Conspiracy Theorists, Why is Westminster Lifting All COVID Restrictions?


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  • #74098 Reply
    SA
    Guest

    “And BTW I have posted enough information for anyone to find me, let’s see you all do the same.”

    I don’t know who you are and it really doesn’t matter to me who you are as this is a forum for people to express their opinions and sometimes, where needed, to bolster that with scientific or other references that are credible. The links you have posted are not exactly neutral, Lew Rockwell describes himself as an anarcho-capitalist and then you send us a link to a site called Odysee with an interview of someone that lasts over an hour. Difficult to know their orientation but from the German title sounds like the Corona Alliance, and we still don’t know what you are trying to achieve here. It seems that you are just using this as a billboard to disseminate covid skeptic websites and propaganda. This is not a good start for an open discussion as you claim you are seeking.

    #74103 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    I have a gentle theory that we may be getting to herd immunity in the U.K.

    An eighth of a million have died of covid,
    more than five million have officially caught covid
    but that is probably a fraction of those who have had some covid,
    most with barely noticing they have been ill.
    Two thirds of the adult population have been double jabbed.

    So we are “finding” people who have some covid in them, even if they have been doubled jabbed, like our new Health Secretary.

    We test double any other country, if France tested as many as are tested in the U.K. they would “find” many more people with some covid in them.
    Perhaps we should now revert to only testing people who are ill?

    #74105 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    I’m Clark Killick; my name and address are on the Chelmsford electoral roll. Craig Murray could confirm my identity. I’m not a Marxist.

    “Clark believes my income should be stolen to pay for UBI”

    UBI stands for “Universal Basic Income”, and “universal” means everyone, so that includes you, Andy Bacon. You therefore seem to be arguing for your personal privilege to have more than others, but do correct me if I’ve got that wrong. How much more? How much less should others have? Should they go short of, say, food, shelter or water to support your greater rights? Life itself, perhaps?

    “I found Clark […] provocative.”

    So far as I can determine we’ve never met so it must be something I wrote. Care to specify, so that we can discuss it?

    “I don,t think Clark and others believe in open debate.”

    Well you could at least try before giving up. Maybe you already did, but under some other username? Possibly my use of the term “conspiracy theorists” provokes you, but let’s be clear; you seem to be dismissing the pandemic as a vast hoax ie. a grand conspiracy, so the term seems appropriate.

    #74106 Reply
    SA
    Guest

    Michael
    The question of the herd immunity is a complex one and depends on several factors, vaccine coverage, vaccine effectiveness in reducing transmission, numbers with natural infection and also the virus itself. The delta variant has a much higher R value. The further complication is also how long the immunity lasts and in future whether a variant that is resistent to current vaccines emerges. This paper is perhaps too technical and I do not claim to understand it completely but it explains these constant interactions. Note that vaccine coverage in UK is quoted as number of adults vaccinated which leaves a sizeable number of susceptible children. Also because the vaccine effectiveness in reducing transmission is about 86%, 14% of those vaccinated are still susceptible and also the unvaccinated adults. This is why there is this sudden rise of cases which is due to the delta variant and its increased rate of transmission. I doubt we are anywhere near herd immunity in UK.

    #74107 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Michael norton:

    “So we are “finding” people who have some covid in them, even if they have been doubled jabbed, like our new Health Secretary. We test double any other country, if France tested as many as are tested in the U.K. they would “find” many more people with some covid in them.”

    PCR indeed can be sensitive enough to detect fragments of virus from old infections that people’s immune system have killed, but if the high infection prevalence found were caused merely by the number of tests performed, the graph of positive test results would have a shape similar to the graph of total tests performed. It doesn’t. The graph of tests performed is here:

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/testing

    No resemblance. The positive tests graph has the characteristic rising curve of anything that grows, including a spreading infection.

    A proportion of samples that tested positive are also sent to Milton Keynes for genetic sequencing. Virus fragments from old infections are revealed because they’re too short to be sequenced. And when infection prevalence is rising fast, as it is now, new, active infections will always greatly outnumber detections of old virus fragments.

