monday, the day when the last of the Covid-19 restrictions are due to be lifted by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, when thunderstorms could arrive.
Thousands of people have flocked to beaches across the country, with London and the South East seeing clear skies and highs of 84F (29C) today – with the mercury climbing to between 88F (30C) and 90F (32C) tomorrow.
And, for a change, the heat is being shared across the country – with the North Midlands and South Yorkshire hottest today, followed by the South East tomorrow.
Monday is expected to see the highest temperatures shift to the West Country. But we are still a long way off record temperatures – with the all-time UK record of 101.7F (38.7C) being set in Cambridge on July 25, 2019.
Tom Morgan, meteorologist at the Met Office, said: “We have got quite an extended hot spell of weather to come through the next several days lasting much of this week, nighttime temperatures will be in the high teens Celsius and daytime temperatures will be in the high twenties or low thirties.
“It’s going to mean that people are really going to feel the effects of the heat as we go through this week.”
Worth reading in full – not least for the gallery of photographs showing people relaxing and enjoying themselves in the sunshine.
CommentsBritain Set to Carry Out Largest Flu Vaccine Roll-Out in Its History This Winter
By Michael Curzon
Encouraged by its large Covid vaccine programme, Britain will carry out the largest flu vaccine roll-out in its history this winter, with all secondary school pupils and children aged two and three set to be offered vaccines. Officials expect that, altogether, 35 million people could be vaccinated against seasonal flu this year and that Covid and flu vaccines will continue to be given for “years to come”. MailOnline has the story.
NHS England and Improvement, and Public Health England have issued the 2021-2022 annual flu letter to providers, outlining their plans for this year’s expanded programme.
From September, 35 million people including all secondary school students up to Year 11, children aged two and three on August 31st, all primary school children, people aged 50 and over, pregnant women, unpaid carers, and frontline health and adult social care staff will be eligible for the free jab.
The drive will build on last year’s expanded flu programme, which saw a record 19 million jabs being administered.[Health Secretary Sajid] Javid encouraged all those eligible to get their flu jab when they are called.
“Flu can be a serious illness and we want to build a wall of protection by immunising a record number of people,” he said.
“With the nation getting closer to normal life, we must learn to live with Covid alongside other viruses and we’re offering the free flu jab to millions more people to help keep them safe this winter.
“The phenomenal scale of the Covid vaccination programme is a clear demonstration of the positive impact vaccination can make and I encourage all those eligible to get their flu jab when called forward.”
Public Health England medical director Dr Yvonne Doyle said the upcoming flu season will be “highly unpredictable” combined with “the likelihood that Covid will still be circulating”.
The flu programme is expected to be delivered alongside any booster programme for Covid vaccinations.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation is expected to publish its final advice on the Covid booster jab programme later this summer. …
In a letter sent to senior leaders, GPs and hospital bosses earlier this month, NHS England said health systems should be preparing to deliver booster doses of the coronavirus vaccination between September 6th and December 17th.
NHS Providers Chief Executive Chris Hopson said people will to be vaccinated for flu and coronavirus for “years to come”.
“Rolling out a flu programme of this scale alongside a Covid booster campaign will take a huge amount of planning, collaboration and commitment, particularly from primary care,” he said.
“It is incredibly ambitious in its scale and complexity, and while we have no doubt the NHS can meet this challenge, we do need to think about how we enable NHS staff to carry out this programme while meeting the other pressures they face.
“We’ll be vaccinating against flu and Covid for years to come so let’s put our approach on a sustainable footing as soon as possible.”
Worth reading in full.
CommentsBBC Offers Lanyards to Staff Wanting to Continue Social Distancing When Returning to the Office
By Michael Curzon
Having recognised that a sizeable proportion of its workforce does not want to return to normality just yet, the BBC is offering white lanyards to staff who are returning to the office but would like to continue ‘social distancing’. Employees are also being asked to disclose their vaccination status, but they have been told they will still be able to come to offices if they have not been vaccinated against Covid. The Telegraph has the story.
A memo sent to BBC employees on Friday by Bob Shennan, the BBC’s Managing Director, said the organisation “knows that some of you are anxious about returning to the office” in September.
“To address this, we are introducing a new white BBC lanyard to indicate that the wearer wishes to be given extra space. If you see a colleague wearing this lanyard then please respect their position,” he wrote.
He told staff the white lanyards would co-exist with their “sunflower” equivalents used by people with hidden disabilities.
BBC staff were also informed that the number of people allowed to use office lifts simultaneously would rise as more employees return to the office.
Some signs restricting the amount of toilet facilities that can be used would also be removed, Mr Shennan wrote.
A BBC spokesman said: “We’re taking some simple and effective steps for staff safety and to ensure that critical public services remain on air.”
The Government has endorsed homemade badges made by the “Distance Aware” initiative that read “please give me space” and encouraged people to print them out at home if they were worried about a lack of social distancing.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: A reader has been in touch with details of an email sent to the staff at his local gym containing instructions from the Government to “set a good example” by continuing to wear face masks.
Just been to my Nuffield gym in Kingston, chatting to the trainer and he showed me the email to all staff from the CEO. Apparently, all the big health clubs and gyms were ordered in to see the Government and were told they must “do their bit” from July 19th. That means all staff carrying on wearing masks in order to “set a good example”. So, this is coming from the Government, not the health clubs and you can bet if gyms were ordered in so were supermarkets, etc. Say no more. Not really freedom is it?
