Conspiracy Theorists, Why is Westminster Lifting All COVID Restrictions?


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  • #79825 Reply
    Pigeon English
    Guest

    SA

    Brilliant article.

    Antivaxxers I know are definitely part of “Wellness and Yoga” comunity” and reasoning evidence and sarcasm did not help one iota.
    They could not understand basic concept of probability.

    I hope you keep posting since you are one of my favorite commentators!

    Funny enough ET few days ago asked where are you ?.

    #79826 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    So for Wokingham (near me), yesterday, that means one person in 687, newly tested positive for covid.
    This is ludicrous, it has been going on for almost two years.

    At least one in seven of the U.K. population has now has covid.
    When will it end?

    #79829 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    J, I am glad you’re still attempting to engage (assuming that you’ll actually pay attention to this comment), but the mods are correct to enforce some structure upon the discussion. It is an unfair technique to simply drop your former argument and change the subject onto various other ones. This tactic is routinely used in the promotion of conspiracy theory – one assertion of the overall theory gets refuted, so instead of acknowledging that refutation and accepting that it has been eliminated, the conspiracy theorists act like they never raised it in the first place by raising several new ones instead (“Gish galloping“), protecting each of the weak assertions in the same manner in turn, as if a load of superficially plausible assertions added up to proof.

    I find moderation at this site to be fair, and I fully expect that if you exercise self-discipline, adhering to valid methods of argument and accepting refutation when it has been reasonably demonstrated, the moderators will publish your contributions.

    #79834 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    In the U.K. we have had a few Lock-Downs, a bit of mask-wearing and a bit of vaccination.
    Recently, all precautions have been thrown in the canal.
    Now we no longer bat an eyelid at forty five thousand new covid positives cases in a day.
    We also, no longer bat an eyelid at 150 deaths a day.

    I am convinced that this pattern is no natural.

    #79836 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    The U.K. covid positive figures have been remorselessly going up for the last three months.
    We are now at the third highest peak of the pandemic but it is still going up?

    #79838 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    J, please also refrain from exploiting Craig’s plight in that manner (Oct 18, 13:30); “Craig has been censored, therefore it is unfair to censor Meee!

    Craig has always made his points with evidence and reasoning; he has accepted refutation on the few occasions it has occurred, and either retracted or edited his post. Only two of his posts have been actually censored; his arguments are still very well supported by the many posts that remain. Rather, he has been made an example of, to discourage others.

    And try to show some consideration for the moderators and site admin. You are pushing opinions that the best evidence shows to be potentially fatal, and you do so with unfair and invalid techniques of argument, linking to sources that rely on evidence that has been shown to be distorted and sometimes even fraudulent. Moderators have an ethical responsibility to the public. Please stop trying to hang on Craig’s coattails.

    #79840 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Eastern Europe and Turkey are doing very badly.
    Russia now has about one thousand covid deaths a day.
    Russia now has the mostly daily covid cases that is had had during the pandemic.
    France is just starting to uptick, too.

    Something is drastically wrong, in Europe most people 3/4 of population has been double jabbed, yet still cases numbers are relentlessly rising?

    #79856 Reply
    Pigeon English
    Guest

    M N

    Without mentioning number of tests per day or per million in countries quoted, you can not come to your conclusion? I can state that NHS is the best in Europe based on your data. So many infected people and so “few” deaths.

    Are there any other factors to take into consideration and how to put them all together and come to most scientifically and statistically based conclusion? No wonder people study statistics at Uni level!

    #79861 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    The only guess I can come to P.E. is that far more are tested in the United Kingdom, than in other lands.
    So, almost certainly in other countries there are many millions who have had some sort of covid but these persons are not counted.
    Yesterday France has eleven times fewer covid positive cases than U.K. and eleven times fewer deaths.
    This to me seems strange, similar populations with a shared tunnel, so our very near friends, yet completely different recent figures.
    The U.K. is of course much more densely populated, so more prone to disease.
    We got the Delta earlier, as millions of people cross from India to U.K. every year.
    But U.K. now has more covid cases than even India. India has one and a quarter billion people, it makes you think – apples and oranges.

    #79864 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    +49,156

    so, today. 18/10/2021 the U.K. announces not far short of fifty thousand extra covid positives.

    I think another Lock-Down is coming soon?