    If testing were reduced we’d just degrade our data source for assessing how effective the various vaccines are, and our warning about potential oncoming hospital demand. Abandoning testing is a “rose tinted spectacles” strategy, or “head in the sand” to be less polite about it.

    #74108 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    SA – “I doubt we are anywhere near herd immunity in UK.”

    We can’t be, or infection prevalence couldn’t be rising as fast as the tests show.

    The total number vaccinated is shown here:

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations

    35,732,297 have had two doses; that’s just over half of the entire UK population.

    #74109 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    “Head in the Sand”

    Apparently it had been said that in one week more than 500,000 people got NHS pinged.

    In a few weeks time it is now suggested five million persons could be asked to self isolate, for ten days, even if they are double jabbed and have consequently taken part in a test which suggests they are not currently infected with Delta. Most of those persons will not become ill.

    There is already a shortage of drivers, food is going to become scarce, transport will become more and more hit and miss, yet hardly anyone will be ill?

    #74110 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    If Freedom Day happens tomorrow,
    we will as a nation have to get on with life, that is the thing about life, either you give up and die or you decide to keep living and you just have to get on with it.
    Eighteen months of freedom has been stolen from us, enough is a fucking nuff.

    #74111 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    “in one week more than 500,000 people got NHS pinged.”

    Yes, that is inevitable when attempting trace-and-test at the same times as infection is being permitted to spiral out of control. The best use of social restrictions is to get infection prevalence low enough that trace-and-test can take over, keeping it low by finding nearly everyone who’s infected. This is what China and Australia have been doing, and what New South Wales has just abandoned.

    “Most of those persons will not become ill” compared with “yet hardly anyone will be ill?” – they’re not the same thing. A small proportion of a large number can still be a large number. We’re talking of millions getting infected, so hundreds of thousands becoming ill.

    #74112 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Not so much “enough is enough” as “too little, too late”. New Zealand, China and Australia have all demonstrated that early, strong restrictions enable much more freedom overall, including freedom from covid.

    “either you give up and die or you decide to keep living”

    People don’t decide to die of covid; the illness takes their life against their will.

    #74113 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    There may well be drinking water shortages, food shortages, transport shortages, electricity shortages as well as health care shortages.
    What would we have done in the Second World War, would we have sat on our hands and declared we must work from home?

    #74115 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    The Second World War is a very apt analogy. The UK economy was transformed out of all recognition to defeat Nazism. Food and fuel were rationed. Children were relocated to the countryside to protect them from the Blitz. Blackout was imposed. Resources were requisitioned and entire industries repurposed.

    By contrast, this government has been reluctant to do anything at all, and now they’re giving up.

    #74125 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    We could be rid of covid in under a month. If absolutely everyone took one month’s supplies, went home and just stayed there without exception for four weeks, when we all came out covid would be all but extinct, any few remaining cases easily mopped up by trace and test.

    I know this is not practical, but it defines the best-case scenario so that we can make a comparison; a short sharp shock would kill covid quite easily. We could have been free of covid well over a year ago, and we could still go for wiping it out at any time.

    If the vaccines don’t stop infection or long covid, we may well be forced to take that option eventually, as our population get progressively weakened by repeated bouts of infection.

    #74128 Reply
    SA
    Guest

    We could have got rid of covid at the first lockdown if there was proper quarantine rather than voluntary self isolation and exposing all your family to infection. It is a frame of mind that prevents the measures needed. Late incomplete lockdown, not properly carried out, lack of masks at the outset, poor test and trace, still current and prevention of international travel. All of these were carried out late and reluctantly and incompletely.
    The vaccines will reduce death and serious illness but not eliminate them and will also reduce transmission but will need over 90% vaccinations of the whole population not just adults.

    #74134 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    More than 46 million people in the UK have now had their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine,
    it has been said that five and a half million has contracted some sort of covid,
    one eight of a million have died of covid
    46,500,000
    128,000
    5,500,000
    = 52,128,000

    67,000,000 – 52,128,000 = 14,872,000

    So just under fifteen million are readily available for contagion
    however the vast number of those will be under eighteen, who we have decided not to jab

    #74135 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    A possible solution would be to vaccinate children?