CommentsInfections in the Vaccinated Overtake Those in the Unvaccinated For the First Time – But the Graph is Removed From the ZOE App Report
By Will Jones
Health Secretary Sajid Javid has tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, despite being vaccinated – and he is far from alone. The latest ZOE data shows that, as of July 12th, infections in the vaccinated (with at least one dose) in the U.K. now outnumber those in the unvaccinated for the first time, as the former continue to surge while the latter plummet (see above). (Note that 68% of the population has had at least one vaccine dose, so there are still at this stage disproportionately more new infections in the unvaccinated, though on current trends that may soon change.)
At what point will the Government accept that these vaccines have limited efficacy in preventing infection and transmission, and thus the whole rationale of being vaccinated to protect others – vaccine passports, compulsory vaccination, and so on – is suspect?
The above graph was in yesterday’s report, so I downloaded today’s report (you can get it by signing up to the app and reporting your symptoms) to get the new update. I was dismayed to find the graph was gone. At the bottom, a note explains:
Removed incidence graph by vaccination status from the report as there are very few unvaccinated users in the infection survey, the Confidence Intervals are very wide and the trend for unvaccinated people is no longer representative.
Which I would say is very convenient, just as infections in the vaccinated became the majority. Perhaps ZOE should try to recruit some more unvaccinated people for its survey, so it can continue to report on this as well as have a control group for its vaccine data? That would seem the scientific thing to do, rather than just stop reporting it because it is suddenly “no longer representative”.
It’s doubly odd because Tim Spector, lead scientist on the ZOE app, made the decline among the unvaccinated a feature of his video this week. So the realisation that the trend is “no longer representative” appears to have been rather sudden, even invalidating the contents of a ZOE ‘data release‘ two days earlier.
It seems we will never know how the story ends, which is a shame and a missed opportunity for ZOE.
ZOE data continues to suggest the current Covid surge is peaking and possibly even beginning to decline in the U.K., at least outside England (see above). Yet this is at odds with the daily Covid reports from the Government, which show continued growth.
Why the discrepancy? Is it because the Government figures include all the lateral flow tests that schoolchildren are taking as they isolate? 839,100 children – 11.2% of the total pupil population, more than one in 10 – were absent from state schools for Covid-related reasons on July 8th. All of them will have been tested and this will be picking up asymptomatic or mild infections that would usually not be noticed. ZOE data is symptom based, with a confirmatory PCR test, so would not be affected by surges in lateral flow testing among schoolchildren picking up asymptomatic infections.
Whatever the explanation, one to watch.
CommentsAustralia’s Loony Zero Covid Policy Gradually Drives Entire Country Mad
By Toby Young
In Australia, the state of Victoria, with more than six million people, has been put into lockdown because of 18 cases. Yes, you read that correctly. There are now 12 million Australians confined to their homes due to fewer infections than you’d find in the average British pub.
We’re publishing a guest post today by Steve Waterson, the Commercial Editor of the Australian. This piece originally appeared in the Weekend Australian, but Steve has given us permission to republish it.
So away we go again, hunting to ground the absolute beast, the out-of-control killer virus that runs rampant at light speed, vaulting from customer to customer in a fleeting cafe encounter.
Contact tracers scramble tirelessly to chase down the asymptomatic covidiots, while their masters, responding to the hour-by-hour health advice, are forced against their will to impose a snap lockdown, perhaps a circuit-breaker, to flatten the curve towards zero transmission, but for no longer than necessary.
Regrettably, they may have to slam their state borders shut (only as a last resort) so medical facilities will not be overwhelmed, to save lives and keep people out of harm’s way in this unprecedented, existential war. After all, they’re simply following the science, and they make no apology for that.
Hasn’t it been illuminating, these past 18 months, watching the verbal gymnastics of our politicians and their supporting cast of advisers and enablers, as they contort language and meaning to support their twisted edifice of hysterical illogic? The banal retreat into cliche, exaggeration, oxymoron and jargon, all wind and no substance, largely unchallenged, it’s sad to say, by a media pack trying to outdo each other with doom-laden headlines.
No matter how much you might resent it, you have to admit the scaremongering has been absolutely first-class, judging by the results. Many of us have been reduced to whimpering sadomasochists, grateful for the beatings administered to our livelihoods, our relationships, our hopes and dreams, our self-reliance and self-respect, and quick to spank those with a different outlook on life.
We’re in a Fifty Shades of Grey scenario, or perhaps a Tarantino film: state premiers have us handcuffed to a chair and are repeatedly punching us in the face with one hand, then applying a soothing balm with the other, saying, “Look what you’ve made us do!”
Half the population are now imprisoned in their homes, not because of the tiny number of Covid cases, but because of the brutal overreach by the moronic authorities who can conceive of no other way of dealing with them.
Many observers, since this insanity began, have mounted a simple argument: identify those at risk, offer them protection, and let the rest of the country go about their business like adults. They will take what precautions they consider necessary, safeguarding or neglecting their health as is their habit and right. Some of them drink alcohol; many eat too much; others smoke; a few rash souls do all three at the same sitting. They will have the opportunity to receive a coronavirus vaccine soon enough, and some will refuse it. That shouldn’t bother the vaccinated.
But many Australians have succumbed to the terror rhetoric, and genuinely believe they are at extreme risk of death should they contract a disease that has a better than 99% survival rate. Look at India and Indonesia, they wail, there are sick people on stretchers outside their hospitals! It could happen here, they warn, without acknowledging that we have eight times as many hospital beds per capita as the subcontinent, four times as many as Indonesia, and immeasurably more sophisticated healthcare resources.
