The arrest of Piers Corbyn is yet another sign of the intolerance of dissent and devaluing of free speech in the modern UK. Neither being tasteless nor being wrong is a police matter. Furthermore the attempt to distort this into a question of anti-semitism is ludicrous. The clear import of the leaflet involved is that Auschwitz was an instrument of mass murder, and so is the covid vaccine. There is no way of reading this that makes out Corbyn to be denying Auschwitz or promoting it as a good thing. That the Auschwitz comparison is tasteless as well as simply wrong is a view I would share; but neither is a crime, and I perfectly accept other people may view it as neither tasteless nor wrong.
The intrusion of the state into the legitimate expression of dissenting views is becoming commonplace. The hatred directed at Piers’ brother explains something of the glee that swept both social and mainstream media at Piers’ arrest, as does another chance to contrive Corbyn and anti-semitism into the same sentence. However the incident betrays the very real shift in society towards intolerance of non-mainstream views. It is only the vigilance of citizens which will ever limit the power of the state, and it is therefore no surprise that in the age of cancel culture the state stamps down on dissenting opinion.
I leave aside the question of Piers Corbyn’s connection to the leaflet and cartoon or not as irrelevant to my argument here, though of course it is relevant to his legal position; there is no reason for the leaflet to be illegal anyway.
I do not think that anybody will ever put the argument for free speech better than the great John Stuart Mill:
First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.
Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions, that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.
Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.
[Despite a lifetime of studying Mill, it was only in researching Sikunder Burnes that I discovered that when John Stuart’s father James left Montrose for London he anglicised the family name from Milne to Mill. John Stuart and Burnes became friends in the East India Company, as had been their fathers in Montrose.]
As to this particular opinion of Piers Corbyn, I have no qualification that makes my view any more authoritative than yours. But it seems to me probable that the massive advances in knowledge of how vaccines work within the body at the level both of incredibly small structures and of atoms, better enable theoretical constructs to underpin the discoveries of the vaccine testing process, and thus vaccine safety can indeed be established sooner than in earlier years, when the testing of empirical effects of a vaccine proved efficacy and safety or otherwise, without knowledge of precise mechanisms being entirely essential to the process. I shall myself take the vaccine when offered and urge everybody else to do so, despite myself tending to the view that the risk of death from covid-19, other than to clearly defined vulnerable groups, is extremely small. The risk to those vulnerable groups is acute, so for their sake I hope everybody vaccinates.
I might expand into my general view of vaccines. Being of an age where I can recall people only slightly older than myself living lives in forms twisted by polio, I have always regarded “anti-vaxxers” as deeply misguided. Any vaccine of course carries an inherent risk, as does any instance of putting anything at all in the human body. But for all established vaccines, those risks are very small. In fact, I view those who do not take vaccinations as extremely selfish, because while refusing the vaccination because of a very small risk to themselves, they still benefit from the herd immunity created by everybody else who has taken that tiny risk. I therefore view anti-vaccination as an immoral position; with the caveat that not everything that in my view, or even the state’s view, is immoral should be illegal. We come back again to the right to be different, to the fact that neither the state nor I are infallible judges of personal morality, and that the arm of the state is already too far extended.
—————————————————–
Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
Choose subscription amount from dropdown box:
Paypal address for one-off donations: [email protected]
Alternatively by bank transfer or standing order:
Account name
MURRAY CJ
Account number 3 2 1 5 0 9 6 2
Sort code 6 0 – 4 0 – 0 5
IBAN GB98NWBK60400532150962
BIC NWBKGB2L
Bank address Natwest, PO Box 414, 38 Strand, London, WC2H 5JB
Bitcoin: bc1q3sdm60rshynxtvfnkhhqjn83vk3e3nyw78cjx9
Ethereum/ERC-20: 0x764a6054783e86C321Cb8208442477d24834861a
Subscriptions are still preferred to donations as I can’t run the blog without some certainty of future income, but I understand why some people prefer not to commit to that.
Craig, I’m a great admirer of your skeptical approach to Government PR and your bravery on political matters. You do not assume that the government is telling the truth when it makes comments about Assange or Salmond or Russia or Douma or Skripals. Your adversarial challenging of the assumptions has revealed truth.
I am a little perplexed that you have no such skepticism about Government PR on COVID. You accept as a matter of faith the idea that vaccination is in the public interest because it gives herd immunity, despite latest evidence that COVID vaccination does not stop spread of the disease, but merely reduces the severity of the symptoms. IE vaccination may protect vulnerable people from symptoms, but does not stop them carrying and transmitting viruses. You use the pejorative term “anti-vaxxer” to refer to people who question the narrative. The term implies a dogmatic blindness, refusal to partake in dialogue. A bit like “commie” or “lefty”.
This is a complex, scientific matter, and people who don’t have a scientific background tend to say “trust the experts” – even when they don’t trust the experts on political matters. One person who seems sincere and has put a lot of effort into studying this is Robert F Kennedy. He has summed up the problem of vaccination as being one where science has not yet proved the benefits of vaccination. He says we need a long term, whole-life study of outcomes for those who vaccinated vs those who didn’t.
This is the simple underlying question: does vaccination provide an overall health benefit over the long term? Seems it would be simple to answer this question, as we have been giving mass vaccinations for over 100 years, and we have all the records of who took vaccinations and who didn’t, and how long they lived. I made a freedom of information request to the NHS and the Department of Health, to the effect of “Has Government made a whole-life health outcome study, comparing outcomes for people who were vaccinated, vs with those who were not vaccinated?” Simply compare groups who are vaccinated, and those who aren’t, and tell us what the long-term health outcomes are. The reply I got was that these studies have not been done. Activists in the USA ask the same questions, and again the studies have not been done.
We’ve been doing MMR vaccinations for 40 years; it should be easy to extract data from NHS records. Look at two groups: hose who chose to vaccinate, vs those who didn’t. Which group lives longest? Who has more allergies asthma, autism, cancer? These are all diseases of the modern age. Maybe it’s not due to vaccination. But we should do the studies.
Why is government not studying long-term outcomes of vaccination? I had an acquaintance in the NHS, his job was PR, basically to manage public opinion about the NHS and it’s health campaigns, including to spin news about failures of vaccination. My pal said there is no point in doing the lifetime outcomes studies because the data will obviously show “anti-vaxxers” will live longer, have less asthma and less autism. Because anti-vaxxers are nice middle class people who don’t eat meat, don’t smoke, don’t drink, live stress-free and do yoga every day. So there’s no point, he says, in doing the study. There are too many variables, he said. He said the general public needs simple information. To much information about health risks associated with vaccination would confuse them.
I guess my NHS pal has a point – people who don’t vaccinate tend to be generally health conscious, so we might expect them to live longer. It is hard to separate out the vaccination effect from the not smoking, the yoga, organic food etc. But 50 years ago, the government said there was no evidence that smoking was bad for us, or that lead in car fuel was bad for us, and that whole life time studies were misleading because we could not disentangle the variables. We did the life-time outcome studies for smoking, and for lead in car fuel. We discovered that pharmaceutical companies and government can be blind to evidence that their position is wrong.
Im not an anti-vaxxer. But I am a skeptic!
R: “We’ve been doing MMR vaccinations for 40 years; it should be easy to extract data from NHS records. ”
Just taking one part of your manifesto above, because it’s unduly lengthy, and a reply to most of that requires a much longer explanation than the original points. That’s always the way with conspiracy theories.
Believe it or not, medical organisations have actually thought of that. Amazing eh? They did indeed consider a possible link between MMR and ill effects. I know, absolutely astonishing – hard to believe. Type “MMR autism” into a search engine, and you’ll find many links to peer reviewed analysis on the subject.
R: “Maybe it’s not due to vaccination. But we should do the studies. “
What an idea. As mentioned, try the search suggested above into a search engine, see if anyone has already thought of it.
Glenn : “Just taking one part of your manifesto above, because it’s unduly lengthy”
Translation : “Just taking one part out of context because I want to twist your meaning”
Glenn : “and a reply to most of that requires a much longer explanation than the original points.”
Translation : “I only do short sentences.”
Glenn : “That’s always the way with conspiracy theories.”
Translation : “I called your eloquent reasoning a bad name.”
Glenn : “All the rest what I wrote.”
Translation : “Empty sarcasm, I don’t really have a point, but I am compelled to attack you because you think for yourself”
Ok, tiresome one. Give us the strongest point out of the above and we’ll discuss that. Most of what Raphael said was “We don’t know anything, they should do studies” – apparently being as ignorant as yourself of the fact that these things are studied pretty damned hard. The fact you don’t know anything about a subject before expounding on it is proof of nothing but your laziness.
glenn_uk says: “You’re blowing a lot of smoke, Ankle Sum, but the fact of the matter is that your boy Fetzer is a holocaust denier – he admits it himself.”
Well, unless Fetzer has a split personality that is a lie because as I’ve already told you, he at no point admits anything of the sort. I put it to you that you are typically taking something out of context and twisting the truth.
The link was given above, Irritant. Here’s the context:
Halfway through our long lunch at Tex Tubb’s Taco Palace in Madison two days after the trial, Fetzer starts talking about the Jews. He says he is surprised Pozner’s lawyers didn’t call him a Holocaust denier. After all, he wrote the foreword to a 2014 book that argues that Jews were not killed in gas chambers. “I am a Holocaust denier, but not in the broader sense,” he tells me. “Millions of Germans and Europeans were slaughtered in World War II.”
Glenn – Yes, do I know of studies of links between MMR vaccine and Autism (see below). What I would like to see (and Kennedy has called for), that hasn’t been done yet, is “Life course epidemiology” – where two groups’ whole life health outcomes are studied. One group would be those who have been vaccinated, and the other group – not vaccinated. This “Life course epidemiology” study has, so far as I know, not been done for vaccination, and its absence is striking. Please let me know if you know of one.
** In 2014, a mainstream (CDC) study showed a MMR/autism link in young black boys, in USA. Other studies suggested there is no link. It’s hard to make conclusive studies of these links in part because adverse reactions are rare, and other lifestyle factors can affect results, so we are left arguing statistics. This situation applied to smoking, and allowed the smoking lobby to claim for decades that there is no proof smoking has negative affects on health.
I wish I could remember more of Ben Goldacre’s book “Bad Science”, to comment confidently on a lot of the other points, though if you’ve not read it I found it a pretty interesting insight into how medical studies are conducted and a lot of the logical trappings in interpreting data and relaying findings to the public. Your friend’s point about too many variables in basing the value of vaccines on something as broad as life span was touched on in the book, with a similar explanation. I think they’d at least have to narrow the scope to something more specific – though it’s odd if the suggestion of a study been so casually dismissed.
Perhaps since disease-related infant mortality has dropped off a cliff and smallpox had been practically eradicated since the advent of the vaccine in advanced nations (and is incidentally coming back with all of the others since the vaccine-skeptic movement), it’s taken as self-evident. I suppose hygiene, nutrition and living standards have improved alongside, so it could be the case that vaccines are given the credit for advancements elsewhere. I’m open to it.
One point I do have some confidence in though, on the below:
“You accept as a matter of faith the idea that vaccination is in the public interest because it gives herd immunity, despite latest evidence that COVID vaccination does not stop spread of the disease, but merely reduces the severity of the symptoms. IE vaccination may protect vulnerable people from symptoms, but does not stop them carrying and transmitting viruses.”
I think it’s been said that if the vaccine reduces the severity of symptoms to the point that people can safely recover at home and return to full health within a week or two, that itself is a success. A large part of the problem with covid is that it’s putting more people in ICUs than hospitals have the equipment and staff to cope with – which is in turn putting the brakes on other essential treatments – which itself costs lives. If / when those services aren’t under strain any more, we can go back to normal.
We’re probably not going to eradicate it completely through ironclad immunity that prevents infection at all, but if vaccines can take the teeth out of it, catching it will be no more an issue than having a common cold.
Before people pile on with “for most people, that’s already what it is”, I’m only going by the anecdotal evidence and official stats I’ve been shown too. I’ve not had covid nor taken a stroll through my local ICU. This is the theory of why the vaccine is still worth it if what’s said about strain on hospitals is true.
So what’s this all about?
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid
“Status of COVID-19
As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) in the UK.”
Oh FFS seriously! Kathleen, what in hell has that got to do with anything? Read the page.
“Cases of COVID-19 are no longer managed by HCID treatment centres only.”
There are a limited number of HCID units in the country. If they hadn’t done that every covid patient would have been required to be transferred to such units. The HCID units would not have had capacity for such numbers of patients. Also it has a low mortality rate, by that I mean it is in the 1% range and not the 50% range. That doesn’t mean it is not impactful but also it does mean that as things currently stand it is not at the extinction level event range. It isn’t the zombie apocalypse though I am seriously beginning to doubt that!
The purpose of a SpecialIsolation Unit (Airborne)is the safe and effective treatment of High Consequence Infectious Diseases that are known or suspected to be transmissible from person to person via the airborne route (airborne HCIDs).High consequence infectious diseases are characterised by:
a)acute infectious illness;
b)an ability for illness to spread in the community and within healthcare settings including staff if not properly protected;
c)high case-fatality rate;
d)difficulty in rapid recognition and detection;
e)effective treatments often lacking; and
f)coordination is required at a national level to ensure an effective and consistent response
Is it really too much to expect that people do their own due diligence in exploring what they post before they post it. C’mon, put your practical head on.
The Guardian carries a piece written by an ICU doc. It’s a disturbing read.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/feb/06/ive-been-called-satan-dr-rachel-clarke-on-facing-abuse-in-the-covid-crisis
“During the first wave, I knew the public had our backs. This time round, being an NHS doctor makes you a target. For the crime of asserting on social media that Covid is real and deadly, I earn daily abuse from a vitriolic minority. I’ve been called Hitler, Shipman, Satan and Mengele for insisting on Twitter that our hospitals aren’t empty. Last night a charming “Covid sceptic” sent me this: “You are paid to lie and a disgrace to your profession. You have clearly sold your soul and are nothing more than a child abuser destroying futures. I do not consent to your satanic ways.” A friend, herself an intensive care doctor, has just been told by another male “sceptic” that he intends to sexually abuse her until she requires one of her own ventilators. And this morning, another colleague, also female, was told: “You evil criminal lying piece of government shit. You need to be executed immediately for treason and genocide.””
“Worse even than the hatred they whip up against NHS staff, the deniers have started turning up in crowds to chant “Covid is a hoax” outside hospitals full of patients who are sick and dying. Imagine being forced to push your way through that, 13 hours after you began your ICU shift. “
“Some individuals have broken into Covid wards and attempted physically to remove critically ill patients, despite doctors warning that doing so will kill them. “
“I well understand why they want to gag us. Our testimony makes Covid denial a tall order. We bear witness not to statistics but to human beings. Our language is flesh and blood. This patient, and then this patient, and then another”
For those who make the effort to read it through, the article speaks for itself. Thank you, Dr. Rachel Clarke.
Truly worrying stuff, ET, and it makes me very angry to hear the abuse denialists perpetrate on decent people for sport.
Wasn’t it Voltaire who said something along the lines that those who can make one believe absurdities, can make them commit atrocities? In which case, we have a lot to worry about. Denialists have unarguably made the first leap.
The problem with these denialists, is there is NOTHING that can convince them, perhaps short of personal scrapes with death or the loss of a few loved ones. We see this repeatedly with denialism in gun massacres, we saw it in the HIV/AIDS horror. We are seeing it with climate change denialism.
It’s a hoax. Nothing happened. It never happened, even while it was happening – as Covid deaths are happening right now. If denialists meet the families of victims, then they are “crisis actors”. Any official pronouncement is obviously part of the hoax. Any actual dead people have been killed off by anything else. The same playbook.
It’s like arguing with a Moonie or some other religious devotee. Logic and reason doesn’t come into it, evidence is unpersuasive, they’re just on – unabashed – to the next form of denial, eventually sneaking around to their original denials and pretending it’s all new again, hoping nobody will notice.
Denialists have a _massive_ death toll for which to explain themselves. Our UK death totals are outrageous, and every single denialist here is responsible in part for it. They will have to live with their eager participation in increasing mass death and suffering, I hope they can cope with that fact when reality catches up with them – assuming they are ever capable of admitting the truth.
There is also a problem that through the course of epidemic, it was not all too clear what measures are helpful and what were not. Initial high fatality rate of infection was caused by sketchy medical knowledge of a new disease, similar to past viral pneumonias but with important differences.
Once the virus was broadly disseminated, different governments were taking different measures, some bizarre. In Poland, for a while the authorities forbid walking in forests — except for hunting, and fishing — even though people who fish on riverbanks etc. habitually practice “social distancing”, simply to improve their chances to catch a fish. The latter was left to the discretion of individual policemen… Different types of lockdown were tried with different efficacy, after more than six months people were very tired of them and this is when the most infections happen.
Montenegro suffered more than double fatality rate of Serbia. Do people who engineered the “independence” bear responsibility for those deaths? At best, it would be hyperbolic. Everybody was bewildered by the pandemic, so one should be less assured in casting heavy accusations.