    #74136 Reply
    SA
    Guest

    I think that is being considered. The ethical objection is that they are being vaccinated not to protect themselves but to protect others hence the reason why this is currently not happening here.

    #74137 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    If those under eighteen become a reservoir of covid infection,
    they might possibly infect their parents, grandparents, their teachers and neighbours.
    Although it might seem wrong to forcibly inject teenagers against their will, teenagers do not make electricity, gas, water and sewers run, they do not operate the trains, buses, they do not work in slaughterhouses, they do not trawl the seas for fish and they do not man the hospitals.
    Society cannot function without working adults.

    #74138 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Just seen Marr, on iplayer,
    professor Neil Ferguson, claimed we may soon get up to 200,000 covid cases per day and several thousand hospitalisations each day before things calm down in the Autumn.
    He seemed to suggest that most of this explosion in covid positives was happening in teenagers.

    #74151 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    It seems reasonably clear to me,
    that teenagers should be next to be vaccinated against covid.

    #74153 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    “Although it might seem wrong to forcibly inject teenagers against their will……”

    There is no equivocation, it is utterly wrong to force anyone, teenager or adult, to have any treatment against their will so long as they can reason the consequences. Parents must decide for younger children but any teenager who demonstrates capacity to reason should be allowed to decide for themselves. There is much precedent in medicine for this concept.

    #74155 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Teenagers are often forced against their will by their parents.
    Teenagers are forced to go to school.
    I remember as a child being lined up for injections with children crying because they didn’t want it, it made no difference, you got it if you wanted it or you got it if you did not want it.

    #74160 Reply
    SA
    Guest

    Michael
    Consent to treatment is vital to give anyone any form of medical treatment or intervention and there are rules and laws about it. You can read all about it here. You can ‘force’ teenagers and even older children to have treatment only if they lack capacity or if the treatment is life saving in which case even decisions by parents can be overruled. As the balance of benefit to children from the vaccines is not yet clear, and as there may be serious, if rather rare complications, forcing children to have vaccines would be utterly unethical and illegal.

    #74164 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Quote

    “Allison Agar, from Redcar, spoke to Stephen Nolan on BBC Radio 5 Live about her son George. He is 17 and has started a petition for all Year 13 students to be given the choice to be fully vaccinated before going on to higher education.

    Allison said by the time George went to university he would have had, at the most, one vaccine.

    She is worried about him mixing during “super-spreader event” Freshers’ Week.

    “He’s weeks away from his 18th birthday,” she said. “Should he not be considered an adult for the purpose of the vaccine?”

    Allison said it wasn’t just about his own health.

    “He wants to protect himself but also other people knowing that he will go back into the community,” she added.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-57864699

    It does seem to me that young people are going to keep the covid pandemic going for longer, unless they allow themselves to get vaccinated.
    It must be only for the hard of thinking to claim it is wrong to vaccinate people under 18 just because they will not get very ill or die.
    We are all in this together, sink or swim, we have been offered a way to get through it and that way is vaccination.

    #74168 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    Michael, I don’t think anyone is suggesting that they shouldn’t be allowed to choose to be vaccinated if they so wish, just like adults. Forcing teenagers to be vaccinated against their will is an entirely different thing. Just like it is with adults.
    There is also the ethical issue. You are asking a group who may derive little benefit for themselves to be vaccinated for the benefit of others with a vaccine that may (I repeat, may) have unforseen adverse effects in the longer term.
    First off, do no harm.

    #74169 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    “Do No Harm”

    the harm has already befallen us, in this country, more than one eighth of a million covid deaths.
    More than five million covid positive cases.
    Currently we have more than five hundred people in critical care, yet a month ago it was less than one hundred, so the Delta is currently rampant even though almost fifty million doses of covid vaccine has been injected, mostly with eager uptakers. More than half a million “pinged” and asked to self isolate.
    Firms are already shutting down divisions because of self isolating key-workers.

    We can not go on and on with this crap.
    We should quickly offer covid vaccinations to all older children and encourage them to take it.

    • This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by modbot.
    • This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by modbot.
    #74172 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Vaccinations can be provided only so fast. The government has set the order in which groups are offered it, so the least they should do is maintain restrictions until vaccination is complete; at present, demand continues to exceed supply. I’d like my second jab sooner, but I still have a couple of weeks to wait.