A previously unnoticed coterie of experts, relishing their moment in the limelight to ramp up the fear, project the figments of their imagination, confidently predicting what will or would have happened in their flawless reading of the future or an alternative present; and always, always focusing exclusively on case numbers and epidemiological data, as if those are the only things that matter.
For them, perhaps; but some of us live in the real world, where life comes with no guarantees. There are elderly people reading this who will not wake up tomorrow. Today is their last day on Earth, and it has been wasted by a government that forbade this weekend’s visit from the grandchildren. There are fading cancer victims who will now die alone, whose governments have denied them that last chance to hold a loved one’s hand, although they’d whisk them enthusiastically into the grave under an assisted dying law.
It’s increasingly difficult to see any humanity in our leaders’ actions and overreactions. They are like medieval theologians debating how many angels would fit on the head of a pin, losing sight of anything else. Critics say a lockdown is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but at least you want the nut cracked. What we’re doing is using a sledgehammer to do the washing-up.
Meanwhile, the real, ignored pain accumulates: surgery is stopped or delayed, rendering treatable conditions terminal; schooling is suspended, fostering another gullible generation of scientific illiterates and innumerates; mental health deteriorates, shattering families; and the dismantling of the backbone of our economy gathers pace.
Many of us have friends whose small businesses are going under, whose staff will soon find themselves unemployed, whose savings, built up prudently over decades, have all but disappeared. Some of them will lose their homes just as they should be enjoying the rewards of a life of diligent work.
It’s almost embarrassing to have a job that is relatively secure, though it means I’m on the hook for part of the official benevolence that has thrown in excess of $300 billion at this self-inflicted wound. My share of the debt is in the tens of thousands already. Call me picky, but I don’t feel I’ve got value for money.
Our unaccountable premiers whirl about like headless chooks (although they still manage to run rings around the Prime Minister; how’s that national cabinet working out?), while claiming to follow the ubiquitous health advice no one else is allowed to see, just as the various Treasury cost-benefit analyses remain top-secret.
Governments pay millions of our dollars to generate this information; the suspicion remains that if there were any evidence that their virus-containment strategy is sensible and proportionate, they would be ramming the data down our throats. Maybe it’s too complex for the man in the street to understand, although if Dan Andrews can get his head around it I think one or two of us might give it a go.
Instead we are drip-fed pseudo-scientific gobbledygook, with fancy 3.5 degrees of lockdown and Greek letters for the variants, ooh, just like on Stephen Hawking’s blackboard. The “rocketing spikes” of infections are announced each day and added to the running total (it appears nobody recovers, not that we’re permitted to know whether they’re sick in the first place). Hundreds of thousands queue for hours to be tested, costing millions of dollars a day, when none of them have the virus. There’s the real measure of the success of the scare campaign.
So well done, pollies and bureaucrats, enjoy your lavish salaries and lick your lips at the pensions that await you. You are sinister monkeys dancing on the barrel organs played by medical nonentities, blithely stripping us of our freedoms as we stumble towards tyranny. But thanks for keeping us safe.
Now we have confirmed this pandemic is an existential war, let’s recall our response to an earlier deadly threat. Eighty years ago, as young Australians steeled themselves to fight and die in WWII, and Londoners endured months of bombing during the Blitz that claimed almost 50,000 Cockney lives, their governments understood their role was to encourage stoicism, resilience and defiance in the civilian population. Official histories record that far from sinking into panic and despair, Britain’s overall mental health improved, with citizens treating air raids as casually as inclement weather, referring to bad days as being “very blitzy”.
Contrast that with our modern leaders’ efforts, which they proudly declare are designed to terrify us simpletons. No “soldier on” or “keep calm”; instead we had Queensland’s next governor last year admitting school closures were unnecessary, but would communicate the gravity of the crisis: “It’s more than just the science and health,” she said, “it’s about the messaging.” Last month the NSW Premier, face contorted in agony, told us we were in the “scariest period” of the pandemic so far. Lord knows how frightened she and her advisers must be by now.
If you’re going to infantilise the population, then at least have the fortitude to behave like parents, who traditionally reassure their children in the night that there are no monsters under the bed, rather than scream that there are also monsters in the bedroom cupboards.
Imagine if Winston Churchill had followed this modern script, his sonorous baritone crackling over the wireless to address the Commonwealth, as the scourge of Nazi Germany ravaged continental Europe: “Oh my God, everyone, have you seen how many tanks and aeroplanes Adolf Hitler has got? And all those great big stormtroopers! It’s as scary as anything. I’ve changed my mind about fighting them on the beaches; let’s keep really, really quiet and fingers crossed they’ll leave us alone.”
Hide from the virus. Hide from the world, even as it opens up. This is what our leaders have condemned us to, seemingly in perpetuity. Our situation is beyond parody, and beyond pathetic.
CommentsA Response to Scott Alexander on Lockdowns
By Noah Carl
The prolific blogger Scott Alexander has written a long post about lockdowns. It’s not too objectionable from a lockdown sceptic’s point of view. For example, he concedes that “lockdowns weren’t necessary to prevent uncontrolled spread” and says that it’s “harder to justify strict lockdowns in terms of the non-economic suffering produced”.
Nonetheless, I do disagree with him on several points, which I will highlight here.