Of course, nothing excuses boorish and aggressive behaviour.
Yes I read that. Depressing how deluded some people can become and the hostility is very disturbing.
[ Mod: This lengthy OP isn’t appropriate here, as it is an article in its own right rather than a comment. You’re welcome to post it as a new topic in the discussion forum. ]
—
MODS: I wish to make a long and discursive contextual argument in response to the above and beg the indulgence of Mr Murray and his moderation team. (Is this your Kraken, Zoot?)
—
[ Mod: Snipped the 2,937 word essay – to be posted elsewhere. ]
I see it now, but honestly, it wasn’t there before. Sorry about the hassle.
If it’s true. The British media has fabricated reports from foreign hospitals to justify American foreign policy in the past, so who is to say they’re not now doing the same from British hospitals? Just because there is a name attached to the quote doesn’t mean it’s genuine.
FFS, don’t be such a clown.
There are plenty of doctors’ Twitter and Facebook pages you can go and look at, and there are videos of the covid deniers holding demos outside hospitals; I’ve seen a vid of one outside St Thomas’ London, which I recognised because I was there last October.
Hmm, “ there are plenty of doctors..” Strange I use Hospitals on a frequent basis but have yet to see these demonstrations. Perhaps, it is just confined to the fervent scribblings of more zealots, Now, if you have the video it would be interesting to view, however, the only online videos I have seen were taken by NHS workers showing empty nightingale wards !!
The demonstrations aren’t widespread, because most people have more sense.
Here’s a report from the Canary (a more trusted source here than the usual MSM sewer outlets), which features the original tweet with the embedded video and plenty of useful advice:
https://www.thecanary.co/opinion/2021/01/06/a-message-to-anti-lockdown-protesters-and-covid-deniers/
Dawg, I watched the clip from the Canary, which has supported the establishment narrative about the “ pandemic “ from the off. No matter how hard I looked and listened to the clip, which is only a very short clip so like the MSM taking words or sentences out of context, I struggled to find anyone being abusive to NHS staff. Perhaps, if the Canary had more balance about the “ pandemic “, the clip might have more credibility!!
You say the Canary has “supported the establishment narrative about the ‘ pandemic ‘ from the off”. I say you should examine other output from the Canary and take some time to decide whether they are independent journalists or establishment puppets.
Off you go with that “establishment narrative” drivel. What goes so badly awry in your mind to think that way? Is multiple sclerosis an “establishment narrative”? “Isolate the evidence”! Is the periodic table an establishment narrative? We’re brainwashed to believe it at school (and the ‘smart’ people who don’t follow it get purposely flunked in their exams). If there’s any kind of twisted narrative, it’s in your own head. Sheesh!
Here’s more footage of the same protest:
https://www.foxnews.com/world/uk-doctor-crowd-chanting-covid-hoax-hospital
The hospital is on the east side of Westminster Bridge, just across the Thames from Parliament. Notice the guy with the sign on his back which reads “Flu World Order”
Dawg, well, are they following the establishment narrative or not about the “ pandemic “ because so far there seems very little to differentiate them from the MSM story. “ Off you go with MSM..”.
How quickly events go down the memory hole. Remember, the 45 minutes to doooom, the WMD baloney ! Unfortunately, I don’t understand gibberish perhaps if you used a Google language translator. Hmm, on seconds thoughts naw. “ Here is some some footage from the same footage “ “ Fox News…”. Isn’t that one of the billionaires “ news”/ propaganda outlets. “ Notice the guy across on his back with ‘…’ Oh dear, we are grasping at straws !!!
I haven’t forgotten Iraq and WMDs
https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/war/traffic-slows-down-to-stare-at-alastair-campbell-201001132374
Neither has MediaLens,
https://www.medialens.org/2020/a-perpetual-motion-machine-of-killing-alleged-cover-up-of-civilians-murdered-by-uk-special-forces-in-iraq-and-afghanistan/
https://www.medialens.org/2020/conspiracy-theories-malign-and-benign-face-masks-and-israeli-training-of-us-police/
Nor Jonathan Cook:
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2021-01-22/lessons-iraq-libya-syria-cheer-war/
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-10-01/doubt-path-despair-cynicism/
Nor Noam Chomsky, Craig Murray, Dawg or myself. You might be surprised at The Canary:
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2018/09/28/investigation-slams-guardian-cooperation-with-novice-reporter-linked-to-us-regime-change-machine-2/
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2018/10/11/how-many-privileged-columnists-does-it-take-to-silence-one-black-woman-2/
Exactly, remember the tenuous justification for the first Gulf war. The woman telling the US senate about the evil Sadam’s troops, which didn’t stop the US, UK and Germany supplying him with weapons plus biological/ nerve weapons, throwing babies out of incubators in Kuwait. The truth willed out and lo and behold she was the Kuwaiti’s ambassador daughter to the US.
Can you not distinguish between what led to the Iraq war with actual ministers resigning, millions marching and so on, and the current situation? These are completely false analogies that stand to no scrutiny whatsoever. Anyway the arguments you make are politically closer to those of politicians like Trump and Bolsonaro rather than any progressive anti-war commenter.
If you read Peter Oborne’ s excellent book, Not The Chilcot Report, he lays out with great clarity the manufactured reasons for the U.K. going to war. He states on p179
“ The trust in the State was shattered by the Iraq War, and it’s gruesome aftermath. We have learnt that civil servants. spies and politicians could not be trusted to act with integrity and decency and in the national interest. “
The only point to add was the duplicitous and despicable role the MSM and the BBC played in this horrific event. Alas, how quickly these events are flushed down the memory hole. Suggest you buy Oborne’s book and enlighten yourself!
Craig and his team will not allow me to reply to this post. I wanted to make the case, from my perspective that much of what we see and hear may not be what it seems and why a modicum of critical distance should be maintained with any media story. An appeal to simply keep an open mind amidst the general hysteria. You can find it here: https://textuploader.com/18cmd
—
[ Mod: You were advised to post it as a new topic in the discussion forum as it’s too long and digressive for the comments section under a blog article. ]
Where did this advice occur?
—
[ Mod: It appeared in a moderation notice at the top of your lengthy comment – 2,937 words – posted at 2:15pm. ]
How could I see any response to my lengthy comment when it was never posted? This is perhaps a technical issue to address for the future.
—
[ Mod: When a comment is suspended, it remains visible to the same IP address. You are still using the same IP address as you were when you posted that comment, so it should still be visible to you.
That system seems to work well enough for everyone else. Do you have any idea why you might be an exception? ]
Nope. Nothing here. Didn’t see the post again after I refreshed.
The Guardian is a “News” paper with an abysmal track record for impartiality. E.g. in 2015 it had a full 2-page spread from the new head of MI5, without any in depth questioning, propagandising the latest boogie man to justify outlandish spending on the “ latest “ security threats, the latest justification for increased military spending and ever increasing draconian laws not out of place in a totalitarian regime. Indeed, Jonathan Freedland and other “ journalists “ displayed articles against Corbyn which even Goebbels would have been proud of. Not forgetting, the slavish devotion the Guardian had to believing the “ WMD ” from the annals of MI6, MI5 and the plagiarised work of a degree thesis with the 45 minutes to doooom fables.
The result was a justification for the invasion of Iraq resulting in millions of deaths to this day. The Guardian became synonymous with Blair’s New Labour and was considered it’s house Journal.
Reading the Guardian and trusting what is written in it would have been akin to believing what was written in Pravda during Soviet Times !! Nothing has changed!!
Well find Dr.Rachel Clarke’s Twitter stream and see if that confirms her article. You’ll probably find plenty of other medical professionals replying or retweeting on her account too.
She’s a doctor, not a spook!
Are some Doctors above having agendas. Bevan didn’t seem to think so!!
Past Medical History – ANEURIN BEVAN AND THE BIRTH OF THE NHS
He eventually won the support of the medical profession by allowing the consultants to both work inside the NHS and treat their lucrative private patients at the same time. He famously described this as having bought the support of the consultants by “stuffing their mouths with gold.”
Some doctors. You’re accusing her with no evidence; go find her Twitter stream. There are loads of medical workers saying similar things, and far from being supportive of the government policy they’re highly critical of it. They say their colleagues have been dying of covid. Or is that just a ruse, part of a grand conspiracy?
“ There are loads of doctors..” Really, are those the ones who have the courage to tell the truth, despite the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads if they tell the truth about the “ pandemic “ or do you mean those whose careers are dependent on toeing the line !!!
See my reply above:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/02/piers-corbyn-and-free-speech/comment-page-4/#comment-976050
You started by criticising the Guardian; fair enough – see the two Canary links in my comment above. But you then went on to suspect a doctor. Now you’re suspecting the vast majority of doctors. Here’s a link to the John Snow Memorandum, with the verified signatures of nearly 7000 scientists, researchers & healthcare professionals:
https://www.johnsnowmemo.com/
And this is why I call this stuff conspiracy theory, because the conspiracy has to expand without limit. We’re not talking about a viable conspiracy of few spooks and government ministers, with the compliance of some pro-war corporate media journalists from the Integrity Initiative. The nature of the pandemic is the scientific consensus, and that’s a very different thing.
Oh dear, you are extrapolating things which I have not said. I pointed out as Bevin did that some doctors are not pillars of virtue. Moreover, if you have followed the Guardian and the overwhelming majority of the MSM had written about for example, their total support for the Iraq war plus the BBC, you would quickly realise they are no paragons of virtue. Unless of course, you want to rewrite history. It’s always interesting when someone has to use ad hominem to support their arguments to misquote Thatcher, if all they can offer is ad hominem, they have no arguments
“Being of an age where I can recall people only slightly older than myself living lives in forms twisted by polio, I have always regarded ‘anti-vaxxers’ as deeply misguided.“
They were usually people who were unlucky enough NOT to catch the polio virus when they were babies, when it is practically harmless, and who then caught it later in life, or else they caught it from the vaccine (as one of my relatives did). For a while in a country like Britain, polio was one of extremely few illnesses that hit the rich more than the poor, because the poor who live in much more crowded conditions than the rich mostly got it in early childhood and became naturally immune.
This article really is clueless crap. What is this shitty term “anti-vaxxer” anyway? Just because a person is against certain vaccines doesn’t mean they are against all vaccines. Didn’t John Stuart Mill cover the logic that is required to realise that?
There is as little logic in the “Hail the Vaccines” position as there is in the position that asserts that exploiters and exploited must hold hands together for the Nation against the outsiders, because then they can decide things together without the outsiders being present.
And bye bye again. Nobody should give credence to what this blog says about the SARS vaccines.
Oh look, it’s N_ who as usual is only partially correct.
He’s madddddd though!
Wikipedia on polio:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliomyelitis
I too am of an age where I remember someone living near to me was wheel-chair bound due to poliomyelitis. I didn’t really know this woman but I knew why she was wheel chair bound. I note the references in that wiki article that currently vaccine-caused polio cases outnumber those found in the wild. What is the perspective on this?
“Following the widespread use of poliovirus vaccine in the mid-1950s, new cases of poliomyelitis declined dramatically in many industrialized countries. A global effort to eradicate polio began in 1988, led by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and The Rotary Foundation. These efforts have reduced the number of cases diagnosed each year by 99.9 percent; from an estimated 350,000 cases in 1988 to a low of 483 cases in 2001, after which it remained at a level of about 1,000–2000 cases per year for a number of years.”
“In 2015, cases decreased to 98 and further decreased in 2016 to 37 wild cases and 5 circulating vaccine-derived cases, but increased in 2019 to 175 wild cases and 365 circulating vaccine-derived cases.”
“A concern is the presence of circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses. The oral polio vaccine is not perfect: while the genetic characteristics are carefully balanced to maximize efficacy and minimize virulence, it is possible for the polio virus in the oral vaccine to mutate. As a result, persons given the oral polio vaccine can acquire acute or chronic infections; or can transmit (circulate) mutated virus to other people. Circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus cases have exceeded wild-type cases, making it desirable to discontinue use of the oral polio vaccine as soon as safely possible”
350,000 cases reduced to 365 cases. I’d call that a result.
will the kraken be seen again? the smart money will be on yes.
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts
Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. “When someone says science teaches such and such, he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach it; experience teaches it. If they say to you science has shown such and such, you might ask, “How does science show it – how did the scientists find out – how, what, where?” Not science has shown, but this experiment, this effect has shown. And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments (but we must listen to all the evidence), to judge whether a reusable conclusion has been arrived at. “
Richard Feynman Physicist https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman
and experience has been teaching us for 400 years that masks work in a pandemic. why are you disputing it?
“…and experience has been teaching us for 400 years that masks work in a pandemic. why are you disputing it?”
What an amazing thing to write. Do you ever pause and read what you have written before you press the “Post” button?
For a start, I am surprised to learn that you are 400 years old – which you must be to have such experience. Also, Pasteur first published his theory that diseases are caused by germs about 150 years ago. Before that people may have worn masks and hidden to escape from the “effluvia” and “bad air” that they thought responsible for disease. But of course that theory was wrong, and the kinds of masks they could have made in those days would have stopped viruses the way Admiralty Arch stops dogs and cats.
No, do you ever pause and read what you have written before you press the “Post” button? The explanatory theory is entirely irrelevant to empirical experience. That’s precisely the point Jennifer Allan just made. People used masks because experience suggested that they work.
But of course you’re one of the Good Guys, as identified by Mushy, so your “do you ever pause and read” jibe can’t have been aggressive.
Dear comrade Clark
Finding (again) myself in disagreement with you makes me so sad. I have to say.
Peace.
Best
Empirical, from the Greek empeirikos almost literally means ‘from experience’.
Best wishes to you too, Pooh.
– “Finding (again) myself in disagreement with you makes me so sad”
Well maybe you’re not, but you haven’t said what you disagree with so I can’t even attempt to find consensus.
they have this subject called history, tom. people wrote about the subject 400 years ago. do you ever pause and read what you have written before you press the post button. on the evidence, you don’t.
Most RespectfulY, pretzelattack
I feel I must share with you that Christopher Robin often recites the following:
“There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.”
with all due respect to winnie the pooh and a.a. milne, i submit that winnie would use the limited knowledge at his disposal, and wear a mask during a pandemic.
One must not be selective in interpreting such quotes. There is scientific method and that is what counts. Science changes but it is the systematic way of testing what is known that advances our knowledge. But you have to also understand how to interpret the scientific findings and I am afraid many lay people lack the knowledge to do so and that is why we rely on ‘experts’. Of course it is healthy to challenge new findings but by all means do so by producing plausible arguments not by selectively choosing your dissident ‘experts’.
SA I feel tempted to ask.
What is your definition of a ‘dissident expert’ ?
Good question Jennifer although not only did you feel tempted you actually asked.
A ”dissident expert” my definition, is someone who has knowledge in a certain subject, and who uses this status to throw doubt on the consensus views without necessarily providing evidence for their views.
As a corollary, such experts become the ‘go-to bible’ for those who wish to question the supposed establishment narrative, whilst omitting to apply the supposedly high standard of proof required from those consensus experts, to the ‘dissident’ experts.
ah but some people can’t resist some temptations.
Indeed a great quote and a great scientist.
In effect, you need to be a constructive skeptic. And you must question your own ideas with even more effort than you question other ideas.
Feynman was of course a leading expert and teacher on quantum physics. I don’t think his quote means what you want it to mean.
Thanks for this quote, well worth having. Feynman apparently said this in a lecture to an association of teachers. It is found in the book “The Pleasure of finding things out”.
IMHO Feyman was a genius and a great teacher, and as such deserves to be listened to, as an expert. 🙂
That said, I think his view, respectable and applicable in the proper place though it is, needs qualification. Listening to all the evidence might require expertise of its own. If Feynman were speaking to potential professional physicists or physics researchers, his utterance would be a commendable call for acquiring independence in judgment. But for laypersons, exercising a judgment in fields in which we are not expert is much trickier.
In fact, as I understand, listening to experts is a part of the activity of “citizens assemblies.”
I’ve been getting that feeling about my own capacity to interpret all of these statistics and links and articles too. My expertise on the matter amounts to about twelve years of mandatory science classes, a few hundred hours of reading books and magazine articles that take my interest, and statistics experience of jiggling Excel graphs at work to look superficially impressive to my manager.
It’s not really a body of knowledge that can be used to interpret and logic-test information at the same level of someone who has spent years and thousands of hours studying their chosen field. Eventually you just have to pick a few experts who seem to be of good character and trust their opinion – unless you go to the effort of studying to become their equals, which is an option.
As important as it is to acknowledge that unquestionable truths are few and far between, it’s too easy to go down the rabbit hole of literally refusing to believe anything you haven’t tested yourself.
Philosophically, I could open my door and be met with a completely different world to that which I saw when I last closed it. The world outside is a quantum soup – just a memory in my head – until I look at it again.
Realistically though, it’ll probably be as predicable and mundane as ever, rather than a step through the TARDIS.
There has to come a point where you say “OK, this is probably as correct as it’ll ever be to me” and stop tying yourself up in academic thought-experiments.
Anonish, same advice to you as I give repeatedly – read the books Bad Science followed by Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre. These really, really help.