    #74173 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    “First, do no harm” is the motto of the doctors, which is precisely who the government ignored, right from the start. This is from five days before the first lockdown; 18 March last year –

    Richard Horton (editor of the Lancet)

    – Scientists have been sounding the alarm on coronavirus for months.
    – Why did Britain fail to act?

    http://web.archive.org/web/20200318143159/https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/18/coronavirus-uk-expert-advice-wrong

    #74177 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Germany

    U.K. and Spain seem to be galloping away from the rest of Europe.

    However what interests me, I can’t think of any good reasons, Germany records such minuscule figures, 20 to 40 times less than the U.K.
    One reason could be because they are Germans, they follow orders and do what they are told; however there are millions of Moslems in Germany, and I can’t see them doing what they are told.
    Perhaps another reason could be their vaccination programme is the best in Europe, after all Turkish/Germans invented the first commercially available vaccine, that now produced and controlled by the American firm Pfizer.
    Maybe German people do not live in overcrowded accommodations?
    I have not been to Germany for almost thirty years but then most people lived in blocks of flats.
    Maybe most Germans are so well off they eat better quality food, maybe they are not so obese or have less diabetes?

    Germany has more residents than anywhere in Europe apart from Russia and Russia is doing very, very, badly.

    So come on you theorists: why is it, lately, hardly touching the Germans?

    #74184 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Maybe they’ve also got enough sense to open the windows.

    #74188 Reply
    SA
    Guest

    Michael

    “One reason could be because they are Germans, they follow orders and do what they are told; however there are millions of Moslems in Germany, and I can’t see them doing what they are told.”

    Let us pause for a second and consider the implications of what you say: That Muslims are inherently anti vaccines. This is as close as you can get to a racist statement I am afraid. And what do you base this on, may I ask? I advise you to read this article from the Lancet to become more familiar with the social and cultural issues that are related to vaccine hesitancy, a very different kettle of fish from anti-vaxxers.

    From the outset it is important to distinguish between people wholly opposed to vaccination (anti-vaxxers) and individuals with limited or inaccurate health information or who have genuine concerns and questions about any given vaccine, its safety, and the extent to which it is being deployed in their interests before accepting it (vaccine hesitancy).7 In conflating and problematising the spectrum of those who do not accept vaccination, authorities might further erode trust and confidence, thereby exacerbating rather than resolving the factors underlying vaccine hesitancy. COVID-19 vaccines arrive as the social contract between some governments and their populations is being eroded8 and when many people, especially those in vulnerable groups, have little confidence that their government will protect them. In the UK, for example, a parliamentary report highlighted that more than 60% of Black people do not believe that their health is protected by the National Health Service to the same extent as White people.9

    Also it is worth noting that vaccine hesitancy is not exclusive to muslims, it is the whole BAME community, the majority being black Afro-Caribbean.

    But also look at vaccination rates in predominantly muslim countries:

    • United Arab Emirates: 68.4% one of the best in the world
    • Bahrain 65.8%
    • Morocco at 26.7 % is better than Switzerland and Lichtenstein

    and so on as shown here.

    Maybe, just a small maybe, it has nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with social justice, deprivation and possibly also social integration. And maybe the Germans are better at tackling these than UK?

    #74189 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Hi Clark, ventilation could be part of the answer but I think generally most Europeans spend more time outdoors than British people. British people tend to be fatter and suffer from more diabetes and eat more processed foods.

    If German people are currently getting infected at 1/40 th the rate British people are currently getting infected, this is something worth looking into more deeply.

    Possibly it will be the Delta that is the largest factor.

    but there may be other contributing factors, which would be good for u

    #74194 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    SA I had not thought specifically of vaccine hesitancy for immigrants in Germany.
    When I last visited Germany in the very early 80’s I was struck by how conformist the German people were, they did their utmost best to follow all the rules, coming from Britain (at that time) I thought that strange, as all the people I knew, did their best to not follow rules.

    With regard to Asian immigrants in Germany, I expect people that have been there for decades, would try to merge into German society and follow the normal rules.