First, he ignores most of the academic studies that have found little or no effect of lockdowns on mortality. For example, he doesn’t mention Simon Wood’s studies finding that infections were in decline before all three U.K. lockdowns. Nor does he mention the paper by Christopher Berry and colleagues which observed “no detectable health benefits” of shelter-in-place orders in the United States.
Despite ignoring these studies, he dedicates a whole section of his post to something called CoronaGame, which he oddly classifies as “Actual Evidence”.
Second, he compares the official COVID-19 death rate up to August 2020 in Sweden with various other countries, and claims that “Sweden comes out looking very bad, but not the literal worst”. He then claims that “it looks even worse when you compare Sweden to other Scandinavian/Nordic countries”.
However, if he had used age-adjusted excess mortality, and had extended his window of analysis up to the end of 2020, Sweden would not have come out “looking very bad”. As I’ve noted several times, Sweden saw age-adjusted excess mortality up to week 51 of just 1.7% – placing it 14 out of 22 European countries.
And there are several reasons why the “neighbour argument” – the argument that we have to compare Sweden to its immediate neighbours rather than the rest of Europe – isn’t very convincing. Sweden saw unusually low mortality in 2019; border controls (not lockdowns) made the difference in the first wave; and once you include the Baltics, Sweden no longer stands out.
Third, he claims the cost of lockdown “is measured in psychological suffering and economic decline”, noting that in order to do a cost-benefit analysis “we should figure out how much stricter lockdowns affected the economy”.
While the economic impact of lockdown certainly constitutes a major entry on the costs side of the ledger, Alexander neglects to mention another negative impact of lockdown, namely the switch to remote learning. As several studies have shown, this resulted in sizeable learning losses, which were concentrated among children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.
Alexander’s post offers a decent overview of the debate, but he’s too charitable to the lockdown side, leading him to overstate the benefits of lockdown and understate the costs. Not his best piece of work, in other words.
CommentsThousands March Against Vaccine Passports in France
By Michael Curzon
Thousands have taken to the streets in France to protest against President Emmanuel Macron’s extreme plans to force all health workers to get vaccinated against Covid and to prevent the unvaccinated from visiting restaurants, shopping malls and hospitals, and from using trains and planes. Unmoved by these demonstrations, French Prime Minister Jean Castex says people should be “convinced” to take the vaccine “at all costs”. Reuters has the story.
Macron this week announced sweeping measures to fight a rapid surge in coronavirus infections, which protesters say infringe the freedom of choice of those who do not want the vaccination.
The measures had already prompted demonstrations earlier this week, forcing police to use tear gas to disperse protesters.
“Everyone is sovereign in his own body. In no way does a president of the Republic have the right to decide on my individual health,” said one protester in Paris who identified herself as Chrystelle.
Marches, which also took place in France’s largest cities such as Marseille, Lyon and Lille as well as many smaller centres, also included “yellow vest” protesters seeking to revive the anti-Government movement curbed by coronavirus lockdowns.
Visiting a centre in Anglet in southwestern France, Prime Minister Jean Castex said vaccination, which is not mandatory for the general public for now, is the only way to fight the virus.
“I hear the reluctance that arises but I think that we must at all costs convince all our fellow citizens to be vaccinated, it is the best way to cope to this health crisis,” Castex said.
Despite the strength of the protests, an Ipsos-Sopra Steria poll released on Friday found more than 60% of French people agree with mandatory vaccination for health workers, as well as a requirement for a health pass in some public places.
Worth reading in full.
By Jonathan Barr
- “Children will only get Covid vaccines if vulnerable” – Under guidance due to be issued on Monday, Covid jabs will only be offered to children between 12 and 15 who are deemed vulnerable to Covid or who live with adults who are immunosuppressed, according to the Telegraph
- “Boris Johnson cancels plans for Churchillian Freedom Day launch” – The Prime Minister Boris Johnson was planning to give a Churchillian speech at a location associated with the wartime leader to celebrate the ending of Covid restrictions, according to the Daily Mail, but it has been cancelled due to the climb in cases
- “Unvaccinated less likely to have jab if Covid passports become mandatory, says expert” – An ORB Survey of more than 2,000 people who had not yet taken the jab found that the prospect of vaccine passports made 44% of them less likely to accept it, according to the Telegraph
- “Independent Sage is run by Left-wing group including anti-Brexit activists” – Independent SAGE, the group that has regularly criticised the Government for not locking down hard enough, is run by the Citizens, according to the Telegraph, a group founded by Carole Cadwalladr, a well-known anti-Brexit conspiracy theorist
- “Tube lines suspended and partly closed as staff ‘pinged’ by Covid app” – The Metropolitan Line was suspended and the Piccadilly and District Lines partially closed, according to MailOnline, after control room staff were instructed to self-isolate
- “Covid growth rates are slowing in eight of England’s 10 hot-spots” – The third wave is slowing down in many of the country’s hotspots, but experts fear that infection rates could speed up in the rest of the country, according to MailOnline
- “Boris promised freedom… Get ready for the next lockdown ” – Tomorrow is ‘Freedom Day’, but Dan Hodges of the Mail On Sunday does not think we’ll get to enjoy our newly granted freedoms for long
- “Freedom-loving Boris can’t stop flirting with authoritarianism – and it’s all our fault” – In his latest Sunday Telegraph column, Dan Hannan blames the mood of the British public for Boris Johnson’s new found authoritarianism