I’m about 80% though Bad Science and enjoying it – will probably get the other after. It’s certainly provided some good insight so far into how research is conducted and how even highly educated people can be subject to the same psychological trappings as the rest of us.
I’ve had another book on the shelf for years about mental heath being over-dependent and over-sold on medication called Cracked, which I really need to get to one day as well!
(My profile square seems to change on my tablet for some reason.)
Thanks for the recommendation of Cracked, a subject I am interested in. Goldacre mentions the “serotonin hypothesis of depression”.
The profile square is called an Identicon and it is derived from the e-mail address you submit, so probably your tablet has submitted another of your e-mail addresses, or truncated or mangled your usual one.
Matthew 7:1-3
King James Version
“Judge not, that ye be not judged.
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”
“ I view those who do not take vaccinations as extremely selfish, because while refusing the vaccination because of a very small risk to themselves, they still benefit from the herd immunity created by everybody else who has taken that tiny risk.”
Craig please do not not judge those of us who have legitimate concerns about vaccines. Most of us are not ‘anti-vaxxers’, but just citizens who expect our governments to deliver vaccines which are as safe and effective as possible. Katie Price’s son Harvey is in hospital following a severe reaction to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. Please pray for him.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9232261/Katie-Prices-son-Harvey-rushed-hospital-high-temperature-uncontrollable-shaking.html
[MOD: link sanitised to remove facebook identifier]
And Jennifer, how are we now going to reconcile science, based on real observations with a system of beliefs based on 2000 year old writings not backed by any facts?
Good comments Jennifer
The term “Anti-vaxxer” is a classic strawman – it equates legitimate questioning of the Government’s policies and the “Official Narrative” with lunatic conspiracy theorising.
It is, at best, intellectual laziness and/or cowardice and, at worst, black propaganda.
I would urge everyone to have a look at the latest COVID-19 report from the ICNARC (Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre) here:
https://www.icnarc.org/Our-Audit/Audits/Cmp/Reports
There is a good analysis of this report here:
http://www.frombehindenemylines.org.uk/2021/01/latest-icnarc-graphs-amongst-general-reattribution-of-other-illness-to-covid-19-pneumonia-from-flu-is-a-thing-of-the-past/
Is it really credible that ICU admissions for myocardial infarction, strokes, self-harm, drug abuse and pneumonia from influenza ALL dramatically fell in 2020? Have there been incredible unreported advances in treatment for these conditions? Or have they occurred as usual but, in order to support the faked pandemic narrative, were instead recorded as COVID-19?
Hear now this, O foolish people and without understanding, who have eyes and see not, who have ears and hear not
Jeremiah 5:21
– “There is a good analysis of this report here…”
No, that’s a skewed and misleading analysis. Can you not apply critical thinking, and pull it apart for yourself? I’ll give one little example:
– The first of these graphical illustrations (figure 13) show that admissions to ICUs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were only unusual in one month (April) in the spring and summer of 2020: so much for a Covid-19 pandemic.
What else would you expect? Admissions. The peak infection rate was around March 23, because it rose nearly exponentially until social restrictions arrested it, so of course the peak in hospital admissions followed shortly after, and then fell.
Your comment avoids the point of the article.
The article is concerned with admissions to Intensive Care Units (ICU) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2020.
It first shows a month-by-month graph of all admissions throughout 2020, with those attributed to covid-19 highlighted. The graph also shows similar data from the previous 4 years for comparison. There is a huge spike of covid-19 cases in April and a smaller one towards the end of the year.
Subsequent graphs show ICU admissions for specific afflictions over the same 5 year period – acute myocardial infarctions, strokes, self-harm, and trauma. All those graphs show sharp troughs which coincide with the peaks of the first graph.
The author suggests that incidences of heart disease, strokes, etc are being mis-attributed to covid-19.
Please would you address this point.
I’ve addressed it below:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/02/piers-corbyn-and-free-speech/comment-page-4/#comment-975909
There is no common factor that would increase “acute myocardial infarctions, strokes, self-harm, and trauma” without covid just in April and December. The troughs in admissions for those conditions are presumably caused by people unable to enter ICU or not attending hospital due to both being stuffed with covid sufferers.
Plus, the statistics compiled by cause of death recorded on death certificate confirm the rise in covid cases.
Since we have a free go at misinterpreting data to fit our own beliefs, chart 17 suggests to me that lockdown had great impact on self-harm admission to ICU. It is clear that in April numbers went down, then in Summer (when UK was open to business) they went up, and in November and December went down.
Self harm admission
Ankle Sum, the fact is that in April and then in November and December ICU admissions were higher than previous years.
I strongly believe in correlation between infections, hospitalisation and ICU admission (and death). If there was not correlation, the number of ICU admissions would be similar to the 5-year average, but misattributed to Covid.
When the author of your favourite text keeps using “I suggest” that is as trustworthy as me claiming Lockdown has resulted in less selfharm* (Apparently it’s defined by the medical profession differently than I assumed. Apparently it involves drug and other substances.)
Quote from the (IMO) toxic article “(because zealots in the NHS are not bright), or more likely deliberately and politically (because they are zealots).”
Friend of ours is a medical doctor and she said something like “I could not have imagined in my 50s doing 12-hour shifts”.
To properly address your link someone should read the whole 70+ pages of the ICNARC report, and have knowledge of medicine and statistics.
There is a reason why Statistics, Medicine and even Medical Statistics are at UNI levels.
The news about Katie Price’s son is important, as are any unexpected undesirable side-effects of a new treatment. My unworthy prayers for him, certainly. Even after a vaccine has undergone a series of trials, and been permitted for public use by bodies like the MHRA, surveillance continues, for things like this. If it happens too often, the vaccine may have to be withdrawn – but hopefully such events will be very rare, and that will not prove necessary.
Very pleased to say Harvey has recovered from his Covid vaccine after effects and is safely home again. I confess I ‘ducked’ SA’s snippy comment, presumably about religion after I asked for prayers for Harvey.
Quote:-“how are we now going to reconcile science, based on real observations with a system of beliefs based on 2000 year old writings not backed by any facts?”
Impossible to prove, but my own experience is prayers DO work as long as they are for others, not yourself. If they helped Harvey I am delighted. Well done folks. I believe in love and truth and yes an element of faith is necessary.
It seems vaccines have become the new religion and cannot be questioned.
So the way prayers would work is as follows: there is someone who prays with a specific wish. Hopefully this would be to wish something good, but I stand corrected. Then out of the Babel of billions or millions, the prayers find their way to the appropriate god (is there only one god or a whole hierarchy?). This omniscient god receives a reminder (the prayer) that he should pay more attention to a suffering being, because he has been reminded by one of his flock, about the somewhat less urgent plight of someone with a possibly self limiting vaccine reaction. But this god may have actually have also received a request to deal with the children dying in Yemen, admittedly long overdue and rather more complicated, and rushes to answer this much simpler one, thereby scoring a quickly earned point and then back to the much more complicated situation in Yemen.
Saying you agree with the ‘vaccines’, but then enabling a discussion about them, so people can put the record straight, is very helpful, and the diplomatic way to do it, bearing in mind its a bit mean to ask Craig to die in every ditch. The fact merely questioning the ‘vaccines’, like any other medication, is heresy, is evidence of foul play.
I mean why would you want to vaccinate everyone in Britain and then the entire world against a mostly mild respiratory virus that can be treated with therapeutics and other standard measures when the population has already achieved herd immunity, hence the need for fabled new variants to prolong the fear based new business model..
I couldn’t agree more, Dave. Perhaps I don’t praise Mr Murray often enough, as I have come to take it for granted that he is one of the good people.
As you say, he allows us to argue such matters out between ourselves; and he is of course entitled to his own opinions. In this matter I strongly disagree with him, but nobody can be right about everything. (Not even I).
Tom Walsh
“I couldn’t agree more, Dave.”
What is it exactly that you agree with Dave on? Herd immunity having been established, or his airy fairy ‘therapeutics’? What we are having here is not an intellectual discussion about facts and their verifications but a group of disruptive flat earthers repeating mythical disinformation.
You have replied to many of my comments on this thread, SA. I find it depressing and perhaps symptomatic that you still cannot spell my name correctly.
It doesn’t make me optimistic about your ability to grasp any more complicated facts.
Ah so sorry. That of course invalidates all my comments which you have chosen to ignore. I am covered in shame, how can I face the rest of mankind?
But seriously Welsh, I am indeed much more capable of grasping more complicated facts like how the PCR works and why it is such a marvellous test with a high degree of specificity and a high positive predictive values, unlike a lot of ignoramuses on the net.
Oh, poor Craig, he isn’t of the good people because he doesn’t agree with your unsupported assertions and ideology. So he must be patronised from your position of great expertise and never wrong pedestal. lol
Dave
“I mean why would you want to vaccinate everyone in Britain and then the entire world against a mostly mild respiratory virus that can be treated with therapeutics and other standard measures when the population has already achieved herd immunity, hence the need for fabled new variants to prolong the fear based new business model.”
The problem here is your refusal to acknowledge the facts that are established beyond doubt that that this is not a ‘mild respiratory virus’.. When we start with such a low level of knowledge and a denial of facts, it is difficult to have a useful debate. If you believe that this is a mild virus then good for you but it will not alter the facts that already 100000 people have died of this virus in the UK alone and that there are currently 30,000 people hospitalized in the UK because of the virus.
You also continue to propagate myths that have now foundation about therapeutics and herd immunity, which has no basis in reality and has been discussed over and over again in other forums.
Well, SA – you talk about Dave’s refusal to acknowledge the facts that are established beyond doubt.
Surely, that is the problem here: Just what are the facts and have they really been established beyond doubt?
Because we live in such a corrupt society with a corrupt media I think it is virtually impossible to establish true facts anymore.
I would agree of course that Covid – or whatever we call this inadequately identified virus is often devastating and lethal but so is flu – and why suddenly this winter are flu figures so relatively low? A presence of “Covid” in people who have died doesn’t necessarily mean that is what they died from. I don’t think anyone “fiddles” the figures on “Covid” mortality but it seems to me often impossible to accurately identify “Covid” as being the cause of death.
As I’ve said previously, we need to remember that the NHS has been consistently run down with regard to human and material resources and there are far less hospital beds available than in the past.
Irritant, in these days of social media there is no longer any excuse for your ignorance. Doctors, nurses and other health practitioners have Twitter and Facebook accounts; they compare and exchange experience online, in public. There is no mystery about COVID-19 – dense white shadows on both lungs, low oxygen saturation, high clotting agent D-dimer, turning the patient onto their front may help recovery. Oh, and many health practitioners catch it; they end up treating their colleagues.
“the facts that already 100000 people have died of this virus in the UK alone”
the only “fact” that can be derived from your statement is that 100,000 people died.
There are not 100,000 autopsies available demonstrating the process by which “COVID-19” killed these people, and there never will be.
Even the media is very careful to use the phrase “died WITH COVID-19” rather than “died FROM COVID-19”.
A fact that is impossible to prove is not a fact.
The COVID-19 infection prevalence among the population predicts hospital admissions and the death rate. High death rate lags infection prevalence by about two weeks, which is the time COVID-19 takes to kill.
Click the “7 day moving average” boxes on the second and fifth graphs to see this clearly:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210206193636/https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
That is proof of causation beyond reasonable doubt; you seem to have been bamboozled by the “of or with” soundbite.
“That is proof of causation beyond reasonable doubt”
I am sorry Clark but I don’t think that is a very scientific attitude,
I am sure there are other hypotheses which can explain those two charts you have to be more rigorous to make sure you have got the right one, how about this:
Observation: Charts 2 and 5 appear to have the same shape except that the inflections of chart 5 are translated forward by approximately 2 weeks.
Hypothesis: These charts show cases and deaths due to COVID19 therefore if cases rise deaths will rise 2 weeks later.
Test: Does it fit the historical data? Does it fit other data sets? Is it predictive?
Well I think it does not fit the UK data around the end of March start of April, the deaths take off much quicker than the cases, this is most clear in the cumulative graphs. the German data matches better including in that early April window. So perhaps it is just a peculiarity of the UK data, but in my opinion the Canadian data does not follow the expected (according to your hypothesis) trend.
Maybe there is something more going on so what is next? you can’t just pronounce and then close the book, doubts and imperfections are the very thing which improve understanding and you do not understand that data fully.
On top of that these data are a complete mess anyway collection methodology, definitions of cases and deaths. About the off/with criteria? Whether the recorded positive PCR tests have detected a live infections with a significant viral load at say 18 cycles or viral fragments from an old infection or an infection which has not developed a significant number of virions yet (and may never do so) both showing up at around 35 cycles – how do you tell them apart because it surely matters if you are trying to use the data to develop a theory.
Personally I have embarrassed myself more than enough times by saying too much based on too little, to spot the dangers in that little lot.
– “Well I think it does not fit the UK data around the end of March start of April, the deaths take off much quicker than the cases, this is most clear in the cumulative graphs. the German data matches better including in that early April window”
If you remember, the UK had a serious shortage of test kits in spring 2020, so bad that testing of people with symptoms was not permitted, not even in hospitals, unless they had travelled or come into contact with travellers. Community transmission went undocumented as a result.
Germany meanwhile was being praised for having a good testing programme that helped control spread much better.
– “how do you tell them apart because it surely matters if you are trying to use the data to develop a theory.”
I’m not developing a theory. I’m just defending the already well established scientific consensus from a load of misleading nonsense. Please try to remember the context; a lot of commenters here equate standard public health measures with “the official story” and a global conspiracy by the World Economic Forum to crash the economy by dictating what doctors write on death certificates.
The testing may account for that. But, and I’m just arguing for the sake of it now, if testing affected the case figures why not those for deaths?
Was the attribution of deaths to SARS-CoV-2 a bit slapdash at first?
Very well said Dave
I suspect there is not going to be a useful debate as Craig had presumably wished for, the reason is one side is openly hostile to the others views and do no restrain themselves, in that arena consensus will not be given a chance to emerge and perhaps that is what the hostile side desires.
I will attempt to simply the opposing views in order to perhaps encourage a side debate of what actually are the opposing views and why each side hold them so strongly.
Group A: Vaccine benefits are long known, there are risks but the benefits outweigh the harm and individuals should have the jab(s) to protect society at large.
Group B: The Covid vaccines are not tested thoroughly, their efficacy and safety are not known, individuals should be concerned and consider if it is right for them to take on an unknown risk.
Then that takes us to the contentious bit: Should each side try to press their view on people who have not made up their mind?
Group A say its OK for them because they know the “facts” but Group B don’t and that will lead to unnecessary deaths if people are convinced by Group B’s arguments.
Group B say no we don’t know the facts but neither does anyone else, we are concerned and we have the right to defend our position and refute ugly allegations thrown at us on this website.
Alas if I am close to to a true characterisation then this is a poisoned debate. When one side knows the facts which the other side says do not exist and are abused because of that position then the debate is toxic – it causes more harm than it does good.
– “…one side is openly hostile to the others views and do no restrain themselves, in that arena consensus will not be given a chance to emerge and perhaps that is what the hostile side desires.”
Ah, you’re hinting that there’s a vast conspiracy, and that “one side” is comprised of agents acting on its behalf. Oh but I mustn’t call this a “conspiracy theory”, because that would be “hostile”.
– “Group B say no we don’t know the facts but neither does anyone else, we are concerned and we have the right to defend our position and refute ugly allegations thrown at us on this website.”
Oh indeed, there is nothing but doubt and therefore it is our unalienable right to assert absolutely anything, even if it encourages lethal behaviours.
Not a vast conspiracy, just the tag team.
Tag team indeed. Who’s got an agenda? Here’s our Dave:
https://powerbase.info/index.php/David_Durant
– “In November 2007 Durant was elected to the Solidarity Executive for a period of five years.[5] Solidarity, a self-described “nationalist union”[6] has close links to far right organisations such as the BNP and Civil Liberty. The BNP openly endorse Solidarity; a link to the Solidarity website, one of only four on the links page, is provided on the BNP website.”
So maybe Dave tells lie after lie about COVID-19 to encourage its spread because it’s killing far more blacks and Asians than whites.
Piers Corbyn thinks your vaccines are part of a ‘Nazi’ depopulation agenda.
Not my vaccines Dave. I’m not sure they’ll do much good in the long run. Piers Corbyn is deluded, he proved that years ago, whereas you really were with the BNP, weren’t you?
It’s group C who think this is all a hoax to keep us enthralled to some elitist cult – where every reference or quote from “the establishment” is immediately discarded as deep-state lies – that’s impossible to engage with rationally.
I can completely understand the concerns about a new vaccine technology being introduced to the general public at such speed and at such scale. There’s been some answers to some of those concerns (which some still don’t accept), but there’s still a lot of admitted unknowns. I’m slightly nervy about how it’ll pan out too. I still think it’s within reasonable risk-to-reward.
The questioning of whether vaccines have *ever* been of value leans a little more towards group C, but at least there’s something to work with.