    #79901 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Two accounts from UK doctors’ Twitter streams. Please read the whole threads:

    @seahorse4000 – acute medicine doctor – 18 Oct 2021

    Seeing working age people with long covid who have nothing I can treat but are too breathless & tired to function or work, waiting for long covid clinic appointments. Confused & angry 45 yr old plasterers and busdrivers, “never been sick in my life” types. Double vaccinated covid was a rarity in July but it’s not now. Someone dies of covid every shift, usually weeks after admission. There are sick children with covid on the children’s ward. We’ve had sick prem babies on neonates after early sections to save mum on ICU with covid.

    Andy Conway Morris – Academic ICU consultant – 17 Oct 2021

    …around half our level 3 (ventilator) beds are filled with patients with COVID. A lot of the patients are double vaccinated, and pressures are rising from other conditions. This is in significant part because we have high levels of community transmission – under conditions of high transmission even small percentage of vaccine-breakthrough infections will be severe, a small percentage of a very large number is still a large number. […] waning immunity from vaccination is a major part of this […] But it’s not just vaccination, people in the U.K. are behaving as if the pandemic is over – crowded, under-ventilated indoor spaces are great places to spread COVID. […] The patients with COVID are not patients we would have otherwise seen with other conditions – they are additional…

    #79902 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    J, this one’s for you:

    @seahorse4000 – acute medicine doctor – 12 Oct 2021

    There are some really charming anti-vaxxers on my last tweet, laughing at dead pregnant women, threatening me with nuremberg trials…

    J, I’m not saying you’d act like quite that (though you did make some quite nasty accusations). But do please think about what sort of crowd you’re adding your voice to.

    #79910 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Michael, you’ve been wondering why there is so much more covid in the UK than in other European countries. Here’s an analysis that I find convincing. Summary – lots of people mixing indoors with poor ventilation; waning protection due to early vaccine roll-out; lots of transmission through schools and young people; hardly anyone is wearing masks any more:

    John Burn-Murdoch, statistician for the Financial Times:

    #79930 Reply
    glenn_nl
    Guest

    Clark: “But do please think about what sort of crowd you’re adding your voice to.”

    That’s another thing. It isn’t pro-vaccine, pro-mask people marching through streets, intimidating kids in schools, sending death threats to scientists and politicians, and screaming at people to put a mask ON. No – that sort of violence, real or threatened, is exclusively from the denialists.

    Which is strange, because – as the title of this thread suggests – restrictions are lifted now. Denialists can carry on exactly as they want, and indeed they do – I was upstairs on a bus a couple of weeks ago up north. Of the 10 of us there, 3 were wearing masks (including myself and the misses). So why are they so fighting mad at people who still take precautions? Why do they want to attack vaccine and testing centres?

    Why are denialists not only ignorant and dishonest, but aggressive with it?

    Incidentally, I was deeply disappointed to see ‘J’ earlier, simply ignoring the discussion he had started. A few of you had obviously gone to some effort to research his own stated points and references, and then he just ignores it and runs away from it! Frankly, I was shocked at the dishonesty and cowardice, and from a denialist too. And then simply to try to move onto other points instead – shocking, and totally unexpected.

    #79933 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Glenn_nl, 16:12 – indeed. The denialists and trivialisers would never admit it, but they’re also in the same camp as the UK government and its BBC mouthpiece, which is the subject of my next comment…

    #79935 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    The BBC is at long last reporting on Delta variant AY.4.2, but they’re playing it down – the BBC really is just a government propaganda channel these days.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58965650

    Things that are wrong with this report:

    • The BBC claims 6% of “current infections”, but by using “latest official data” the BBC manages to report a figure that is a month out of date. Latest sequencing figures (which will become the official figure once they have worked their way through various offices) is 10%.
    • The BBC claim that transmission advantage is 10% over standard Delta, but the best figures give 15% to 25%.
    • The BBC claim “it is not yet considered a variant of concern, or a variant under investigation” – of course it bloody is, all descendent variants of Delta are variants of concern!
    • The BBC claim “experts say it is unlikely to take off in a big way…” but it is already taking off in a big way; you only need to look at the sequencing data – the official data will jump from 6% to 10% when the next monthly report comes out. Of course, you can always find an “expert” who says the opposite if you make enough ‘phone calls, and the BBC have found…
    • Professor Bollox, sorry Balloux, but has picked up the nickname Bollox in the trade because his predictions have been so poor. This is a prof who advised against early lockdown that would have been shorter, far more effective and saved tens of thousands of lives.

    Incredibly, you’d get a better idea of what’s going on in the UK from the Israeli press; the Times of Israel covered AY.4.2 far more accurately, and over a week earlier.