- “The young were overlooked during the pandemic. Now it’s happening all over again on the way out” – “For young adults awaiting their second jab, there’ll be months more of quarantine and Covid tests,” says Kate Andrews in the Sunday Telegraph
- “The Most Dangerous Plague” – Dr Hugh Willbourn offers three indications to identify a sound and positive way forward in the over-policed world that will follow lockdown
- “Swathes of England fans report coming down with ‘Wembley variant’ after Euro 2020 final” – Large numbers of football fans have tested positive following the Euros final, according to the i. Some fans said that “pretty much everyone” they knew who were at the stadium on Sunday are now self-isolating
- “Anger as England extends restrictions on France travel” – The U.K. Government’s decision to place France in a new ‘amber plus’ category has caused widespread anger and frustration, France 24 reports
- “England’s lifting of Covid lockdowns is a danger to the entire world, experts warn” – Zero Covid fanatics gathered at a virtual summit on Friday, according to CNBC, where they criticised the U.K. Government’s plans to ease COVID-19 restrictions as unethical and dangerous for the whole planet
- “This isn’t freedom day. It’s lockdown outsourced” – “With different rules for different companies, Freedom Day is going to be chaos,” says Charlotte Lytton in the Telegraph
- “I believe the real purpose of masks is social control” – “How far tomorrow looks like a real Freedom Day will be up to all of us and our determination to return to normal life,” says Graham Brady in the Mail On Sunday. “It is time for us all now to start using our own judgment”
- “We’ve de-clawed Covid… now give our freedom back” – “The very limited nature of the freedom we will receive tomorrow will leave many dissatisfied and disappointed,” says this Mail On Sunday editorial. “If we are to recover as a society and an economy, Ministers are going to need to be more confident of their own success”
- “Visions of the future” – Writing for LeftLockdownSceptics, Raminder Mulla describes three potential scenarios for what society might eventually look like, post “freedom day”
- “War and Covid: The Flickering of Civilisation’s Lamp” – Omar Khan takes a look at Heartbreak House, George Bernard Shaw’s play about a “cultured, leisured Europe” drifting towards destruction in the First World War, and finds parallels with the world today
- “Doctors urge teachers to reject Covid vaccination for children” – The Conservative Woman reproduces a letter addressed to teachers from the U.K. Medical Freedom Alliance about the ethical concerns about vaccinating children
- “Tess Lawrie explains why the vaccine rollout must be halted” – Writing for the Conservative Woman, Neville Hodgkinson explains why Dr. Tess Lawrie wants the vaccine rollout to be paused
- “That Nurse Who Asks Questions” – In the latest episode of the Real Normal, Lord Rickmansworth and Don interview Jenna Platt, a nurse and anti-lockdown activist
- “Darkness has ascended upon the enlightened country” – By completely cutting off the unvaccinated from their daily life, Emmanuel Macron has segregated the French territory into two categories, the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, with the latter being stripped of all its rights, says Julien Yvon in Bournbrook
- “France to require 24-hour negative Covid test for unvaccinated travellers from U.K. & five EU countries” – As of next week, anyone visiting France from the U.K., Spain, Portugal, Greece or the Netherlands will have to present a negative PCR or antigen test that was taken less than 24 hours before departure, according to RT
- “All of Britain put on Denmark red list – apart from Wales” – Denmark’s Foreign Ministry advises against travel to all parts of Britain apart from Wales, Nation Cymru reports, the first time an EU country has differentiated between the U.K.’s four nations for the purpose of entry requirements
- “Nearly 1,000 people infected with Covid after Utrecht festival” – Nearly a thousand people who attended the July 3rd-4th Veknipt festival in Utrecht have tested positive, according to NL Times. The organisers are surprised, as they there were many Covid security protocols in place
- “Mykonos bans music in bars after England players filmed in restaurant singalong” – The Greek island of Mykonos has banned music and singing in bars after four England players were filmed singing “Sweet Caroline”, according to the Telegraph, and introduced a night-time curfew
- “Disney moves 2,000 jobs from California to Florida’s business-friendly climate” – The Walt Disney Company will be moving 2,000 jobs from its California HQ to Florida, the Post Millennial reports. CEO Bob Chapek has criticised California’s lockdown restrictions, which kept Disneyland closed while the park in Florida was open
- “Harvesting the Sickening Fruit of Lockdowns” – Peter C. Earle looks at how lockdown restrictions have led to an increase in overdose fatalities for the AIER
- “Protest convoy of trucks at Sydney Harbour Bridge and Anzac Bridge following changes to COVID-19 rules” – Sydney Harbour Bridge and Anzac Bridge were blocked off by about 100 large trucks who were honking their horns loudly, the Weekend Australian says, in protest against the latest Covid measures
- “If the premiers are keeping us safe from the virus, who is keeping us safe from the premiers?” – Writing for Spectator Australia, James Macpherson takes aim at Dan Andrews, Premier of the State of Victoria, after he described anti-lockdown protestors as shameful
- “Meet the Covid billionaires” – “Redistribution of wealth is alive and well within the Covid pandemic,” says Alexandra Marshall in Spectator Australia. “Just like old school socialism, the loose change of the working class has been siphoned into the pockets of global bureaucracies, big business, politicians, and union heavyweights”
- “Freedom Day? More like Groundhog Day” – GB News’s Neil Oliver is unimpressed by ‘Freedom Day’
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Ten today: “All The Lies” by Alok, Felix Jaehn & The Vamps, “Evil Doers” by Michael Prophet, “Help Out This Nation” by Everal Cooper, “Stop Them” by Billy Joe Morgan, “Bad To Worse” by Burning Spear, “What’s Next” by Drake, “The Good Times Are Coming” by Cass Elliot, “Counting Down The Days” by Natalie Imbruglia, “The Time Has Come” by The Time Has Come and “Tomorrow” by Aileen Quinn.