Whilst I’d rather we could all stay calm and objective when interacting with each other, it’s difficult not to get emotive when the consequences of denying that a problem exists and discouraging people from taking it seriously quite literally costs lives. I still respect people’s right to do so – but it’s depressing so see so much of it.
Of course, wearing the others’ shoes, those who sincerely believe this is all going to end with class-based genocide and labour camps are worried about mass life-loss too.
There still needs to be a line between being careful to acknowledge and respect a person’s perspective, and endorsing it. It’s a difficult line to toe.
Anonish, thank you for having the patience to say that.
If we can appreciate that most people just want the best for everyone but have different ideas of how that’s achieved, it helps to take the anger out.
I do really wish we could all stop using lazy political labels, insults and condescension though. (I do slip up sometimes too…) It just puts people on the defensive and becomes an argument between egos rather than ideas.
A couple of fairly detailed explanations that unthinking supporters of the government line will probably not have the patience to read.
“The Mainstream Bubble” by Ralf Arnold, translation by S. Robinson
https://off-guardian.org/2021/02/06/the-mainstream-bubble/
“The Journals’ Sins Are The Editors’ Sins” by Robert Yoho
https://wmbriggs.com/post/34560/
Who are the “unthinking supporters of the government” here, Tom? People who don’t buy into your conspiracy hogwash?
There are more things in heaven and earth, Tom W
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Mushy
Not really so black and white. Many are cautious about the vaccine. It is true that there is no long term follow up yet but what is known so far is that there are no serious short term complications other than the reactions that occur with most vaccines, such as pain, sore arm, flu like condition low grade fever, fatigue and so on that in most cases resolves quickly. Yes it is true that long term complications may yet be found but they are likely to be rare. But the important decisions that the licensing authorities have to make is a risk benefit analysis based on what we know about the virus. What we do know is that it is a highly infectious virus that kills between 1-3% of all those infected depending on the settings, that it has a much higher rate of mortality with increasing age and co-morbidities and that about 20% of those infected may need hospital admission and 5% may require ITU support. Because of contagion, people who get even the mild form of the disease will need to be isolated. It has proven rather difficult to control this virus in the west but there have been much better results in many Asian countries of doing so by proper lockdown. So the balance is: are all our elderly people and those with many co-morbidities OK to be left to die and the rest just get on with their business to ‘save the economy’? The licensing authorities, rightly or wrongly, think it is worth the risk and many of us are really not qualified to question this properly. All we can do is make a personal choice based on facts not hearsay. Part of the personal choice has to be consideration for others but at the end of the day it is up to your conscience.
Again the estimates that you quote are guesses and not based on real data.
We don’t know how many have had the disease, we don’t know how many it has killed.
ITU figures are good but cannot be compared with other populations because those populations are not known.
The most important and useful figure that would drive meaningful policy is how many have natural immunity and that is quick and cheap to obtain, the results are also extremely accurate
“The most important and useful figure that would drive meaningful policy is how many have natural immunity and that is quick and cheap to obtain, the results are also extremely accurate”
How is it done?
– “The fact merely questioning the ‘vaccines’, like any other medication, is heresy, is evidence of foul play”
“Merely”.
Different types of questioning have different motives. Questions are rational and scientific when the various possible answers to then are testable. Such questions can lead to the advancement of knowledge.
But questions can also be leading, rhetorical, or simply deliberate distractions:
– “Doubt is our product,” Michaels quotes a cigarette executive as saying, “since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.” Michaels argues that, for decades, cigarette manufacturers knew that their product was hazardous to people’s health, but hired mercenary scientists who “manufactured uncertainty by questioning every study, dissecting every method, and disputing every conclusion”. In doing so the tobacco industry waged a campaign that “successfully delayed regulation and victim compensation for decades”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubt_Is_Their_Product
Parading one’s extremely opinionated gross ignorance clearly has become highly fashionable.
Where has this reverence for idiocy come from? Where is it promoted and why? Could it be that the influence of the corporate media (or “MSM” to those who think of the majority of their peers as “sheeple”) is actually more insidious and pervasive than the denialists and conspiracy theorists give it credit for?
Oh glorious, proud ignoramuses, read the book Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. You will then be in possession of the intellectual tools required to construct meaningful comments about matters of fact, reality and the study thereof, and you may recognise how you have been bamboozled. Until then, please at least develop sufficient wisdom to appreciate the value of your own silence.
Your post seems to contain a compelling argument but it is lost in abusive language.
You ask where Ignorance, opinionated, idiocy, insidious, pervasive, denialist, conspiracy all come from. Seems that it’s you who’s bringing them up and tossing them like grenades. You are obviously an intelligent person, but it’s not a good look, man! Does it help your opinion by insulting those who who disagree.? Isn’t it better to persuade?
“Forgive them father, they do not know what they do.” Let’s cut each other a little slack and have some old fashioned love for our fellow humans. Life ain’t easy. Let’s work together to find the truth.
– “Let’s […] have some old fashioned love for our fellow humans.”
Yes, for instance the hundred of thousands in the UK condemned to gasping for breath by COVID-19, the incredible medical workers who treat them, and the loved ones of both these overlapping groups.
You have precisely illustrated my point with the waffle you linked to below; the Telegraph has been a prime offender in promoting opinion over fact. If you want an interesting article, try this link; the people are the economy:
– All countries should pursue a Covid-19 elimination strategy: here are 16 reasons why
https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2021/jan/28/all-countries-should-pursue-a-covid-19-elimination-strategy-here-are-16-reasons-why
“Parading one’s extremely opinionated gross ignorance clearly has become highly fashionable.”
Perhaps parading one’s extremely gross arrogance has also become highly fashionable…
Accepting facts is a form of humility. Denying reality is the ultimate in arrogance.
We should only accept facts when they are shown to be facts.
Denying reality is indeed the ultimate arrogance – but we first have to truly establish the reality.
And what would you accept as a fact?
over 460,000 dead in the u.s. from covid. that’s a fact. morgues in los angeles running out of space to take on new bodies, with the result that some corpses are still in their homes. another fact.
You and I might agree these are facts, PretzelAttack, but I don’t think the denialists here can define what they will regard as a fact very easily.
And in any case, they’re not too big on facts – they don’t like them. Assertions, yes. Ludicrous speculation, certainly. Facts – not so much.
“Oh glorious, proud ignoramuses, read the book Bad Science by Ben Goldacre”
Then read the book “Cultural Dwarves and Junk Journalism” by Martin Walker, available as a .pdf document here:
http://whale.to/b/dwarfs01.pdf
Goldacre is a hack, bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical lobby and a professional “Skeptic” (meaning he is skeptical of anyone who doesn’t swallow the Government line).
The only “fact” you will find in Goldacre’s book is the title.
Interesting article by Fraiser Nelson in the Telegraph about the need for open minded debate around Covid and the “targeting” (his words) of critical voices. Hope the link works…
https://t.co/5BOgisQmad
https://twitter.com/ClarkeMicah/status/1357658020617027584?s=20
A landmark intervention. I’d say the only people who speak with more authority on this matter are Andrew Neil, Toby Young and Julia Hartley Brewer.
Haha, how true. Quoting Fraser Nelson is the very definition of clutching at straws.
The politeness straw has also been latched onto and is being waved about with some abandon.
Ah yes, the faux affront flag is being hoisted.
Your entire purpose in visiting this site seems to be to insulting and ridiculing other comments.
Is this really a constructive use of your limited time? Or is it remunerative?
apologies, comment was meant for “Ian”
Personally, I try to play the ball not the man. My politics are a long way from Mr Nelson. But Even though I might be suspicious of his politics I still think important to hear his point of view. You could dismiss Peter Hutchins in a similar way, but he has written some insightful journalism on the OPCW, Syria and Julian Assange that adds to the debate.
All this sneering, sarcasm and calling people ignoramuses doesn’t help the debate in my opinion. Surely such name calling is behaviour more akin to the playground? This rudeness stifles debate because I’m just going to walk away and not listen to the serious and intelligent points you are making
Pity the pubs are closed. Debate is washed down with a good deal of ale and humorous banter. Even though we might disagree, we’ll still share a pint together because it’s your round and the match is on soon.
Didn’t mean to say that Mr Jay was name calling
If the Telegraph among others hadn’t put so much effort into promoting marginal experts above the scientific consensus and centuries’ old public health practices, there wouldn’t be any need to “target” that same handful of experts now.
@ SA
I appreciate we’re repeating ourselves from another thread, albeit this one highlights the attack on freedom of speech and assembly, but as there are more readers here, its worth the effort. Coronavirus is associated with common colds and not the flu, but as its a new, but not entirely new, strain, its impact on an unprepared population will be serious, particularly if by accident or design, its assisted by government actions by neglecting people in care homes, suppressing therapeutics, closing the NHS and promoting virus terrorism. But clearly it can be deadly, as it’s remarkably killed the flu this year, but the response has made things far worse overall.
Just a thought about the lockdown. If we had implemented a proper lockdown, a proper stopping of international travel and a proper support for all the population we would have been in a much better situation. Instead a year later, we have never had a proper lockdown, we have suffered terrible economic consequences, we are nowhere near controlling the pandemic and we have a proliferation of sceptics and vaccine hesitancy.
There seem to be a lot of extremists here on both sides. I don’t agree with either of them, neither the ‘Washington Consensus’ types nor the ‘raving denialists’. But it would probably be wise to calm down. It is already the case that the words ‘anti-semitic’ and ‘mysogynistic’ have become common coin for right-wing politicians, fundamentalist irates, and prostitute journalists to discredit anybody who raises moral questions about anything. Pretty soon they are going to be able to add to the list ‘sceptic’, as this word takes on increasingly malignant connotations. Why is it so hard for humans just to admit that sometimes we don’t have all the information.
I don’t have all the information!
Now you Clark, SA, Glenn, ET?
Do you have all the information to be able to justify the government’s policies for Covid measures which the government knows are killing people, creating an epidemic of mental illness and isolation, causing poverty, destroying jobs and the economy.
You must really be confident about your information for you to find the cost acceptable.
It is not Covid measures and lockdowns that are hurting people Mushy. You really need to wake up. Your post is quite unbelievable, I’m afraid.
What is hurting people is a criminal government that has destroyed the welfare economy and destroyed the healthcare system and destroyed meaningful relationships through the constant prioritising of consumerism and the financial worth of the individual.
You don’t seem to understand that the government needs a scapegoat, and that Covid (not immigrants, the poor, or Jews, this time) is serving very nicely as that scapegoat.
That is not to deny he reality of Covid, but just to state a fact tha should be blindingly apparent.
You don’t need all the information; you just need to identify the patterns.
Look at Wuhan, Hubei and China. Wuhan had a major outbreak, because the government went into denial and tried to suppress news of the local epidemic. When the government woke up they locked down – and this really was a lockdown, not merely a stay-at-home order; apartment block doors were welded closed, barriers were erected at the end of every street. Infection was detected in Hubei and beyond, so the government instituted travel restrictions, compartmentalising the country. 760 million people were under travel restrictions, over a tenth of the entire global population.
Result? Covid was all but stamped out, down to the level that test and trace could manage it; restrictions were lifted by May, and covid-19 hasn’t been an issue in China since. The whole of China has had under a tenth of the deaths of the relatively tiny UK.
Look at New Zealand. The government saw covid-19 coming and took it seriously, closed the borders, instituted social restrictions in advance and set up managed quarantine facilities. Result? 25 deaths in a population of similar size to Scotland’s, restrictions lifted in May, briefly reinstated to cope with an outbreak, then lifted again.
We needn’t be at the mercy of this virus, and we have a better option than relying on a crash course of vaccination. But only if we take it seriously, and act decisively.
https://www.endcoronavirus.org/green-zones
Yes you do need the information to inform an appropriate response.
Because the virus has been in the UK for well a year the proportion of people infected is far greater than Wuhan in the early stages,
At that point it was reasonable (in Wuhan) to assume that the infection rate was low but would ramp up without mitigating measures (mass testing confirmed the infection rate(s) at an early stage. Hard lockdown gave them breathing space,
The UK is in a very different situation regarding the infection lifecycle and needs a customised solution to be drawn up, it it is more important for us to know how many have already been infected than are infected.
The antibody test is less than half the price of the PCR, it is vastly more accurate and the results available in 15 minutes.
If you want to see a snap shot of where we actually are that is the cheapest , fastest and most efficient route. Looking at patterns at this stage is not useful, hard data is what is required,
Once the info in known then those with natural immunity are identified so are vulnerable without immunity. Targeting / Lifting restrictions then takes on a far more meaningful roll.
Effort then can be put into medium and long term research looking into the longevity of natural / artificial immunity and policies adopted accordingly.
The point is the information is easily available but the government does not want to see it.
Mushy: “The point is the information is easily available but the government does not want to see it.”
OK, at some point you’re going to have to explain why. You’re making a quite extraordinary claim here, so you need to provide some explanation for it.
I don’t have an explanation for it.
The test is available
It’s extremely accurate
It’s less than half price as the PCR
And results are known in 15 minutes
The government have used them in regional serology surveys but they have decided not to take them up nationwide.
Why that is? Your guess is as good as mine
– “The UK is in a very different situation regarding the infection lifecycle and needs a customised solution to be drawn up”
No, because the solution is the same no matter what the infection rate; use social measures to prevent the virus from spreading. Done properly, it takes only five weeks:
https://www.endcoronavirus.org/how-win
– “At that point it was reasonable (in Wuhan) to assume that the infection rate was low but would ramp up without mitigating measures”
We know that the proportion vulnerable in the UK must also be high, or infection prevalence couldn’t have risen as fast as it did mid December 2020 to early January 2021, as confirmed by the rapid increase in death rates in the first half of January 2021.
– “Once the info [is] known then those with natural immunity are identified”
We don’t know how long immunity acquired from being infected lasts; experience with other coronaviruses that cause common colds is that it fades within months, and data from Manaus is suggesting the same.
– “the information is easily available but the government does not want to see it.”
The UK seroprevalence survey results are published regularly.
M : “Why that is? Your guess is as good as mine”
I was hoping to work this out with you. What is your explanation? There could be many – it could be that one of your assumptions is not correct. It could be an incorrect conclusion from facts which themselves are correct, or a combination thereof.
It’s also very possible that it is not a politically convenient choice, that pressures are being applied to policy through ideology or vested interested or just plain stupidity (as in, “Open everything up right now!”). It’s also more than likely that some element of corruption is weighing into decision making – that mates of ministers, or generous donors to the party, have some vested interest.
It is foolish to the point of idiocy to conclude “This is a massive worldwide hoax, involving every government, every agency, all medics […the list is extensive…], with the aim of [implanting Bill Gate’s chips/ to kill everyone/ to control us with masks that limit oxygen to the brain / to introduce social isolation / etc. etc. etc. ]”
The sad fact is, many people – including nearly all the denialists here – reach for one of the conclusions immediately above. And they have no end of crank sites/videos to back them up, all self-referencing and circular in their reasoning.
My point here is to appeal to you to question with sound critical thinking, not to knee-jerk into some vast conspiracy theory which has no basis in reality and can only serve to do harm.
Seroprevalence surveillance is being done. That is the latest England data I could find. You’ll need to scroll down to page 41 of that report.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/923668/Weekly_COVID19_Surveillance_Report_week_40.pdf
Just for clarity’s sake, all the policies and decisions that SA references above – policies and decisions that have given GB the worst death rate in the world from Covid-19 – are factual, not wild eyed claims of an extremist.
They are the policies and decisions of a rightwing, libertarian-minded government. It is also the case that scepticism about vaccines and about Covid itself is overwhelmingly the province of the libertarian far right. If we adhered to the prescriptions of such sceptics the death rate in GB would be worse even than it us now.
“If we adhered to the prescriptions of such sceptics the death rate in GB would be worse even than it us now.”
Really? Where is your evidence?
– “Where is your evidence?”
Here:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Compare mortalities in countries that have applied social restrictions soon and strongly against those who have acted late or pretended there was no problem.
Seriously Clark?
The number of death certificates that quote Covid (including false positives) equated to the number of people who have been killed by Covid.
I give up – you win – ta ra
– “The number of death certificates that quote Covid (including false positives) equated to the number of people who have been killed by Covid.”
No, you can check that elsewhere. There are the statistics based on “any death within 28 days of a positive test” in which non-covid deaths would be insignificant because the chance of any individual dying in a specified 28 day period is tiny by comparison. There are also the statistics based on cause of death on the death certificate; for that to be seriously wrong, tens of thousands of doctors would have to be falsifying cause of death. So there is good reason to accept both figures, but they also broadly confirm each other anyway.
But PCR false positive rate is very low anyway, as confirmed by studies in areas without covid eg. Australia, China.
You are probably right Jay, but I’m not sure it is the sceptics themselves that care about party politics. They certainly get used and manipulated and hidden behind though.
Marmite.
I hope you do not count me as an ‘extremist’ for advocating proper lockdown. If you do then I think you misunderstand what I am trying to convey.