    However much more recent people such as the one and a quarter million Syrians may not yet have reached full rule-taking attitudes?

    #74205 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    A useful set of figures would be what proportion of trace-and-test trails were successfully pursued to conclusion, ie:

    In the UK, around 40,000 infections being detected per day caused half a million people they’d been in proximity with to be contacted (“pinged”) by trace-and-test. With a testing capacity of, say, 100,000 per day it’d take 5 days to test them all; meanwhile, the positives among them are passing it on, creating yet more to follow up. Viral spread races ahead of trace-and-test.

    But if, say, around 20 positives are found in a day, and on average they each had 20 encounters, that’s just 400 to follow up. Of those 400, the negatives are “trail closed”. The positives lead to further tests, but that’s easy – with a testing capacity of 100,000 per day, even speculative contacts of those “tested today but results pending” can be tested that same day. Tracing, testing and isolation can get ahead of infection, so spread is choked off.

    It’s like fire; the sooner you fight it the less of it there will be to fight. Get ahead. And then make sure you stay ahead.

    So maybe that’s the difference in Germany; maybe their trace-and-test is still ahead of infections, with all trails pursued until they find 100% negatives. In the UK, we can’t even follow all the trails because we have far too many. The percentage closure rates of trace-and-test would tell us, but I don’t know where to find those figures.

    #74206 Reply
    SA
    Guest

    The anatomy of unintentional racism.

    “…there are millions of Moslems in Germany, and I can’t see them doing what they are told.”

    “However much more recent people such as the one and a quarter million Syrians may not yet have reached full rule-taking attitudes?”

    So are these one and a quarter million people not taking rules as a good German citizen should, because A) They are Syrians?, B) because they are Muslim?, or C) because they are refugees in a new culture and maybe confused and shocked?

    Think again about the implications.

    #74210 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    I think one has to consider that infection waves happen at different times in different locations. Looking quickly at the graphs for cases on worldometer for Germany, France and UK you’ll see that Germany and France had many more cases during April/May/June of 2021 than did UK. So I’m not inclined to infer population civic mindedness characteristics from any of it.
    As Clark keeps reminding us (not a criticism) the only things that appear to have made a significant difference is or was the early use of lockdown, effective track, trace and quarantine and border closure and those countries that did so spent much less time in lockdown.

    For interest here is a graph of mortality in England and Wales from the 1918 flu pandemic.

    #74211 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus
    At the above link there are buttons for cases and deaths etc where you can select the countries/regions you want to compare and see the timeline for anyone interested.

    #74213 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    “the only things that appear to have made a significant difference…”

    Arguably the most significant characteristic of SARS-CoV-2 is its lightning rapid spread; this is why it overloads health systems. The defining characteristic of politicians seems to be their depressingly sluggish minds – after a year and a half and dozens of examples from all over the world, they still haven’t appreciated this one simple fact.

    When infections or admissions exceed their arbitrary threshold, the politicians set some date to have a debate about it, usually in about a week. When they debate it they set some further date to actually do anything about it, usually in about another week’s time. Meanwhile the virus has spread, outbreaks in new areas every day. By the time restrictions are actually implemented they’re already out of date.

    #74217 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Mr. Macron is U-Turning on some of his recent quite harsh rules

    “We have entered the fourth wave of the epidemic,” Attal said after a meeting of the French cabinet.

    https://www.france24.com/en/france/20210719-france-adjusts-plans-for-covid-19-health-pass-announces-fourth-wave-of-epidemic

    They seem to have the highest hesitancy in Europe, in France.
    Recently the numbers of covid positives have been going up but you must remember they test less than half that are tested in the United Kingdom.

    The more you test
    the more you find
    or the less you test the less you find.

    #74219 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Waves and Waves and Waves and Waves and Waves
    Some European countries are in wave two, some wave three, some wave four and some wave five.
    So what separates these waves?
    Mostly, partially-successful-lockdowns.
    Each time a country goes for a lock down, after a while the figures drop.
    Then, they stop the lock down and the figures go up.
    So what wave you are in, is mostly determined by how many lock downs you have imposed.

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