    #79940 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Then there’s this, from the same link:

    “A few cases have also been identified in US. There had been some in Denmark but new infections with AY.4.2 have since gone down.”

    Even Prof. Balloux admits that this is bunk, but he seems to like speaking in code:

    “The situation in Denmark has to be interpreted carefully. The population size of SARS-CoV-2 is much smaller than in the UK. In small populations of constant size, a ~10% selective advantage is not necessarily sufficient to counteract demographic stochasticity.”

    More simply put, we cannot draw conclusions from the Denmark data because very few cases have been found so far. That is unsurprising because, not only does Denmark have far fewer infections in total, they also do far less sequencing.

    But worldwide, absolute numbers of AY.4.2 are more than tripling each month, which equates to about 25% transmission advantage. Why on Earth ignore the world data and instead draw attention to Denmark, unless you wanted to play it down?

    Going on UK growth rates, AY-4-2 will amount to 50% of infections by around Christmas.

    #79929 Reply
    glenn_nl
    Guest

    The Big Lie in the denialist movement is that independent youtubers, bloggers and so on are completely uninterested in ratings – indeed, anything but the sacred truth. That they are not inhibited by numbers of hits, advertising, and the generation of forwardings and references according to the content of individual posts, in the way cable companies and “corporate news” supposedly is.

    The corporate news media is certainly interested in how many people stay on for the next segment, and through a set of adverts, and usually they’ll wait 24 hours for the data to come in. With these independent postcasters/youtubers, they are intimately familiar with the results, pretty much in real time. Lifetime experts on the subject wouldn’t be putting out the number of episodes on vaccines and their effects as these people.

    It takes a fair amount of gullibility to imagine that the “vaccine scepticism” isn’t being driven by hits by these supposed independent commentators. They want response. Suggesting that the scientists are pretty much correct, given the current data and understanding at any point, just isn’t going to get the response these grifters crave.

    #79959 Reply
    J
    Guest

    If I mention the Harvard study again, which you censored all mention of, will that be censored too under the grounds that it is not conspiracy theory and therefore impermissible in this thread? Who exactly is running this facade?


    [ Mod: To reiterate the advice given to you
    earlier:

    As these contributions aren’t relevant to the thread title (the lifting of covid restrictions by Westminster) and don’t follow on from any earlier post in this thread, J should create a new topic with an appropriate title for each separate issue, to avoid multiple overlapping discussions on a single thread.

    Regards. ]

    #79960 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Glenn_nl, it’s surreal. We’ve got the government playing it down and doing the minimum possible, and the denialist movement actually believe that they’re opposing the government!

    #79994 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    J, a little advice. Try tying up some of the many loose ends you left flapping before suggesting yet another related but tangential topic. The mods here are by now very familiar with the techniques used for the promotion of conspiracy theory. These are the discussion forums, and the objective of discussion is to collate each other’s knowledge and understanding towards consensus, not to railroad people into extreme and misleading beliefs through the constructions of a mosaic made from cherry-picked soundbites; that’s for politicians and propagandists 🙂

    #79996 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    J, there are plenty of your earlier points that you could pick up on. For instance, you cited a 1.4% death rate in part of India as evidence for a miracle cure, but New York and Spain had much lower death rates without your miracle cure. Do you now accept that maybe your cure isn’t such a miracle after all, or at least that your citation wasn’t good evidence for it?

    …’cos if you don’t, we all know what will happen; you’ll just resurrect the same claim later (when you want to distract from a different refutation) and we’ll have to go through the whole tedious business again. Sorry; seen that technique before, friend.

    #80008 Reply
    SA
    Guest

    P.E.
    Thanks for the kind words, it is also nice to be missed.?

    It would be good to know whether the denialists have any faith at all in any of the institutions of society. I would like to know whether people like J for example ever use the NHS. If they do, then they must have some degree of trust in doctors and medicine. By all means you have to ask questions when it relates to your health and offered explanations and alternatives, but then why assume the worse when it comes to the pandemic.

    J’s comments a bit earlier were based on the question of ivermectin and this had followed amongst conspiracists from previous other fads with chloroquine and others. The theory goes that governments the world over have plotted for the benefit of pharmaceuticals, to prevent the use of simple cheap available medicines so that pharma can develop more expensive medicines. This argument is nonsensical and betrays a basic ignorance of how Medici and how doctors work. For a start, two interventions in the treatment of severely ill patients with covid have been decanetgasone and the use of blood thinning agents. Nobody tried to suppress those.