Public health measures, properly implemented is the bread and butter of dealing with pandemics and infectious disease. It is a great shame that some people now consider that it is their personal freedom at sake not to be allowed to freely disseminate infections
false dichotomy. few if any are arguing for the washington consensus, whatever the washington consensus position is–seems to be using the pandemic as an excuse for funneling more money to the wealthy. can you point out an example of anybody on this thread arguing for that?
Of course it is a false dichotomy.
But it is the perception that counts, and those who deny the gravity of the virus are quite likely to be very angry at the way it has been abused to maximise profits and controls over the common person. And that is enough for them to want to defy lockdowns.
But again, to get back to the bigger picture, if so-called democracies were not so infected by the sicknesses of libertarianism/individualism/liberalism in the first place, and had decent economic safety nets and health systems in place to weather these pandemics, we would not be seeing this kind of anger and division.
I am actually for lockdowns, if you must know. I regard individual liberty as overrated and in some ways dangerous. My simple point is that I don’t think we should regard those who want to defy lockdowns, or refuse vaccines, as selfish. How can you blame them? They must feel so powerless and cheated. The selfishness lies elsewhere, in the likes of elites who benefit from all the divisiveness and rage, and don’t give a second thought to all the easily preventable deaths. That is the selfishness that should be crucified by us and the media. But it isn’t. Like the swine we are, we just go on apologising for our leaders, and thinking they are doing the best they can do, and jump on anti-Piers bandwagons.
I just think that most of the posts here are missing the bigger picture.
Marmite, I very much agree with all of that, with one caveat:
– “those who deny the gravity of the virus are quite likely to be very angry at the way it has been abused to maximise profits and controls over the common person”
I agree, but it is every individual’s responsibility to uphold fact so that they can allocate responsibility correctly, fairly and effectively. If people who object to government policy choose to play down the severity of the pandemic, they shift the target from politicians to doctors and scientists, letting government get away with it while simultaneously sowing division. As ever, Truth, Justice, Peace is an inescapable dependency chain, so it is every individual’s responsibility to begin with truth, for justice and hence peace are unachievable without it for their foundation.
Stewart posted an interesting link above. It received a sarcastic reply which avoided the point of the article. Stewart’s post is unlikely to get further responses now so I will summarise the article here and invite non-sarcastic responses.
The article is concerned with admissions to Intensive Care Units (ICU) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2020.
It first shows a month-by-month graph of all admissions throughout 2020, with those attributed to covid-19 highlighted. The graph also shows similar data from the previous 4 years for comparison. There is a huge spike of covid-19 cases in April and a smaller one towards the end of the year.
Subsequent graphs show ICU admissions for specific afflictions over the same 5 year period – acute myocardial infarctions, strokes, self-harm, and trauma. All those graphs show sharp troughs which coincide with the peaks of the first graph.
The author suggests that incidences of heart disease, strokes, etc are being mis-attributed to covid-19.
Here’s a link to the article again:
http://www.frombehindenemylines.org.uk/2021/01/latest-icnarc-graphs-amongst-general-reattribution-of-other-illness-to-covid-19-pneumonia-from-flu-is-a-thing-of-the-past/
and here’s a link to the source data
https://www.icnarc.org/Our-Audit/Audits/Cmp/Reports
On the face of it, this is a powerful challenge to the official covid-19 narrative. Would anybody care to challenge the data or the author’s interpretation of it?
Britain has the worst Covid death rate on the planet because of libertarian ideology in its government and your answer is to urge them to end all public health measures. Yes, you are someone who should be seriously and conscientiously engaged with.
Jay, perhaps you meant to say that to someone else and mistakenly replied to me. In any case it isn’t relevant to my post. I didn’t offer any answers. I asked a question. Perhaps you’d answer it while you’re here. As described above, someone has made a very powerful argument that covid-19 casualty figures may be lower than claimed. He supplies all his ‘workings.’ Do you agree with his conclusions? If not, why not?
I would say they’re systematically inflating Covid deaths to a world record rate in order to make themselves look bad.
Why do you think they’re doing it?
Jay, “Why do you think they’re doing it?”
I’m not claiming that “they” are doing anything. That’s what my question is aiming to establish. You didn’t answer it seriously, so here’s another. Why do you think it is that so many of those who defend the official covid-19 narrative ignore the question and answer sarcastically when given a direct opportunity to prove the sceptics wrong?
@ Jay:
So because you have no answer, you resort to sarcasm. Pathetic.
@ Ankle Sum
You are putting everything into claims that Covid figures are being deliberately inflated to a world record rate.
You must surely have some theories as to why, because as you must surely agree on the face of it nothing could be more absurd.
@ Irritant
Maybe you can provide the explanation that is way beyond the capacity of Ankle Sum.
@Jay, Look, I’m not interested in fighting with you. Let’s put it this way. I challenge you or any other defender of the official covid-19 narrative to find a flaw in this guy’s reasoning or the data he uses. Take it or leave it. My views are irrelevant.
There may be a flaw, I don’t claim to be an expert. If someone can convince me this guy is talking bullshit, great, I’ve learned something, and I won’t make a fool of myself in the future by referring to a bullshit argument. On the other hand if none of the usually vocal “experts” on this thread can refute the bloke’s argument, I will probably refer to it again when discussing covid-19, and accord it more and more credibility the longer it survives. It’s not as though it’s a complicated argument. It is very simple and comes with pictures.
—-
[ MOD: Taunting commentary deleted ]
Greater emergency powers?
Interesting contrast to the current trust in institutions: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9231773/Ex-MP-NORMAN-BAKER-reveals-day-anthrax-released-tunnel-Northern-Line.html?ito=amp_twitter_share-top
All of these self-appointed clever clogs do not have ‘powerful’ arguments, but mish mashes of speculation, selective data and obsession with one piece of a large jigsaw, and are desperate to ‘prove’ their own bias. And then they demand others must engage them on their terms and waste time pointing out their fallacies. Wasting time, because there is nothing you can say which will deter them from their own utter certainty that they are right. They will just shift the ground if necessary. It’s a faux argument. There are reams of data and information out there, but it requires a lot of discipline and rigour to come to terms with. A quick internet search and the copying of speculative theories isn’t it.
Yep. Conspiracy theory is always like that. The corporate media promote it all the time; just look at their “MMR causes autism” hoax, thousands upon thousands of articles.
Our local conspiracy theorists think of themselves as original and non-conformist, but they reckon without the established media’s subliminal power, and they thereby discount their own subconscious. They literally don’t realise whose lead they’re following and what example they’re emulating.
Here’s my challenge to the interpretation:
– There is a huge spike of covid-19 cases in April and a smaller one towards the end of the year.
– Subsequent graphs show ICU admissions for specific afflictions over the same 5 year period – acute myocardial infarctions, strokes, self-harm, and trauma. All those graphs show sharp troughs which coincide with the peaks of the first graph.
– The author suggests that incidences of heart disease, strokes, etc are being mis-attributed to covid-19.
So why just in April “and a smaller one towards the end of the year”? There’s clearly a big peak, and the author ascribes it to misclassification of “acute myocardial infarctions, strokes, self-harm, and trauma” – which itself assumes that the entire community of UK doctors and other medical staff are somehow part of a grand conspiracy – but why would all these conditions suddenly peak just in April, and be high again in December? It can’t be the “lockdown” because that went on well past April into summer, and wasn’t in effect in December.
This is all clearly conspiracy theory, because it could only happen with a conspiracy of tens of thousands of ordinary medical workers – not spooks, but doctors, nurses, coroners, ambulance crews. It further assumes that the same conspiratorial mechanism operates all over Europe and the US. But your own comment promoting this pathetic article as “interesting”, Ankle Sum, is also revealed as conspiracy theory by your use of the term “official covid-19 narrative”. What, a global “narrative”? Even from Russia? Even from those countries that have stamped out covid-19 such as China and New Zealand?
The plain fact is, covid-19 isn’t a “narrative”; it’s a global pandemic. Certainly, the various governments have promoted various narratives. The UK government’s current narrative is that nothing can help except mass vaccination, but China, New Zealand, Taiwan etc. have proved that covid-19 can be suppressed by social measures.
With respect, Clark, you haven’t addressed any of the issues raised by the article. Most of what you wrote is irrelevant. The author doesn’t refer to conspiracies or narratives, so you shouldn’t need to to refute his argument.
You ask “… but why would all these conditions suddenly peak just in April, and be high again in December?” Well, that’s what the data says. It comes from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC). Are you challenging the data? Here is a direct link to the actual report (those graphs are on pages 21-25):
https://www.icnarc.org/DataServices/Attachments/Download/9621110e-f267-eb11-912e-00505601089b
I summarised those graphs thus:
It first shows a month-by-month graph of all admissions throughout 2020, with those attributed to covid-19 highlighted. The graph also shows similar data from the previous 4 years for comparison. There is a huge spike of covid-19 cases in April and a smaller one towards the end of the year.
Subsequent graphs show ICU admissions for specific afflictions over the same 5 year period – acute myocardial infarctions, strokes, self-harm, and trauma. All those graphs show sharp troughs which coincide with the peaks of the first graph.
Do you disagree with my summary? If so, in what way?
If you agree with my summary, do you agree with the author’s conclusion that incidences of heart disease, strokes, etc are being mis-attributed to covid-19. If not why not?
Regarding your summary, I agree that a sharp peak in covid admissions and sharp troughs in other the admissions are shown in the ICNARC graphs for April.
I disagree that sharp troughs are shown in other admissions in December. Rather, we see a gradual ramping down in trauma from August onward, a ramping down from summer to November with a slight rise in December for acute myocardial infarction and self harm, and little deviation towards the end of 202 from the lower bound of the four year trend for stroke.
So let’s just consider April since the claimed effect is much clearer. We have two hypotheses:
1) Covid caused the peak in covid admissions. The troughs in other admissions were possibly caused by (a) people avoiding hospitals due to the covid surge and (b) people not admitted due to critical care being full, staff being reallocated to covid care, and the risk of infection by covid. This hypothesis is self explanatory.
2) The author’s hypothesis – that the peak attributed to covid was actually the other conditions, wrongly attributed to covid.
Hypothesis (2) requires an explanation for the increase in admissions for all causes over and above the four year data given by ICNARC for comparison. Since these admissions are claimed to be incorrect attribution rather than covid, what caused this increase in four other conditions?
Hypothesis (2) further requires a reason that doctors suddenly started falsely recording trauma, acute myocardial infarction, self harm and stroke as covid in April, and then suddenly stopped again. What caused this strange change in the behaviour of doctors all over the UK?
Since I see no reasonable causes for these requirements whereas the first hypothesis is entirely self consistent, I reject the authors hypothesis and accept the first.
Since the author’s hypothesis requires inexplicable behaviour from of thousands of medical staff, and the article claims that covid-19 is a “psychological operation”, describes the population as “cabbage-headed” and receptive of information only from the government, I also dismiss the article as conspiracy theory. Moral – learning to recognise conspiracy theory from its typical features can save a lot of everyone’s time, so I recommend that you learn how to do so and teach your new skill to others 🙂
@Clark
OK, I concede you have provided a possible alternative explanation to explain the graphs. I think it is unlikely to explain the dramatic trough vs peak effect we are seeing, but it is enough to raise doubt. If it’s true, or to whatever degree it is true, it raises another issue. If all those people represented by the troughs in the heart, stroke, trauma, self-harm, etc graphs were prevented by covid-19 from being treated for their serious conditions in an Intensive Care Unit, their increased death rate must be reflected in the overall mortality figures, which is itself used as a measure of covid-19 fatalities, so they still end up misattributed as covid-19 deaths.
I’d proffer a possible explanation. If ICU beds are already occupied and full with Covid patients then there were no ICU beds available to put the myocardial infarction, stroke and other patients in. The decision would then have been who requires the ICU care most. Such decisions having to be made, in essence, triaging/rationing care has been reported by testimony from doctors and ICU nurses. They have stated that patients who otherwise would have received ICU care had to be refused that care because of covid patients and capacity considerations. I’d like to see the numbers of hospital admissions for the other conditions alongside this data. Perhaps those myocardial infarction and other patients were cared for in another hospital department.
In the case of Cardiac arrest/Myocardial infarction most hospitals have a coronary care unit and most myocardial infarction patients would be cared for there. Those who might otherwise have been considered candidates for ICU probably continued their care in CCU.
Most coronary care units will operate on the policy that they must always have an empty bed available for the possibility of a dire emergency. If you had an admission to CCU that occupied that empty bed you would have to then designate who you considered the least sick to move from CCU to a general ward so as to maintain that empty bed for the next emergency case and so on.
In general, ICU docs want to shift their patients back to general wards so as to maintain capacity for the very ill. Covid patents required long stays in ICU beds. I suspect capacity considerations led to juggling patients.
Incidentally the referred to graphs in the cited ICNARC report are found from page 21 onwards. The link to the .pdf of the report:
https://www.icnarc.org/DataServices/Attachments/Download/9621110e-f267-eb11-912e-00505601089b
Also, ICU beds were occupied by covid patients. Part of any consideration given to admitting a non-covid patient to ICU will have been the possibility that they themselves then became infected in ICU with Sars-Cov-2 and became a covid patient adding further to their morbidity.
Tough calls all round.
The day anthrax was released in a tunnel on the Northern Line – by scientists from Porton Down… and as ex-MP NORMAN BAKER reveals, it’s far from the only time they’ve used Britons as guinea pigs for experiments.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9231773/Ex-MP-NORMAN-BAKER-reveals-day-anthrax-released-tunnel-Northern-Line.html
Na, could not possibly have happened!
A very close parallel to vaccinating against a disease that has already taken 100,00 lives. Well done Mr Cook.
Could you please supply the evidence which you have to support that the disease has taken 100,000 lives (I’m assuming you are referring to the UK)
why? you don’t care about evidence.
– “Could you please supply the evidence which you have to support that the disease has taken 100,000 lives”
Yes. Look at the Office for National Statistics graph for death from all causes. It has enormous humps in it, just after the highest infection prevalence was measured. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it’s probably an international conspiracy by the scientific and medical communities on behalf of the World Economic Forum, formerly known as Bill Gates. Oh hang on…
People die all the time. It is part of the circle of life. Everyone born into this world will die.
If you look at Covid, 99.5% of people survive.
Do you FEAR death so much that you are prepared to lock yourself away and destroy your livelihoods and refuse to actually live in the time you are given?
Lockdowns, economic ruin and vaccines are not going to make Covid go away. Covid (nature) will find a way thru never-ending mutation to remain with us. Humans do NOT control nature.
I actually fear the government’s belief that it is the all wise, the all knowing, the ultimate controller in all matters on this planet……………far more than Covid-19.
Lockdown has already made covid-19 go away from the whole of China. No economic ruin there. New Zealand too.
And this isn’t merely about fear of death. It’s about avoiding suffering, not permitting nature to waterboard a few million folk for days or weeks on end, a fair proportion of them to death. That’s no fun, and no way to end a long and productive life, not when it can be avoided.
Pretty ARROGANT to think you (humans) are able to “… not permitting nature to waterboard a few million folk for days or weeks on end, a fair proportion of them to death.”
Your thinking is just more proof that Humans are The Most Arrogant of Species, which are above the laws of nature.
THAT is what is dangerous!
James just walk off a building. What, you aren’t doing that? Must be arrogance.
James Cook, the study of the workings of nature requires the humility to accept the evidence that nature provides. It is such study that has given you fabrics to keep you warm and comfortable, water safe to drink from a tap, housing to give you shelter, reliable food supplies, and electricity and technology so that you can post your comment here on Craig’s blog.
This humility to accept nature’s evidence has also given humans the ability to arrange more peaceful and less distressing ways of dying than gasping for breath for the last two weeks of life.
Thank you James Cook for a sensible comment. I am listening to the BBC news as I write this and apparently the Oxford/AstraZeneca virus is not very effective against the South African new variant Covid-19 virus. At the moment, the SA variant is confined to a few pockets in the South of England, but viruses mutate all the time. At the moment the Oxford/ AZ vaccine is the only one available in the UK, due to the recent spat with Europe, but the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are also designed to produce a specific spike protein via a coded combination of amino acids. All three vaccines are presently being tweaked to keep up with the mutations. It will be autumn at least before the AZ/ Oxford vaccine is tweaked to deal with the SA variant virus. By that time the virus will have mutated again.
Boris & Co are running around like headless chickens, but at the end of the day we are all going to have to live with this virus. It seems sensible to vaccinate the over 65s, particularly those persons in care homes and in hospital for other medical reasons. The rest of us need to take responsibilty for our own health, eat balanced meals with plenty of fruit and vegetables, a daily multivitamin + minerals tablet is a good idea and I take an additional vitamin C tablet. We are careful about precautions to prevent infection spead. Boris and Nicola are going to have get our countries back to normal sooner or later. I hope it’s sooner.
– “but at the end of the day we are all going to have to live with this virus.”
No, the people of China, New Zealand, the Isle of Man etc. don’t have to live with it because they have eradicated it in those places.
– “…going to have get our countries back to normal sooner or later.”
Well it could be done in five weeks. But normal was going to kill us too eventually through climate and ecological catastrophe, so we need to change how we live anyway.