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. We have a team of moderators in place to remove spam and deal with the trolls, but sometimes it takes a little while so please bear with us. You have to register to use the Forums as well as post comments below the line, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email Lockdown Sceptics here.
Social Media Accounts
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Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, we bring you the news that The School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia is preparing to decolonise its courses following a request by its students. Henceforth, the Literature In History II module, which includes works by Shakespeare as well as Ishiguro’s The Remains Of The Day, will no longer be taught. Instead, students will have an opportunity to take Writing Across Borders, a course which focuses on the way English has “operated as a language of the coloniser”. The Daily Mail has more.
Students at a university that has produced a string of world-renowned authors are to be taught that English “operated as a language of the coloniser”.
The School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia – which boasts Nobel Prize laureate Kazuo Ishiguro and the Booker Prize winners Ian McEwan and Anne Enright among its alumni – is to “decolonise” its courses following demands from students.
The decision is the latest controversial move by institutions to make lessons more diverse – but critics claim it is “anti-academic” and “corrosive”.
Frank Furedi, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Kent University, said: “The project of decolonising the English language has nothing to do with genuine academic concerns. Associating the evils of colonialism with English literature is more about turning the subject into a political dogma than studying the merits of different writing and authors.”
“None of this is about English literature. It is using English literature as a medium to make a statement about how morally superior these students are.”
Documents obtained using Freedom of Information rules show the department will abandon its Literature In History II module, which includes works by Shakespeare and Ishiguro’s The Remains Of The Day.
Instead, a new course entitled Writing Across Borders will focus on “the way English operated as a language of the coloniser”. The reading list includes Zong!, a book-length poem by Caribbean-born writer Marlene Nourbese Philip that uses court documents to detail the massacre of 150 Africans thrown overboard from a British slave ship in 1781 so that its owners could claim the insurance.
The change was sparked by a letter from students last year that described the current course as being dominated by “white, cisgendered male authors”, and centred on the “privileged, white, male experience”.
It accused the department of being “complicit in upholding exclusionary, erasive, patriarchal, heteronormative and white supremacist standards”.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Last week, Toronto Council voted to change the name of Dundas Street because it’s named after the Scottish Politician Henry Dundas who delayed the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. The move will cost $6.3 million and it will take until 2023 to come up with a new name. This is what happens when you “judge the past by the standards of the present”, says Toronto Sun columnist Lorrie Goldstein.
The late British writer G.K. Chesterton once famously observed that “journalism largely consists in saying ‘Lord Jones is dead’ to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive”.
Such was the case with media coverage last week as Toronto Council – often the epicentre of absurdity in Canadian municipal politics – lived up to its reputation by voting to spend up to $6.3 million renaming Dundas Street, named for Scottish politician Henry Dundas.
The costs will involve expunging the name “Dundas” from street signs, subway stations and other namesakes such as the city’s iconic Yonge-Dundas Square.
It will take until 2023 to come up with a new name for Dundas and complete the transformation, according to the city.
Council will also decide what do about 60 other streets with so-called problematic names.
All this because of a petition to council signed by 14,000 people denouncing Dundas for delaying the abolition of the slave trade in the 1790s.
That’s 14,000 in a city of 2.9 million, the vast majority of whom had no idea of who Henry Dundas was.
But this foolishness is what happens when you judge the past by the standards of the present – it even has a name, it’s called “presentism”.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press 2: In a new poll of 1,000 registered voters carried out in the U.S., one third said they considered themselves to be “woke”, and the number was higher among women than men. Newsweek has more.
One-third of U.S. voters said they consider themselves to be “woke”, a term used to refer to someone who is aware and proactive about social justice issues such as racial discrimination.
A new The Hill/HarrisX poll of about 1,000 registered voters conducted between July 8th-9th found 32% of them saying they “consider themselves to be woke”. A larger percentage of men, 35%, said they would fit under the wide umbrella of that term, while only 30% of women surveyed said the same.
The term “woke” has become a divisive political and cultural reference as conservatives often use it to mock progressives as elitist or arrogant. A 60% majority of Democrats surveyed said they think “wokeness” is a good thing for the country, but only about 20% of Republicans agreed.
Polled voters were evenly divided in their view of whether being “woke” is a positive or negative concept for the country moving forward. Respondents were asked if “wokeness” is doubling down on the country’s racial and social divisions, or if it is a helping the U.S. to evolve for the better. Exactly 50% of voters said “wokeness” is stoking differences and causing unrest, while another 50% said it is developing and evolving the country for the better.
Massive partisan divides were evident, as 70% of Democrats said “wokeness” is a good thing alongside 54% of independent voters. By comparison, a 72% majority of Republicans said “wokeness” is further dividing the country along racial and ethnic lines.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press 3: Scientists are now warning that humanity may well run out of things to call “racist”, the Babylon Bee reports.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a one-stop shop down here for people who want to obtain a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card – because wearing a mask causes them “severe distress”, for instance. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and the Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. And if you feel obliged to wear a mask but want to signal your disapproval of having to do so, you can get a “sexy world” mask with the Swedish flag on it here.