    #80001 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    [ MOD:   Michael –  as has been explained so often to you,  merely posting a series of news clippings is not what these forums are for.   Perhaps you would like another few days away to reflect on this? ]

    Things in England may be about to tighten up, as covid is getting out of control.
    Cases and deaths are soaring.
    “Sajid Javid will lead a televised coronavirus press conference live tonight,
    amid fears over a winter surge of the virus.”

    • This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by degmod.
    • This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by degmod.
    • This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by degmod.
    #80025 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    On speaking, yesterday, to a G.P., that G.P. told me that she thinks that our government have but one route in mind, that route is herd immunity, she thinks they want people to catch covid, so it is mostly all over by the New Year and commerce can regain full steam ahead. One of my friends, told me this morning, that his ten year old granddaughter now has covid, and is resting at home but not ill.
    Round our neck of the woods, covid is completely out of control, mainly with school children, their family and family acquaintances. In our county not many are seriously ill but thousands each week are testing positive.

    I shall be watching Mr.Javid, this evening to see what he has to say.
    They seem to have given up with the daily covid briefings from Ten Downing Street.
    I expect they stopped or greatly reduced the briefings because they want people to get back to work and pretend it is all over.

    #80048 Reply
    Pigeon English
    Guest

    Michael

    It looks like this is “new normal” adopted around most of the Europe!

    Number of deaths each day might be the difference in policy and measures taken.

    This time last year, were interesting times but with different vaccines involved and no measures and different vaccines % uptake across Europe will be even more interesting to make sense.

    I am personally curious about performance between low vaccinated East Europe and highly vaccinated Ireland and Denmark

    Disclosure (since I am double Vaxxed I go with Ireland and Denmark)

    • This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by degmod.
    • This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by modbot.
    #80050 Reply
    glenn_nl
    Guest

    Not just Europe – a friend in Moscow told me today that cases in Moscow are going up alarmingly – 35,000 cases a day in the state, and word on the street is that there’ll be a “severe quarantine” imposed sometime soon

    #80057 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Glenn_nl – “in Moscow […] word on the street is that there’ll be a “severe quarantine” imposed sometime soon”

    It’s in the news:

    CNN: – On Tuesday Moscow’s mayor ordered all unvaccinated residents over 60, as well as unvaccinated people “suffering from chronic diseases,” to remain home for four months until late February as the city grapples with a growing crisis.

    France24Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday backed the Cabinet’s proposal to declare a non-working week and keep Russian workers away from their offices as coronavirus deaths surged to another daily record.

    #80060 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Here’s a thought. Look at this archived snapshot of Worldometers UK covid figures:

    https://web.archive.org/web/20211019214928/https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

    Coronavirus Cases: 8,541,192
    Deaths: 138,852
    Recovered: 6,991,909

    8,541,192 – (6,991,909 + 138,852) = 1,410,431

    Obviously, a lot of survivors aren’t completely recovering. The faster people get infected, the faster that figure grows. This will be a major drain on the economy that the government thinks it’s protecting.

    #80061 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    This terrific World Wide Spike in covid must surely put the mockers on twenty five thousand people grouping at COP26.
    Lunacy on steroids. We have got to stop assembling in large groups of people with whom we do not normally meet.
    Eastern Europe is doing very badly, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Romania |¦|
    but Western Europe is also upticking, look at the graphs most are curling up, ready for take-off.

    #80071 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Michael, I’m not happy about attending with infection figures so high. But this is the most important UN Climate Change Conference for six years, when the Paris Agreement was adopted, and it follows the publication of the Working Group 1 section of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, “Code Red for Humanity”.

    I have to attend.

    #80086 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    @J

    You might want to take a look at this .pdf from the Nebraska Gov. It was in response to a request from the CEO of their health dept for clarification on the off-label prescription of ivermectin, hydroxychloriquine and other meds for covid. It’s a fairly good summary of what is and isn’t known about both of these medications. You might enjoy reading it/skimming it.

    #80120 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    A town near me is going bonkers with Covid positive cases, Wokingham, Berkshire.
    The coronavirus infection rate, that is, the number of people who have tested positive per 100,000, is the highest it has ever been in Wokingham.
    The infection rates reached their peak in the area at 619.2 confirmed cases per 100,000 people.

    I am not sure how they can say they reached their peak, those figures have been rising for weeks, I expect they will go even higher.
    They are now doing surge testing in playing fields.
    This is a very high income area, so it will not be poverty or overcrowding.
    It is thought it is being generated in the schools. This country is becoming Plague Island.