Meanwhile, back in reality, the BBC are gently releasing the news that the Oxford vaccine does not work against the so called South Africa variant. Its being phrased in the way that one would break bad news to a small child, so its odds on that the other vaccines will probably be much diminished in their ‘Protection’.
Oxford suggest the Autumn for a revised recipe, which probably means next Christmas or new year. The vaccine Tsar is of course talking of the possibility of yearly boosters, whilst presumably hoping the public have not noticed the organisational effort that has been required to even aim at inoculating the entire nation.
So the bottom line, its likely the virus is in the process of escaping the current vaccine incarnations, and those mutations that do escape will become the dominant strains. So really, argument about the desirability of following the official line and getting the vaccine, is moot 😀
A parody of speculation and red herrings. Nobody in the medical profession is surprised, or alarmed. And it’s hardly a BBC only piece of news.
Expand your argument, are you saying the BBC are wrong ?
More than likely with the FT running it as a main story tomorrow, the organs of the state feel impelled to get ahead of the story. Which may be a good thing when one remembers that the UK has a constituency that set fire to phone masts in the belief they were the cause of the virus.
?
CasualObserver, I think it’s a mistake to rely upon mass vaccination. Vaccines will probably prove helpful, but we shouldn’t wait to find out, because if they’re not effective enough we’re stuffed. Covid-19 can be stamped out by a short programme of strict social restrictions, and that is what we should do. We could then develop and test vaccines at our leisure:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2021/jan/28/all-countries-should-pursue-a-covid-19-elimination-strategy-here-are-16-reasons-why
Go for zero!
https://www.endcoronavirus.org/green-zones
But we don’t know the risk to self is ‘very small’, do we? We’ll only know that after a period of years, when the longer term effects are assessed. It is already fairly clear that at least one of the vaccines doesn’t work properly.
I suspect how ever the vaccine programme fails (and I believe it will fail, whether for medical reasons or lack of take-up), this will be used as an excuse by the Johnson government to prolong its authoritarian policies, benefiting crony corporations and crushing ordinary people and small businesses.
We know the risk from Covid-19 is pretty high – it’s cost many lives. Who knows what the long term effects are.
If the vaccine programme fails for lack of take up, you have all these conspiracy nuts and denialists to blame – including yourself. The trials have been very successful so far, I imagine you’ve been reading up on them – right?
What you think motivates the government to extend restrictions for no reason, when every time they have taken them with great reluctance, using weak measures and too late? You’ll have to explain that in more detail Tom – because it sounds utterly ridiculous, and contrary to all evidence.
The risk from Covid19 is to, or seems to be to, very definite smallish groups. The elderly frail, those with serious co-morbidities, and those who have a genetic predisposition. So realistically we might say that the virus is a sharp reminder of the nature of life for every organism on the planet. Even then the risks are far from the days of Hobbes where Nasty Brutish and Short were the order of the day.
It might be remembered that back in March of last year the Veterinarian profession expressed the view that it was likely that a successful Corona Virus vaccine may well prove elusive to point of being unachievable. They may well have more insight than might be expected given that veterinary medicine has been trying to achieve such a thing for at least the last 60 years.
I would suggest that there is probably much more known by those that govern, regarding long term vaccine efficacy and the chances of success of beating the virus by inoculation. Suffice to say, that in the current atmosphere of near hysteria, the public are unlikely to be presented with any information that casts doubt upon the coming triumph of medicine and science. Indeed it does seem that the preposterous suggestion of a global annual vaccination program may be just over the horizon ?
Its entirely likely that the Sars2 virus will at some point simply go away, or more likely claim many of those who are highly susceptible, and then mutate into some less dangerous form due to lack of potential hosts. So rather than pandering to some idea that the public cannot deal with the reality of life, it may well be a better idea to attempt to protect those deemed vulnerable, and just let the virus rip. It still remains the case that contracting the virus and recovering seems to be the best way of gaining immunity.
CO: ” Even then the risks are far from the days of Hobbes where Nasty Brutish and Short were the order of the day.”
And why might that be the case? Could it – perchance – have something to do with science and medicine?
But now you think we should go back to those days, “just let the virus rip”, and rid ourselves of those you clearly deem less worthy of life than you value your lifestyle in the very short term. Sure, let’s make life “Nasty Brutish and Short” again – all round. Why stop with Covid-19?
You appear to be arguing that, rather than take the chance that a vaccine will get us out of the restrictions we currently live under, we should “let it rip”. Let’s not even wait to give the vaccine a chance.
What a shockingly callous proposal. It is absolutely obvious that a huge death toll would result.
Don’t pretend we can just “protect those deemed vulnerable”, that hardly passes the laugh test. You think “those deemed vulnerable” can remain in total isolation, while everyone else carries on their sweet lives? I suppose you’re also willing to disregard those many people who are far less than old, but still suffer death or serious impairment from Covid-19.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you’ve hardly thought this through at all, or I would consider your suggestion could only come from someone with depraved indifference to human suffering.
Ya cant save everybody, and after age 60 its definitely a case of being in the elimination phase of the tournament. Obviously I’m going to live forever, or die in the attempt 🙂
As for the death toll being huge, that seems to be open to question. It seems fairly obvious at this point that the figures are open to different interpretations. The year 2020 was ‘Above the five year average’ not ‘The highest for five years’ ?
As for depraved indifference, western society has let itself accept the propaganda that if bad things happen, it amounts to a tragedy. I would remind you that up until the year 1956, one in every 20 live births in the UK would not make it to adulthood – not that long ago, and probably within the span of quite a few following CM. For much of humanity, tragedy is still an all too common occurrence, something that we westerners may be accused of being somewhat indifferent to. Certainly Covid-19 in the west when compared with the almost daily misfortune suffered by probably better than 75% of humanity is small beer indeed.
At some point life is going to have to try and get back to normal, whether the virus has been ‘Beaten’ or not, there simply are not the resources available to continue on the current track indefinitely.
CasualObserver – “I would suggest that there is probably much more known by those that govern, regarding long term vaccine efficacy and the chances of success of beating the virus by inoculation”
You already answered this in the negative by citing the veterinarian profession. The best information is in the scientific literature; the preprint servers, which are accessible to the public, and the peer-reviewed journals which usually require a subscription (which your library may have) but are currently supplying most covid-19 papers open-access.
Those that govern seem most interested in matters of money and trade; they rarely take much notice of the scientific community (global warming and biodiversity loss?), and rather famously tend sack their own consultants for telling them things they’d rather not acknowledge.
– “the public are unlikely to be presented with any information that casts doubt upon the coming triumph of medicine and science”
Well I’ve had no trouble encountering it.
– “it may well be a better idea to attempt to protect those deemed vulnerable, and just let the virus rip.”
This is impractical; many elderly require care, and those that don’t can’t be separated from general society. Similar applies to other vulnerable groups. “Letting the virus rip” would overwhelm any health care system and hundreds of thousands of people would experience the horror of being suffocated, many of them to death, without even drugs to relieve the distress.
The best course is to stamp out covid-19 like China, New Zealand, the Isle of Man and various countries have successfully done:
https://www.endcoronavirus.org/green-zones
– “I suspect […] this will be used as an excuse by the Johnson government to prolong its authoritarian policies”
Why on Earth suspect that? They have avoided and delayed social restrictions twice now, and never even contemplated the more stringent measures that would wipe out covid-19 in under two months. They claim to have done everything possible while doing as little as they could get away with.
– “But we don’t know the risk to self is ‘very small’, do we? We’ll only know that after a period of years, when the longer term effects are assessed”
True, but we know that the vaccines employ only a small subset of the components of the virus, therefore the risk to self is almost certain to be less risk to self than catching the virus.
Note how we are now pussyfooting about isolation for those coming to U.K. we still need to make lists of red countries, when we are the worst and have all the variants. The rest of the world should prevent anyone from U.K. from going to their countries as high risk and let Johnson and those brexiters wallow in Global Britain.
There is a strange misconception here, a blur between reality and perceptions and opinion. It is my belief that those who start off by making assertions such as that the virus has not been isolated or that the PCR is not reliable, can be ignored because they have no grasp on reality and think that by having a different opinion that they can dispute hard facts. Others may have a more finessed approach and may actually for example question the extent of the problem and question the statistics. At least these are trying to keep some contact with reality and are just careful or misguided.
There are many commenters here also that are highly critical of how the government have tackled the crisis and indeed point out as to how this has been exploited for other agendas. That is really what all those concerned about the effects of this virus should concentrate on and not indirectly or directly letting the government off with its incompetence.
I can assure you that I have a firm grasp of reality and I know without a shadow of doubt that the PCR test is a worthless diagnostic tool for an illness caused by a virus for many reasons e.g.
1) You may have the virus in your mucus cavities but it may not go on to infect a cell, if it does it may not go on to cause the disease, if it does your disease may have sub clinical symptoms.
2) How the samples are collected, stored, transported and tested can render the results useless.
3) The test itself has inherent inaccuracies and was never intended as a diagnostic tool.
4) Pieces of fruit can return a positive result as can an sterile swab, Elon Musk tested +ve twice and -ve twice in the same day.
But here is the main problem, not for individual diagnosis because doctors have other tools at their disposal to diagnose the illness; the problem is the results are used to inform national statistics and government policy.
So how many people in the UK have had the covid disease? We don’t know!
How many have died because of Covid? We don’t know!
We think we no how many have tested positive but we don’t. We know that someone who is tested 20 times with a +ve result goes into the stats a 20 different individual anonymous +ve tests.
We know that for every true +ve results there are many false +ve’s.
But the government use the number of tests that are positive as the number of Covid Cases ignoring completely the number of people who have had the disease but who have not been tested.
Then there is the number of Deaths that the government put into the stats, anyone who tests positive within a month of death has Covid put on their death certificate, then it as recorded as a Covid Death. This includes false positive results (the dead person never had the virus) and they may have died from dementia, heart disease, lung disease, stroke, trauma etc – they all go into the statistics as a Covid death and that informs government policy.
Official Covid Deaths and Cases statistics are completely and utterly unreliable but they are the reason for the lockdown and vaccine policies. We are living in cloud cuckoo land.
“Elon Musk tested +ve twice and -ve twice in the same day.”
You cite that as a critique of PCR tests, but the tests that Elon Musk took were rapid antigen tests from the company BD. As it turned out he did have covid, which means 2 of the tests returned false negatives (which can happen if the swab isn’t collected properly).
Sorry I just could not resist putting that in.
“This rate could translate into a significant proportion of false-positive results daily due to the current low prevalence of the virus in the UK population, adversely affecting the positive predictive value of the test.2
Considering that the UK National Health Service employs 1·1 million health-care workers, many of whom have been exposed to COVID-19 at the peak of the first wave, the potential disruption to health and social services due to false positives could be considerable.”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30453-7/fulltext
This might help better in explaining the difficulties in getting reliable results
https://www.icd10monitor.com/false-positives-in-pcr-tests-for-covid-19
Pseudoscience based on misconceptions. You can only make these assumptions if you have a systematic error in the test but the writer quotes many theoretical errors none of which are systematic.
These supposed error rates have not been shown in real situations as you would never get any negatives in countries which got rid of the virus. There would always be some positives which is not the case.
– “We know that someone who is tested 20 times with a +ve result goes into the stats a 20 different individual anonymous +ve tests.”
Er, each person is only infectious for around twenty days. You reckon there are loads of people getting tested every day?
– “We know that for every true +ve results there are many false +ve’s”
No, we know the opposite; that the false positive rate is a fraction of 1%. Widespread use of PCR in China and Australia has established this beyond reasonable doubt.
Ever since you arrived here Mushy, you have been spreading false and misleading FUD. My feeling is that you are knowingly dishonest. You think freedom of speech is the freedom to lie and mislead? Your deception encourages behaviour that causes widespread suffering and death, making you just as bad as war criminals such as Bush and Blair.
“ 4) Pieces of fruit can return a positive result ”
Ah what a giveaway showing lack of discrimination in processing data!
Who said that? A distinguished scientist? I actually know how that nonesense came to be disseminated but let you dig your own hole.
When you design a laboratory test you standardise the test for what your starting material is because of what could be non specific interference that is why you have a sterile swab that is used to take samples from upper nasal track and other areas. Let us look at another example, if you design a test to examine the viscosity of oil then run through it a sample of muddy water or pulped up grout the results would be meaningless don’t you think?
“3) The test itself has inherent inaccuracies and was never intended as a diagnostic tool”
Oh yes? What exactly does this mean? Do you know or are you simply regurgitating rubbish published elsewhere. Please let me know. A lot of forensic cases of crimes committed have been convicted on the basis of these highly unreliable tests in forensic medicine. Ah and it just takes a simple statement of mushy thinking to overturn. Why rely on science when we have self pontificating quacks?
https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5fa5866942937a4d73918723/601ffc3e56a64132caa3f42f_Open_Letter_from_the_UKMFA_Vaccine_Deaths_Care%20Homes.pdf
This letter from the UK Medical Freedom Alliance is a excellent discussion of the disturbing rise in death rate among the elderly since the vaccine programme started in care homes in December.
They urge everyone to send it to their MPs. Please do this. The rise in deaths is real and related to the vaccine.
Kate
Haven’t had time to read this thoroughly but one of they are not even saying that the deaths are due the vaccine, but to increased deaths and outbreaks of COVID-19 in care homes after vaccination. This of course was at a time when covid death rates were generally rising so they seem to make a false correlation which does not really make sense.
As far as ADE there has not been any evidence of this so far given the numbers vaccinated with no reported cases. Incidentally there is a system of reporting side effect on new medinas called the yellow card system which patients can fill in on line and believe me these are very carefully watched, the report you refer to implies that there is no such system.
Kate – a couple of issues here. You know that two doses of vaccine is required, and a wait between each shot, before immunity is acquired? Since it will take at least a couple of months at the maximum rate of take-up, it would be March before anyone was really benefiting from shots started at the end of December.
We also know the roll-out is not being done in this fashion – the government wants to extend the recommended period between shots to the maximum, to get as many people to undertake the first shot as possible. It is a questionable policy with some risk.
There is always a reaction to getting a shot. If there were no reaction, that would not be a good sign – the fact it is causes a reaction shows your body is producing an immune response. Unfortunately, this mild response may be enough for the “very elderly” and extremely frail, as the letter says, to tip them over the edge. This mild response is vastly less damage than the full blown Covid-19 attack, of course.
It certainly is a weigh-up, between the risk of a tiny response from the vaccine and certain death from Covid-19.
But asking everyone to contact their MP – to do what? Stop the vaccination programme immediately? – is a bit of an over-reaction with you, with all respect. The medics have raised a concern which will be considered. You have not just uncovered a disastrous death programme which needs to be shut down at once.
“There is always a reaction to getting a shot. If there were no reaction, that would not be a good sign”
So anaphylaxis within a few seconds / minutes would be a good sign?
“It certainly is a weigh-up, between the risk of a tiny response from the vaccine and certain death from Covid-19.”
Where is “certain death” written into the propaganda manual?
Many old people, in their 90’s have been diagnosed with Covid and not died, some didn’t even have symptoms but that might be diagnostic error.
Mushy
No anaphylaxis is a rare hypersensitivity reaction that is not useful and can be fatal but most normal reactions to vaccines include pain in the site of infection and lethargy, fatigue, feeling a bit fluyey and a low grade fever are. Do you have difficulty processing data?
Certain Death ?
Given the number of centenarians who have been in the news over the last year, who caught and survived the virus, it seems that death is far from being a certain outcome of infection ?
Do you honestly believe what you’re saying ? or are you just having a bit of fun ? 🙂
The UK Medical Freedom Alliance seem to be an “alternative medicine” and, yes, anti-vaxxer outfit.
https://www.ukmedfreedom.org/about
Dr Elizabeth Evans claims to be a “Wireless Health Radiation Adviser”. Two or three brand themselves “holistic” or “integrative” practitioners, and we also have a dentist, a lawyer and an osteopath. But most notably we have Jayne Donegan…
– …whose evidence as an expert witness in a court case involving MMR in 2003 was dismissed by the judge as ‘junk science’. She was accused of ‘being confused in her thinking, lacking logic, minimising the duration of a disease, making statements lacking valid facts, ignoring the facts, ignoring the conclusion of papers, making implications without any scientific validation, giving a superficial impression of a paper, not presenting the counter argument, quoting selectively from papers, and of providing in one instance, no data and no facts to support her claim’
https://bjgp.org/content/57/542/757
Good points raised there.
There do seem to have been a number of care home out breaks and fatalities since the vaccinations went on stream. The supposition would be that if one needs to be in a care home then one must be quite frail, so fairly easy to explain away these occurrences.
Of course as the program moves down the age scale, similar events might prove rather harder to overlook.
There is a network of libertarian right wing, well-funded pressure groups, all arguing much the same thing, spreading from the US where this kind of thing is rampant. They all tend to have variations of the same name, Medical Alliance etc. But they all pump out the same line of argument – denialism in various forms. Like climate change astroturfers, they are often sourced to a network of funders and think tanks in the US. Unfortunately, well-meaning if gullible people repeat and tag their articles as if they are some kind of ‘independent’ authority, since they are always keen to have qualified sounding people on board, whose background you seldom will know.