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption. Another reader has created an Android app which displays “I am exempt from wearing a face mask” on your phone. Available free of charge.
If you’re a shop owner and you want to let your customers know you will not be insisting on face masks or asking them what their reasons for exemption are, you can download a friendly sign to stick in your window here.
And here’s an excellent piece about the ineffectiveness of masks by a Roger W. Koops, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry. See also the Swiss Doctor’s thorough review of the scientific evidence here and Prof Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson’s Spectator article about the Danish mask study here.
Stop Press: After ‘Freedom Day’ Prince Charles is only going to wear a mask when he has to, the Mail On Sunday reports.
Prince Charles will wear a mask only when Government advice dictates that he should do so, the Mail on Sunday can reveal.
In a boost to the Government’s Freedom Day, the Prince is not expected to cover his face when he visits Exeter Cathedral tomorrow.
Charles is patron of a fundraising appeal at the cathedral and, for the first time in months, his trip has been made public in advance.
During the pandemic, visits have been kept secret to prevent crowds congregating.
A Palace source said: “This will be the first time in 18 months that we are seeing a return to normality. We’ll be looking forwards, not backwards.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press 2: A parody poster in the style of Welsh Government notices reminding English travellers that they must wear masks when they enter Wales has created a storm of protests on social media, Nation Cymru reports. Critics branded it “racist” and “xenophobic”.
Stop Press 3: Health officials in Los Angeles County, California, have reinstated the indoor mask mandate in response to increasing rates of infection. However, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva says he is not going to expend his departments limited resources in enforcing it. Here is his statement.
Forcing the vaccinated and those who already contracted COVID-19 to wear masks indoors is not backed by science and contradicts the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (DPH) has authority to enforce the order, but the underfunded/defunded Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department will not expend our limited resources and instead ask for voluntary compliance. We encourage the DPH to work collaboratively with the Board of Supervisors and law enforcement to establish mandates that are both achievable and supported by science.
The Great Barrington Declaration
The Great Barrington Declaration, a petition started by Professor Martin Kulldorff, Professor Sunetra Gupta and Professor Jay Bhattacharya calling for a strategy of “Focused Protection” (protect the elderly and the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with life), was launched in October and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it ever since. If you googled it a week after launch, the top hits were three smear pieces from the Guardian, including: “Herd immunity letter signed by fake experts including ‘Dr Johnny Bananas’.” (Freddie Sayers at UnHerd warned us about this the day before it appeared.) On the bright side, Google UK has stopped shadow banning it, so the actual Declaration now tops the search results – and Toby’s Spectator piece about the attempt to suppress it is among the top hits – although discussion of it has been censored by Reddit. In February, Facebook deleted the GBD’s page because it “goes against our community standards”. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job.)
You can find it here. Please sign it. Now over three quarters of a million signatures.
Update: The authors of the GBD have expanded the FAQs to deal with some of the arguments and smears that have been made against their proposal. Worth reading in full.
Update 2: Many of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration are involved with new UK anti-lockdown campaign Recovery. Find out more and join here.
Update 3: You can watch Sunetra Gupta set out the case for “Focused Protection” here and Jay Bhattacharya make it here.
Update 4: The three GBD authors plus Prof Carl Heneghan of CEBM have launched a new website collateralglobal.org, “a global repository for research into the collateral effects of the COVID-19 lockdown measures”. Follow Collateral Global on Twitter here.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many legal cases being brought against the Government and its ministers we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
The Simon Dolan case has now reached the end of the road, and it looks as though the Robin Tilbrook case has too. Neither claimant was granted permission for a judicial review against the Government, unfortunately, although Tilbrook says he’s going to appeal.
The GoodLawProject and three MPs – Debbie Abrahams, Caroline Lucas and Layla Moran – brought a Judicial Review against Matt Hancock for failing to publish details of lucrative contracts awarded by his department and it was upheld. The Court ruled Hancock had acted unlawfully.
Lawyers for more than 2,000 families who lost loved ones during the pandemic are taking legal action to try to force the Prime Minister to hold an immediate public inquiry into the government’s handling of the crisis. The group, called COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, is seeking permission for a Judicial Review. The group’s lawyers are arguing that the Government has a duty under human rights law to hold an urgent judge-led statutory inquiry, because there is evidence that thousands of people died needlessly as a result of decisions taken by ministers. You can read more about that group and contribute to the fundraiser here.
Then there’s John’s Campaign which is focused specifically on care homes and began a legal process to challenge guidance which recommends that care home residents who go on visits outside should isolate for 14 days upon their return. The Government’s initial response stated that this was was not a legal requirement, and that it is up to individuals care homes to determine how best to protect residents from Covid. On May 1st it was reported that the guidance was going to change to no longer recommend the period of self isolation after a visit to a garden or an outdoor space, such as a park or a beach. Read more about the case and get updates here.
Scottish Church leaders from a range of Christian denominations judicially reviewed the decision of the Scottish Government to close churches, supported by the Christian Legal Centre. The church leaders argued that it was a disproportionate step, and one which has serious implications for freedom of religion. The review was upheld, with the judge ruling on March 23rd, 2021 that that the Scottish Ministers’ decision to ban and criminalise gathered worship was unconstitutional and a disproportionate interference in worshippers Article 9 ECHR rights. Read more about the victory here.