    I still really struggle to understand why we so much worse, than our near neighbours.

    #80127 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    ET, thanks for the Nebraska link. I have read about half so far; it seems a thorough and well reasoned summary.

    #80136 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    “I still really struggle to understand why we so much worse, than our near neighbours.”

    My guesses are (1) the UK started vaccination earliest, so immunity is fading in more people earlier than elsewhere; (2) Westminster removed all restrictions, whereas most EU countries still require masks in closed spaces and restrict the size of indoor gatherings among other things; (3) other countries have paid more attention to ventilation; (4) Westminster’s schools policy is guaranteed to spread infection, as you’ve pointed out yourself; (5) UK testing can’t be targeted well because infection prevalence is too high – other countries find a greater proportion of their positive cases with less tests because their trace-and-test is more successful.

    But these are the issues covered by the links myself and others have been posting in reply to your repeated questions on this subject.

    #80140 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Clark, now topping fifty thousand positive cases a day.
    I think it is almost time for the next “PLAN”

    The JCVI The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, ought to take some blame, they would not allow secondary children to be vaccinated. Now we know most cases are in the under twenties. If these secondary school children had been vaccinated in the School Summer Holidays, a lot of this nonsense might have been side-stepped.
    However that would not have stopped my mate’s ten year old granddaughter catching it at school.

    #80144 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Another reason we most likely fared less well, is the terrible state of the nation’s health. More FAT people in the U.K. than any other European country, terrible addiction to cheap factory-produced food; more diabetics and getting more all the time. Diabetes almost did not exist until Europe discovered America, then we brought back many items:
    Potato, Cocaine, Maize, Tomato, Vanilla, Brazil nuts, Turkey, Sugar, tobacco.

    Without some of these items, we would not have had American Factory Food.
    Less people would be so ill. So many millions would not have died from cancer, from diabetes.
    America has a lot to answer for. But the real, real, culprit is always greed.

    #80150 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Yes, greed is a problem. But always remember that there is a vast, multi-billion dollar industry that specifically stimulates and exploits greed, to make a profit for itself and to maximise profits for its customers. Its platform is the corporate media, and its primary, major language is English. The other languages have advertising and PR industries too, but via the English language, the UK is plugged directly into the most funded and thus most powerful advertising industry by far: that of the USA.

    Elsewhere, you have accused someone, possibly me, of “telling [people] they are too stupid to know their own minds”. Do we know our own minds? I actually assume that I don’t know my own mind. Most of everyone’s mind is subconscious, and the advertising and PR industry actually employ psychologists to optimise subconscious exploitation. Everyone likes to believe that they know their own mind – in fact, the very desire to believe that is a subconscious motivation – but statistically, advertising is very effective, it persuades people to buy stuff that they otherwise wouldn’t. People are affected by advertising, yet how many people do you know who would happily say “oh yes, I’m influenced by advertising all the time”?

    Rather like people who say “never believe what you read in the papers” yet faithfully reflect the political stance of the papers they read…

    #80161 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Do we control our own minds? Don’t think of elephants, michael. But you have to think of elephants in order to interpret my sentence! Psychologists employed by the advertising industry know that, and they know how to use it.

    Do you find music emotional? I do; it’s one of my greatest joys. The singer on late 20th century Bodyform advertisements was Clare Torry, the singer on Pink Floyd’s The Great Gig in the Sky, one of the most emotional tracks I know.

    #80170 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    I have often wondered why there is not more clamour to understand and greatly reduce the drivers of obesity/diabetes?
    We once had a picture of my mother pregnant with me, she was incredibly slim with a big baby bump. In those days, just after the war, most people were slim, they did not have fast food, microwave food. Almost all food was basic. Maybe not that tasty or interesting but it got them through the Depression, then the War and the years just after the war. Then somebody invented convenience, from there most of our health has gone down hill, rapidly over the last forty years. Yes you are correct, greed, advertising and subliminals. Then I thought, why do the government, any government, not do something about it. “Big Interests”, but surely the health of the nation is so much more important than Big Interests.
    I suppose, some things have happened, the reduction of smoking. The reducing of some sugar, in some products. But the incessant mindless advertising. Facebook and the like. Personally, I have never looked at Facebook or Twitter or any of those things, I expect that is quite unusual. I try my very best not to look at advertising, most people are weak and will take the easy options, slip it in the microwave, get it delivered to your home, no need to get off your couch, when you get too fat, get a disability scooter.

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