Yes, “America’s Frontline Doctors”, set up by a Tea Party publicist for instance.
but they’re wearing white coats!! they must be legitimate!! in other news 9 out of 10 doctors say lucky strikes are the healthiest cigarettes on the market!!
The measures the open letter is calling for are commendable – more monitoring, more transparency. They are not calling for the vaccination programme to be halted. However, some of their arguments are very dodgy, eg. rises in care home covid deaths in January simply follow the increase in infection among the general population.
Further to my previous comment on the suppression of free speech in (Sir) Keir Staliner’s Labour Party:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/02/piers-corbyn-and-free-speech/comment-page-2/#comment-975239
I am pleased to be able to say that, under legal pressure, Staliner and Evans have been forced to reinstate 50 of the suspended party officials.
https://skwawkbox.org/2021/02/05/exclusive-labour-reinstates-50-suspended-clp-officers-after-backing-down-under-legal-pressure-but-slips-cowardly-reminder-of-conduct-into-letters/
Now, bring on Jeremy’s – and Craigs – legal cases,
Thank you for the sliver of good news.
As the Labour Party now seems to be a lost cause (cue Squeeth to say “I told you so!”), I can’t say the news is very heartening, but I’m personally relieved on behalf of the members who were so unjustly suspended.
A bit late but here’s my comment:
When it comes all things regarding Nazi & holocaust, Germany has extensive jurisprudence about what is allowed & what isn’t, where free speech ends and where illegal negation of facts starts (e.g. holocaust denial), and why the line is drawn where it is.
I think anyone publishing such a leaflet would probably have difficulty ever getting employment as a writer or artists – and that’s fair enough because other people are allowed to make their own decision not to work with anyone they deem a tasteless headbanger, I cannot see how this could be construed as denying of free speech. But I am absolutely certain that this leaflet would not be deemed criminal or illegal.
This is the most interesting paper I have read regarding the origin of SARS-CoV-2 Published January 29 2021
Not only does the novel coronavirus show unmistakable evidence of lab-made inserts into its genome but the team also discovered in the bronchial lavage of patients an adenovirus vector containing the covid spike protein gene (Possibly an experimental mRNA vaccine)
https://zenodo.org/record/4477081
“Wuhan Institute of Virology analysis of bronchial lavage specimens from ICU patients at Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital in December 2019 contain both SARS-CoV-2 and adenovirus vaccine sequences, consistent with a vaccine challenge trial”
Kate
I assume this world shattering discovery has been submitted to a journal for peer review? It just seems to be self published from someone in a Twitter group. Could you please confirm urgently as this could be a hoax.
https://www.covidtruths.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/SQuay_Bayesian-Analysis-of-SARS-CoV-2-FINAL-V.2.pdf
Slightly better link
“Wuhan Institute of Virology analysis of bronchial lavage specimens from ICU patients at Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital in December 2019 contain both SARS-CoV-2 and adenovirus vaccine sequences, consistent with a vaccine challenge trial.”
Geeze, it is 193 pages. I have read through the first 8-10 pages and had a quick scan through the rest. It does actually initially seem to be an interesting analysis assuming the information is independently verifiable. It also appears to be VERY detailed. Might take a few days to get back to you on that one Kate. I don’t think I could read it through all in one go though the table summarising the evidence he relies on seems to be quite comprehensive. Clark will be interested for his origins thread.
If you look at the table on page 6 of the .pdf, you’ll see that of the 27 findings contributing to the overall conclusion only a few are rated as significant; here are all the percentage contributions that the author rates as more than 0.1% of the conclusion:
3.7% – Location of first cases near Wuhan Institute of Virology
14.2% – Lack of evidence of seroconversion in Wuhan and Shanghai
50.1% – Lack of posterior diversity
26.1% – Lack of furin cleavage sites in any other sarbecovirus
0.2% – Rare usage of -CGG- single codons & no CGG-CGG pairs
0.3% – Routine use of CGG in laboratory codon optimization, including Daszak & Shi
So mostly it’s the posterior diversity and furin cleavage material.
Thanks Kate.
The allegations in the link are indeed very serious but need to be verified. What the author states is that his information is gained from open sources including the original published genetic data about the virus. So it is really a case of the evidence being hidden in open view. Of course this has not been published or as far as I can see, not submitted to a peer reviewed journal but just as an open source unreviewed publication, so must await some expert analysis. But what is a little bit suspicious is that all of these issues have already been debated in the scientific community and by many experts in the field. Here is an example from someone who seems to know what he is talking about,
https://virological.org/t/tackling-rumors-of-a-suspicious-origin-of-ncov2019/384
So thanks for bringing this to our attention but this does not mean ‘case proven’
And here is a discussion of this paper, mainly skeptical about the methodology.
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/02/01/about-that-claim-that-sars-cov-2-is-not-a-natural-zoonosis-but-instead-is-laboratory-derived/
Other discussion forums seem skeptical about this report and the way it was written and presented. Also this ‘publication’ seems to be fostered by such covid conspiracy websites as Covid Truths.
Oh yes, the “great John Stuart Mill”. This would be the man who never held down a job outside his thirty-five-year career in the British East India Company. Ultimately in very senior positions that were responsible for determining racist company policy towards the Indian people. In “On Liberty” and other works he defended British imperialism arguing that a fundamental distinction existed between civilised and barbarous peoples. How convenient for British traders and their bankers! On vaccination, are you not aware of the thousands of USAmericans who died, were disabled for the remainder of their lives or were made seriously ill by the swine flu vaccination program in the 1970s? Are you not aware of Pfizer’s and other pharmaceutical companies’ appalling record of negligence since?
@Simon:
I didn’t know that about John Stuart Mill – very disappointing. I was also disappointed to read recently about the acceptance of or connections with slavery of David Hume and John Locke.
I suppose that explains why the “Age of Enlightenment” is still very much a work in progress.
I also agree with your comment on vaccination. These mass vaccinations may prove to be a great contribution to the health of the world but I will always be sceptical while Big Pharma has such a control on governments and epidemiological scientists.
If we had more transparency about side effects with vaccines, then maybe there would be less vaccine sceptics.
I have yet to read about or hear anyone in the media question why Big Pharma is allowed to have immunity from prosecution for any serious side effects that might occur with their products.
He cites Mill to defend Covidiots not condemn them.
what is a covidiot?
– “On vaccination, are you not aware of the thousands of USAmericans who died, were disabled for the remainder of their lives or were made seriously ill by the swine flu vaccination program in the 1970s?”
Do you have a reliable source for that? The one I’ve found says “362 GBS [Guillain-Barré syndrome] cases’ occurring during the 6 weeks after influenza vaccination of 45 million persons, an 8.8-fold increase over background rates”, and even that might be an overestimate since Guillain-Barré syndrome hadn’t been fully characterised in 1976:
https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/175/11/1129/140385
I think Craig is too easily lumping those who vehemently refuse vaccines and those who are casting some concern over the safety of vaccines rushed into very widespread use into the same group. Not that long ago, 2008 in fact, the swine flu vaccine, Pandemrix, was similarly rushed into use. The government assured everyone that it was entirely safe and had been thoroughly tested. Pandemrix went on to give over 1200 people in the UK the terrible and incurable condition, narcolepsy.
We now have Pfizer pushing ‘entirely safe’ mRNA vaccines, a company repeatedly fined several billion dollars by US, for amongst other things, misrepresenting the efficacy and safety of its products. The science behind mRNA vaccines hasn’t been adequately tested on animals, let alone humans. In a 2017 a human trial in Germany of an mRNA rabies vaccine, involving only 101 participants, resulted in 10 of them suffering ‘grade 3 events’ – that’s hospitalization. One other participant suffered a ‘more serious’ reaction, it was never classified so could have been grade 4 – disability, or grade 5 – death. Be in no doubt the vaccine damage and deaths are stacking up, only the British government are keeping it all suppressed lest it affect uptake. Fortunately the US is very open on such matters and has a readily accessible adverse reaction portal openvaers.
Use the search facility on the page below, select ‘covid 19’ as vaccine and choose ‘death’. You will find that 482 people died shortly after vaccination with the Moderna or Pfizer products. Granted many were elderly and many would have died anyway, however, change the filter to the 30-60 age group you find 52 died – all in the first two weeks of January, 2021.
https://www.openvaers.com/openvaers
BMJ Pandemrix https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3948
NHS staff told Pandemrix vaccine was safe https://www.buzzfeed.com/shaunlintern/these-nhs-staff-were-told-the-swine-flu-vaccine-was-safe
– “Pandemrix went on to give over 1200 people in the UK the terrible and incurable condition, narcolepsy.”
Please cite your source because the figures I’ve found seem less than a tenth of that.
Your own BMJ citation gives a comparable figure for the whole of Europe, not the UK:
– Over 1300 people are estimated to have been affected among the roughly 30 million vaccinated across Europe,12 including around 100 families in the UK.
– However, GSK and the European Medicines Agency, which licensed Pandemrix, have not accepted that the association with narcolepsy has been proved to be causal, and research on the topic continues. GSK told The BMJ that “further research is needed to confirm what role Pandemrix may have played in the development of narcolepsy among those affected.”
@Clark:
You may be right, but I see no good reason to accept the credibility of your findings over those of sceptics.
Spencer Eagle seems to have hugely exaggerated his own source – you’re OK with that, are you?
So if Tony Blair finds a few conventional bombs in Iraq, it’s OK to call them “weapons of mass destruction” and invade the country, right? And Saddam Hussein threatening some gun-waving jihadis in Benghazi means he’s about to “massacre his own civilians”, does it?
What’s sauce for the goose…
It was Gaddafi and he said no one would be harmed if everyone went home and called for a cease fire that was rejected and country destroyed by the new coalition of the willing.
Indeed it was Gaddafi, thank you for correcting my momentary confusion.
Now start correcting your own misrepresentations. But of course you won’t, because unlike my one they’re deliberate.
Politically speaking I can see the need for vaccines to dispel the virus terrorism, but there would be no need to indemnify the drug companies and NHS if these were placebo vaccines, but I suppose that would give the game away! But medically speaking at least placebo vaccines would be nearly 100% effective, without side-effects, whereas the new experimental ones are officially much less effective, with side-effects!
This is because with such a low mortality rate, almost anything, an apple, is an effective vaccine, because how would you know otherwise? Its a bit like the Simpsons sketch of taking anti-bear attack tablets to ward of bear attacks in the middle of town, and the absence of attacks prove they work. Whereas the official vaccines don’t claim to be anywhere near the 100% effective to provide the necessary protection. That is by their own admission the new vaccines are not effective, and a distraction from other effective health care.
“Virus Terrorism”. Now that is a loaded term which is intelf totally meaningless.
“placebo vaccines” if a vaccine stimulates the production of antibodies and shows significant protection to most of those who had the vaccines from serious complications, then it is not a placebo, you and your CT websites have invented this term.
“Low Mortality rates” this wrong and incomplete statement has been addressed ad nauseam, so stop repeating it, it just wont become true by repetition.
“Simpsons sketch of taking anti-bear attack tablets” such a simplistic false analogy. Whereas bear attacks do not occur in towns infections with SARS-cov2 have been documented at very high rates, up to over 60,000 per day in UK.
Vaccines do not detract from effective health care, it is not either or.
Now Dave, when will you ever tire of repeating the same old nonsense? Are you trying to wear us down?
@ SA
February 8, 2021 at 12:30
“Virus Terrorism”. Now that is a loaded term which is in itself totally meaningless.
For nearly a year the Government/BBC has been promoting 24/7 we’re all going to die propaganda that’s worked on many and subdued the rest.
“placebo vaccines” if a vaccine stimulates the production of antibodies and shows significant protection to most of those who had the vaccines from serious complications, then it is not a placebo, you and your CT websites have invented this term.
I mean by placebo, something harmless dressed up as a vaccine, as taking a ‘vaccine’ reassures those taking it, who have fallen for the propaganda.
“Low Mortality rates” this wrong and incomplete statement has been addressed ad nauseam, so stop repeating it, it just wont become true by repetition.
The average age of a corona death is higher than a non-corona death. Capt. Tom Moore lived to a 100 until he went into hospital and caught and died of covid!!!
“Simpsons sketch of taking anti-bear attack tablets” such a simplistic false analogy. Whereas bear attacks do not occur in towns infections with SARS-cov2 have been documented at very high rates, up to over 60,000 per day in UK.
Yes, the “casedemic”. Otherwise healthy people testing False Positive.
Vaccines do not detract from effective health care, it is not either or.
Effective therapeutics already exist, but suppressed in favour of vaccine gold.
Now Dave, when will you ever tire of repeating the same old nonsense? Are you trying to wear us down?
Do you think “them” will hold a Public Enquiry?
i think there will be 500k dead in the u.s. by feb 20th, dave. that’s not a low mortality rate.
500k is not a mortality “rate” at all, it’s simply a big scary-looking number without context- useful for stoking fear and little else- like the daily UK death totaliser.
– “it’s simply a big scary-looking number without context”
What, like the 650,000 excess deaths of Iraqis after Bush and Blair’s war? Yeah, ignore it.
I really wonder why some of these people even bother reading a human rights blog such as this one.
26 million cases, almost 500k deaths. that’s the context, and those 500k deaths are not indicative of a low mortality rate. it’s a big number, and it’s scary, and it tells anybody that doesn’t have their head stuck up their posterior that there is good reason to be concerned.
“26 million cases, almost 500k deaths. that’s the context”,
No that’s part of the context. The full context is population total and death from all causes and this helps ensure a proportionate and effective response.
Going by ONS data, the area in which I live which has a population of maybe 10,000 souls, has had, up until December last year, 2 fatalities from Covid, same with the neighbouring area that has roughly the same population, and with all fatalities occurring in April 2020.
The local Hospitals catchment area has probably seen about 120 Covid fatalities at the most over a period of very nearly a year now. The Hospital serves a large conurbation of 120,000, and a rural area of maybe the same again.
By any stretch of the imagination, the Covid can hardly be said to be be equal to the hype that the BBC and others have been spreading with such apparent glee. The government, faced with the real possibility that it might be held accountable in the near term, has responded to the hype and thus we are now in the situation of a Dog chasing its tail. The ability to stop and rethink is at this point a forlorn hope.
The UK’s death rate from Covid is the highest of any significant sized nation on earth.
Only the wildest fringe of the libertarian right believes it is nowhere near high enough to warrant preventative measures.
you’re lying again dave, this is on top of the normal expected deaths, and you will pretend that that isn’t true, as you do.
The figures look trivial when the crude mortality rates are used ie. number of deaths divided by total population. Strictly speaking, it shouldn’t really matter what numbers are used as long as the same method is used for all causes of death which I have done in the chart linked in my following post for the 5 leading causes of death in 2019 all of which are less than that of covid in 2020..
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/sarscov2-outbreak-on-isle-of-barra-in-scotland/#post-65227
If you are going to insist on using deaths/total population I’m going to insist on doing that for the 5 leading causes of deaths in 2019. All causes of death look trivilal by that methodology. Tell the approx 4000 women who die each year from breast cancer that their deaths are trivial compared to the total population and that we are wasting our money on breast screening.
Over 90% is pretty good by any measure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Craig_Murray#%22Conspiracy_theorist%22
More of a tangent than off-topic but if you need a laugh, have a look at these exchanges on the subject of “Craig Murray – conspiracy theorist”. Perhaps someone will recognise the prose of some of the contributors.
I did not have a laugh. I was rather perturbed by that nonsense. To deviate from the script you really need courage strength and conviction. Wish CM all the best.
Perhaps you lack Wiki-mojo?
– “Perhaps someone will recognise the prose of some of the contributors.”
Squeeth, I have a strong objection to snide insinuations; if you think that some of the Wikipedia editors on that talk page section are some of the commenters on this thread, I think you should name the relevant usernames.
My own concern is that so many commenters here parrot from other websites contrived nonsense nearly devoid of factual content that to have any validity would require vast sections of society all over the world, and in particular the entire worldwide scientific and medical communities, to be acting under the control of an extremely powerful yet entirely unnamed conspiracy, while advancing no evidence whatsoever for that conspiracy. Such narratives are most aptly characterised as conspiracy theory; they really consist of little but this assumption of overarching conspiracy, lent superficial plausibility by relentless cherry-picking, misrepresentation, snide insinuation and outright dishonesty.
Craig is a whistleblower who has exposed various actual, specific conspiracies through his insider contacts, his careful and vigorous investigation and his forensic reasoning. The prevalence of such aforesaid conspiracy theory in the comments section may provide false confirmation to those swayed by the many establishment pundits who would discredit Craig and his blog.
The Wikipedia Talk page illustrates the problem. Someone anonymously edited the opening section to describe Craig as a conspiracy theorist. Thankfully, experienced and established Wikipedia editors removed this unwarranted slur, and incidentally had a discussion about what constitutes a reliable source. The one name there that I recognise from this blog’s comments section is Kashmiri, who seems to have learned the Wikipedia system commendably and is using that knowledge to protect the entry about Craig.