There’s the class action lawsuit being brought by Dr Reiner Fuellmich and his team in various countries against “the manufacturers and sellers of the defective product, PCR tests”. Dr Fuellmich explains the lawsuit in this video. Dr Fuellmich has also served cease and desist papers on Professor Christian Drosten, co-author of the Corman-Drosten paper which was the first and WHO-recommended PCR protocol for detection of SARS-CoV-2. That paper, which was pivotal to the roll out of mass PCR testing, was submitted to the journal Eurosurveillance on January 21st and accepted following peer review on January 22nd. The paper has been critically reviewed here by Pieter Borger and colleagues, who also submitted a retraction request which has now been rejected. The Jerm Warfare blog has published an interview with Reiner Fuellmich about his plans to take the World Health Organisation, and others, to court for “crimes against humanity”.
Hugh Osmond, the founder of Punch Taverns and a former director of Pizza Express, and Sacha Lord, Greater Manchester’s night time economy adviser submitted a claim for a Judicial Review about the fact that indoor hospitality venues have had to remain closed for weeks longer than non-essential shops in England. Their case was initially expedited, but on May 3rd, 2021 it was dismissed on the grounds that, by then, the hearing could not take place until after May 17th, the date on which the sector would be permitted to reopen.
Law Firm PGMBM is acting on behalf of an NHS worker, a pensioner and a gig economy worker to challenge the Government’s charges for hotel quarantine for residents coming into the UK from a red list country. Read about that case, and support it, here.
Lawyers from the Law or Fiction group launched a legal challenge against a multi-academy trust in Sheffield to try and stop children having to wear masks in school, but were unsuccessful. You can read about the judge’s decision on Law or Fiction’s CrowdJustice page here.
The Law or Fiction group is also bringing a case against an employer who’s made the vaccine mandatory. It relates to Barchester Healthcare which is planning to impose a ‘No Jab, No Job’ policy on its 17,000 staff. Read more about that case and support it here.
And last but not least there was the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. A High Court judge refused permission for the FSU’s judicial review on December 9th and the FSU has decided not to appeal the decision. Check here for details.
Stop Press: Debbie Hicks, the anti-lockdown campaigner who was arrested after posting a video on Facebook of a recording she’d made of a largely empty ward at Gloucester Royal Hospital, is facing trial and has started a fundraiser to help pay for her legal defence. You can donate here.
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. Samaritans is available round the clock, every single day of the year, providing a safe place for anyone struggling to cope, whoever they are, however they feel, whatever life has done to them.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. Doing these daily updates is hard work (although we have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending us stories and links). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here. (Don’t assume we’ll pick them up in the comments.)
And Finally…
The Question Everything Lockdown Summit took place in London yesterday and featured contributions from many of the lockdown sceptics that have featured prominently on this blog over the past year, not least Toby and Dr Will Jones. The video recording, all nine hours of it, is now up on Dan Astin-Gregory’s YouTube channel to watch at leisure. The schedule ran as follows, with time stamps within the links.
- “Welcome Address” – Dan Astin-Gregory
- “Why was the Pandemic Rulebook thrown out” – Nick Hudson
- “Were the measures of COVID-19 flawed?” – Dr Clare Craig and Professor Norman Fenton
- “Did the Lockdowns work?” – Professor David Paton
- “Has the global response to COVID-19 caused more harm than good?” – Jon Dobinson, Professor Karol Sikora, Professor David Paton, Luke Johnson and Dr Zenobia Storah,
- “Questions and Answers” – Jon Dobinson, Professor Karol Sikora, Professor David Paton, Luke Johnson, Dr Zenobia Storah, Dr Clare Craig, Professor Norman Fenton, and Nick Hudson
- “Is the trade-off between freedom and safety an illusion?” – Professor Frank Furedi
- “What are the wider legal, political and social repercussions?” – Dr Will Jones, Toby Young, Francis Hoar, and Dr. Lee Jones
- “How can we live with the virus into the future? Balancing costs against benefits” – Peter Castleden
- “How can we live with the virus into the future?: Early treatment with repurposed therapeutics and nutraceuticals” – Dr Peter McCullough
- “How can we learn to live with the virus? Panel” – Professor Karol Sikora, Professor David Livermore and Dr Anthony Hinton
- “A Potential for Recovery” – Luke Johnson
- “Thank-you” – Dan Astin-Gregory
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By Jeanne Smits, Paris correspondent
By Michael Haynes
Examinons d’abord la question de la probabilité statistique : combien de personnes sont réellement tuées par des AR-15 chaque année ? Pas beaucoup selon le FBI, qui ne suit pas les statistiques sur des fusils spécifiques, mais suit les statistiques sur tous les fusils ensemble. Et il s’avère que 
L’une des principales prémisses de mon livre de 2005, « The Long Emergency », était que le gouvernement au plus haut niveau deviendrait de plus en plus inefficace et impuissant à mesure que le mélodrame de l’effondrement national se déroulerait. Ce n’est donc pas sans ironie que les élites politiques en perdition ont choisi la figure pathétique de « Joe Biden » pour diriger symboliquement un gouvernement en perdition. Ils ont choisi l’incarnation même de l’effondrement pour inaugurer l’effondrement, et c’est pourquoi « Joe Biden » semble n’être rien de plus qu’un huissier, quelqu’un dont le seul devoir, disons lors d’un enterrement, est de montrer aux participants les plus importants leur place devant le sinistre cercueil.
naufrage/sauvetage 