With great skill you jump to the wrong conclusion; I wondered if any aficionados here could sniff out the establishment stooges trying to smear Craig.
PS I have the honour of being Keith-264.
So, those who will have taken the trouble to observe modus operandi of government, and organs of information dispersal over the last 30 or 40 years, especially with regard to failed policies, may well be noticing familiar behaviour today ? Notice in particular the increasing use of the, in this context, weasel words Should, and Probably.
The Oxford vaccine has been all but abandoned by the South Africans, and combined with some large European players mandating that it not be given to the over 65 age group, one might conclude that by the end of the week it may well have been relegated to the irrelevant vault.
Pity really, as the Oxford people were the only ones offering the vaccine cost, three bucks a shot, as opposed to the Phizer/Moderna mob who were charging about 40 bucks per shot. No doubt the vendors of the $40 injections will be seeing increased profits as a competitor is maybe kicked to the kerb until Autumn at least, but its noticeable that no studies have been carried out to determine if the efficacy of their products is any better when confronted by a now fast mutating target.
Of course, whilst we can all hope that this is only a minor bump in the road that leads to a victory for the ‘Experts’, it may well be in order to consider the possibility that all the vaccine variants now on offer are shown to offer very much less than the hope they inspired.
No doubt the ‘Program’ will be persisted with even it it does effectively become only of marginal value. Its unlikely in the extreme that modern politicians would be brave enough to even skirt the realm of Blood Sweat, and Tears.
Their policies of open borders, half-assed lockdowns, eat out to help out, etc, have given us the world’s highest Covid death rate. So by Casual Observer terms they’ve been “braver” than most.
How many people have actually died from Covid? Not died with it but it being a major influence on the cause of death. This is a very important question because at the beginning of the outbreak the government were predicating 150,000 deaths from lockdowns alone if not mitigated (I have seen no mitigation). There is now also the concern that the “vaccines” are causing deaths.
We know most people have no or mild symptoms. Someone that therefore dies from a stroke or heart attack or hit by a bus cannot be said to have died of Covid just because they tested positive, including false positives, the deceased does not even have to test positive for it to go on the Death Certificate and become a government statistic.
My impression is if the patient was not taken to an ICU then there is a reasonable assumption that an admission to ICU would not have assisted the patients chance of surviving or they had a DNR.
ICU’s have never been at 100% occupancy, anyone who needed a bed got one, the Nightingale Hospitals were closed down because they were not needed and the 50,000 volunteer ex NHS staff were deterred from assisting with the crisis because of unreasonable bureaucratic demands placed on the recruitment process.
Many of the ICU patients had severe co-morbidities.
Are we vaccinating against a virus to save lives when it is the restrictions that are causing the excess deaths which are wrongly being attributed to the virus.?
So how many have actually died from Covid and how many from the lockdowns and now vaccines?
Worldometers
To 7th Feb 2021, UK
112,465
The NHS report the deaths of “patients who have died in hospitals in England and either tested positive for COVID-19 or where no positive test result was received for COVID-19, but COVID-19 was mentioned on their death certificate.”
To 7th Feb 20121, England
76,080
(Data: NHS / ONS)
ICNARC Report ICU deaths and Acute Hospital Deaths
To 5th Feb 2021, England, Wales & Northern Ireland
ICU: 10,746
Acute Hospital: 853
(Data: ICNARC)
Care Homes
To 29th Jan 2021, England
24,919
(Data: CQC / ONS)
It should be noted that there has been a significant rise in deaths in Care Homes since the roll out of the “vaccines” which has not dipped with the rest of the population following the annual winter sickness period, the trend continues.
Some of your questions have been answered here many times, so no need to ask again, just look at these answers. As to all the other questions, I take it you assume that most people in the NHS and in government are much less intelligent than you and have really not asked these questions. Alternatively I think you think they know but have a secret agenda. All in all futile.
SA
I fully understand that you are not able to offer a sensible explanation or answer to the dilemma, neither am I, the data and facts are just not available to understand how many have been infected by Covid and how many have died because of it.
But what separates us is that you use the government’s bogus figures to extract bogus rates of infection and death and then to put the cherry on the top you claim to be following a scientific method.
Quite remarkable!
The only thing here which is “quite remarkable” is the level of stupidity required, to genuinely believe in and promote some vast conspiracy – involving every government and medical agency IN THE WORLD – without having the slightest scrap of evidence.
Same answer, yet again. For the UK, please reference this link:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210206193636/https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
Observe the 2nd graph, “Daily New Cases in the United Kingdom”, and the 5th graph, “Daily New Deaths in the United Kingdom”. On both graphs, please tick the box “7 day moving average”, which adds a line smoothing out the effects of weekends upon collection of statistics.
On the deaths graph, observe the shape and timing of the hump that peaks in April. The deaths begin in the first week of March. They are rising at their most rapid rate in the first week of April. They peak before mid April, and then tail away, reaching very low levels by August.
If lockdown were the cause we would expect deaths to start to increase after it was implemented on March 23, and rise gradually, possibly reaching a steady state during lockdown, and falling only when lockdown was ended on July 4. But the deaths curve is nothing like this. Not only did deaths begin before the lockdown, they tail away asymptotically as would be expected for the distribution of a natural phenomena, and extend well into August.
I have ignored test results for the peak in spring 2020 because of the shortage of test kits at that time.
Now please examine the autumn/winter surge on both graphs. Note the two humps in each. Note that the peaks and troughs in the infections curve precede the peaks and troughs in the deaths curve by about two weeks, the most frequently observed duration between infection by and death from covid-19. Note again that deaths are already falling, though the lockdown remains in force.
This simple examination of graph shapes requires no expert opinion; anyone can see for themselves. It demonstrates that infection testing must be reasonably accurate, or the measured prevalence of infection could not predict the death rate as it does. It shows that the deaths are caused by covid not lockdown, because the graph shapes do not match the lockdown durations, but do match the preceding infection prevalence and common prognoses of covid-19.
The graph shapes also demonstrate that social restrictions work; all three lockdowns arrested the rising infection prevalence and thereby prevented far greater suffering and death.
I think you need to be careful not to make a circular argument. If these graphs are the evidence cases translate to deaths after two weeks, then obviously when you turn it around and say they are a predictive tool it’s going to work
The NHS and Government both fit the definitions of bodies that have grown to the extent that their primary objective is their own survival and retention of credibility.
Trusting in cock up rather than conspiracy being the order of the day, its most likely that the folk you would have us implicitly trust are at this point concerned with retaining their reputations, and hoping to blunder into a situation saving course, in equal measure.
It would be wise at this point, if not long since, to spend time doing ones own research, rather than uncritically accepting the official line.
“… Spend time doing one’s own research…”
Do let us know how your own vaccine research is getting on then. Any promising preliminary results? Exciting new breakthroughs? Fascinating insights? The world awaits with baited breath!
Well I did do my own research. I found that covid-19 hasn’t been a problem in China since last May. I found that New Zealand has had only 25 deaths. I found that there are neither social restrictions nor covid in the Isle of Man. I found that all of these used strong travel restrictions and quarantine to successfully wipe out covid-19, and it takes only a couple of months.
Sadly, I have also found that when those who accuse others of “uncritically accepting the official line” recommend “doing ones own research”, they actually mean shopping around minor websites and simply believing whichever most appeal, rather than actually searching out facts and applying critical thinking. They end up even more misled than those who “uncritically accept the official line”.
Confirmation Bias ?
It is possible to fight against it, indeed, in the internet age its obligatory to try to do so to the best of ones ability. 🙂
Still dragging that one round, like quite a few others here. Nothing will convince you, because facts are merely props in your world view.
Can you please go to https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ where week by week TOTAL deaths in participating countries are compared with last 5 years average. There is clear correlation between high number of COVID deaths and EXCESS mortality rates!
Week 1,2,3 of 2021 in England were classed as EXTRAORDINARY HIGH EXCESS, Week 4 VERY HIGH EXCESS rate.(Scotland doing much better hoovering between low, moderate,high and week 4 low excess death rate.
In January we had highest recorded Covid19 daily death rates and as result excess death rate was EXTRAORDINARY HIGH EXCESS,
It has to be scrolled down to get country maps
My proposition is that your Covid deaths are in fact lockdown deaths and therefore fuel the excess deaths, your charts do not dispel that possibility.
And for your theory to be correct you will need a lot of forged death certificates by fraudulent doctors. Easy.
For goodness sake why do you bring your conspiracy theories into the debate?
Forged Death Certificates? Fraudulent Doctors?
What is the matter with you? The government require doctors to put Covid on the death certificate if there has been a positive result to a test within a month of death or there is a suspicion that the person Covid might have had the virus.
Even if the test returns a false positive, onto the death certificate it goes and into the government stats.
No one but you is dreaming up these conspiracy theories, this is government policy. Please stop suggesting that all doctors are bent, it is not them that are twisted, they are performing the job that the government are instructing them to do. To do otherwise they risk their job.
– “The government require doctors to put Covid on the death certificate if there has been a positive result to a test within a month of death or there is a suspicion that the person Covid might have had the virus.”
I think you will find that is not true; it is a rule for a different set of statistics, not an instruction to doctors. But it is a misapprehension vigorously promoted by conspiracy theory sites. ET has linked the actual “attributing cause of death” instructions; it gives examples where covid was present or a covid test result was positive, but covid should not be recorded as the cause.
But it is irrelevant anyway, unless you are suggesting that getting tested itself is often lethal within the next 28 days, since the chances of dying in any given 28 days is relatively small. Something is greatly increasing the overall death rate, but only for short periods of about a month, and that something has now been arrested by social restrictions three times, as a respiratory infection would be…
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck…
Mushy are you saying that if we did not have lock down we would not have had extra deaths. You don’t trust Covid numbers, extra deaths, correlation between infections hospitalisation and deaths. My link clearly shows that we had highest daily and weekly death rates in January and same weeks total excess deaths were extraordinarily high. Same applies for April. For your proposition to be valid you have to dismiss all above and answer why would lock down kill so many people?
I am so confident in my theory, that falling infection will result in less deaths in 2 weeks time and excess deaths from
extraordinary high will go down to high.
“What is the matter with you? The government require doctors to put Covid on the death certificate if there has been a positive result to a test within a month of death”
Nope, they absolutely DO NOT. That is utter bollocks and a fabrication. Please stop insisting this is the case, you are completely wrong., incorrect, confused, misinformed, misled, erroneous and inaccurate.
“No one but you is dreaming up these conspiracy theories,”
No one but you is dreaming up the above nonsense Mushy.
“or there is a suspicion that the person Covid might have had the virus.”
It isn’t a requirement from government or anyone. A clinical suspicion Mushy, is based on a clinical picture. Particularly the ground glass appearance on imaging but also D-dimers, clinical presentation, contacts, shortness of breath, low oxygen saturations, arterial blood gases, high temerature etc etc. It is perfectly reasonably if someone who presents with a typical covid picture and dies to make the diagnosis on clinical grounds. As it is also for other conditions and always has been. It will usually be followed up with a swab result.
To put things simply, now the main objective has been achieved, the removal of Trump (albeit still fighting) the lockdowns should end, with the resignation/scapegoating of BJ, hence the vaccine gold rush, otherwise known as the pay-off for providing a medical smokescreen for election fraud, with billions of vaccines payed for but going unused, before the hammer comes down on the public extravaganza.
You’ve gone right doon the rabbit hole now. Was that the blue pill?
WOW The whole world conspired to …. Ian is right I am not going there
Dave like his hero Trump believes in natural therapeutics with chloroquine and intravenous bleach.
And Sunbeds and UV lights
You forgot to incorporate how Jews are using laser cannons from space, to start the California wildfires, into your conspiracy theory there, Dave. Q will be very disappointed with you!
Trump as you know never said bleach and shows you are not a genuine witness. He was thinking out loud following a presentation prepared by Homeland Security. I thought using them was risky, but he was surrounded by saboteurs, and so I do suspect a set up, presenting a certain therapy in a way to draw him into saying disinfectant.
Suspected because disinfectant can be spun into bleach in everyday use, but of course disinfectant isn’t the same as bleach and wasn’t used that way in the presentation. Disinfect is the opposite to infect. So how do you disinfect an infected person and this can be done with (maybe) light therapy, which was what he was talking about.
Forest fires are not usual in summer with dry tinder, but there’s limited scope to spread when forest management provides forest clearance/firewalls, but incompetence often compounded by climate change dogma and election fraud in a Democrat controlled state results in poor management and terrible fires. Maybe not, but more plausible that you’re anti-Semitic suggestion, but you’re seldom on the pitch.
He was doing his decision making as he always did – on the fly, trusting his gut, with zero study and operating with very poor intellect. It wasn’t me who mentioned the bleach either, if you notice.
But since we’re on the subject, how do you explain away Trump’s great idea about getting a powerful UV light up inside someone? That was at the same presser, where he was clearly on a roll.
Surprised you’re not on board with the Jewish laser cannon though… I thought that was accepted fact.
Good grief, you are doubling down the fantasy. Great idea, he meant swallow a bottle of disinfectant. That’ll work, especially as covid doesn’t exist and he wasn’t in hospital and blah blah blah.
He never said swallow it either. I don’t know, but the light therapy involves shining the light on the body, and this goes through the body zapping the infection. I agree he was ranging far and wide risking a slip up that would be spun by a hateful media, rather that sticking to the already existing therapeutics, probably due to being confined to the White House and TV broadcasts due to the ban on public assembly.
Here is a reminder of this very low point in a presidency full of low points.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/24/trump-disinfectant-bleach-coronavirus-claims-reaction
So SA, after watching that, do you still say he said bleach?
Disinfectant? Cleaning the body? Shining rays inside. An 8 year old might speak like that but a POTUS?
So you agree he didn’t say it after you said he did, but as you can’t even admit to that ‘mistake’ you now say his comments were those of an 8 year old, when it was clear what he was saying, even in the very edited hostile out of context clip reported by Guardian.
Dave
It was very widely understood by many that bleach is a widely used household disinfectant and cleaning agent. Trumps misguided and ignorant off the cuff remark has been widely interpreted that this referred to household bleach by journalists and by household bleach manufacturers and health agencies and rebuttals were issues to prevent ignorant people from following the advice given by the president. Go have your fight with them and try to convince them. This is a typical diversion and we lose sight that this dangerous ignoramus who was president is being defended by the likes of you.
So you were about to drink bleach but was saved by MSM just in time?
Dave
people like you might get that idea of disinfecting lungs and use it as therapeutic. The rest of us had a laugh and endless memes were created.
I call ad hominem and claim my 5 pounds ?
Can one of the people who believe in the official narrative make comment on the fact that the average age of a person that has died with covid in the UK is slightly higher than the average life expectancy? (82.4 years with covid, 81.4 years all cause mortality)
Surely if it was a disease of high consequence the average age of a victim would be significantly lower than the average life expectancy?
For example, the average age of a person who died from Spanish flu was 28, and life expectancy was around 56 at that time.
Which “official narrative” is that?
Also noted that you don’t consider the life of an elderly person to be of high consequence.
Interesting new diversion.
Yes truth is stranger than fiction, but as the average age of a corona death is higher than a non-corona death it sadly means effective vaccines will cost lives!
Yes you can do that sort of things with averages. If you’re down the pub with your mates and Elon Musk walks in, the average wealth in the pub suddenly goes off the scale.
It’s a disease of high consequence because you can’t leave a couple of million people gasping for breath for a fortnight while a load of them die, not even if most of them are doddery old gits and too fat*. You have to at least try to help, even if only to alleviate the suffering, but you can’t fit a tenth of that number into existing health facilities.
* Or at least I couldn’t; maybe you’d be fine with it, but then I don’t know what you’d be doing here at a blog that objects to extraordinary rendition and waterboarding.
Maybe you’d like a job going into their homes and putting them out of their misery? because that’d be better than just letting them choke. Not sure you’d deserve PPE though 🙂
– “Can one of the people who believe in the official narrative…”
And fuck the official narrative. The original official narrative was to let it rip through the population and kill as many as it could, and it’s not a lot better now.
Babies, young children no many young people etc do not die from Covid but do die normally
Big majority of Covid deaths are over 70. To push average but one Year it is not really a miracle or suspicious
Assuming that this is a genuine question. The life expectancy at the age of 80 for males is not 0 it is 8.4 years, and still 6 years at 85 years and even at 100 years is 2 years. So you just don’t pop your clogs when you reach a certain age you know.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/datasets/singleyearlifetablesuk1980to2018/singleyearlifetableswales/singleyearlifetablesw.xlsx
So looking at it this way many of those who died of covid-19 would have lived for several years of not for the virus.
I should add that these figures are specific to each year and the general trend has been small yearly increments with exceptions in years like 2017 with more deaths due respiratory infections in the elderly. The figures I quoted are from 2019 and the figures for 2020 will doubtless show a significant drop in life expectancy of the elderly but the figures will be available in autumn 2021.
Ask yourself the same question in different order.
Why is average life expectancy lower than average age of Covid death? Might make more sense.