Conspiracy Theorists, Why is Westminster Lifting All COVID Restrictions?


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  • #74224 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    “So what wave you are in, is mostly determined by how many lock downs you have imposed.”

    Or rather, the number of times it has been permitted to get out of control. China’s had only one real wave; all others have been prevented with instant but brief and lockdowns, until trace-and-test got back on top:

    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/#graph-cases-daily

    ‘The more you test
    – the more you find
    – or the less you test the less you find.”

    That wouldn’t apply at all in New Zealand – no matter how many tests, you’d always find zero positives.

    It would barely apply in China and most of Australia – you could test all 1.4 billion Chinese and you might find barely a handfull of positives.

    #74225 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    I do not want to be rude Clark but you seem obsessed by China.

    We do not live in China.
    We live in Europe.
    There is not much point trying to compare a Western Democratic country with the ruthless communist regime.
    Do you recall Tiananmen slaughter?
    Whatever they do in China, almost certainly would not be put up with in the U.K. or France or most ordinary European countries.
    There probably is some use in comparing Spain, Poland, Italy, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

    #74234 Reply
    SA
    Guest

    For once Michael you hit the nail on the head. You very eloquently demonstrate why the worst countries for Covid-19 cases and deaths are exactly those beacons of democratic neoliberalism where liberty equates with freedom to infect others, where the basic rules of public health, or even common good have been jettisoned for the sake of the free market for the rich. No, we should look at China and take from there what is good and discard what is bad. WE do not need to copy Tiananmen Square tactics to be able to deal with a pandemic. Anyway if you don’t like China, what about New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and to a lesser extent Australia and Japan?

    The principles here simplistically boil down to what is the value of human life versus money (dare I say, socialism or social awareness, vs capitalism and self-centred selfishness). And in eastern cultures there is still reverence and consideration and respect for older people and general better respect for others; it is not all about repression you know.

    #74237 Reply
    SA
    Guest

    And about China , from Moon of Alabama showing the efficient Chinese system of how to keep the virus under control, amongst other things.

    #74238 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Not that I have ever been further East than Singapore,
    I am led to understand that the most people who break into China are people from Communist North Korea, people from South Korea, hardly ever break into China.
    Daily people cross the English Channel to break into the United Kingdom.

    #74239 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    “Whatever they do in China, almost certainly would not be put up with in the U.K. or France or most ordinary European countries”

    I think that if people in Europe etc. experienced the Chinese method of controlling this pandemic, they’d choose it outright. Everything is open, and people don’t need to worry. Each lockdown affects only one city at a time, and they last days not months. Most people in the West don’t even know because our news media barely report from China, but covid is under control for nearly a fifth of the world’s population.

    Well over a year ago some of the initial Chinese lockdowns were quite brutal, but most weren’t – the national government delegated social restrictions to local authorities, and some were more authoritarian than others. And there was also provision for the people – a massive emergency distribution operation brought food and household supplies to the end of every street. And since then there has been no massive ongoing oppression in China to keep the pandemic under control – because there doesn’t need to be, because they act fast whenever there’s an outbreak.

    The Australian government monitors China very closely because China is the locally dominant superpower, so they saw China’s method and applied it in Australia, where it has been highly successful.

    #74240 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    I would guess the main reason people go from Sudan or Iran to the U.K. is because they do not want to be tortured/bullied/controlled, they want to be free from over repressive governments.
    There is only so much Macron or Merkel or Johnson can impose on their peoples.
    Macron is currently feeling out those limits.

    #74241 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Western governments love to vilify China, so if China were implementing draconian restrictions it’d be all over the news as our politicians used it to make excuses for the massive western death toll.

    If China had loads of deaths but the government was suppressing reporting, satellites would detect the organic combustion products from the crematoria like they did in March last year.

    #74244 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Western populations hate lockdowns because they’ve lasted three or four months at a time; people here don’t know that it can all be dealt with in six weeks and then controlled quite easily.

    Lockdowns here have lasted too long because governments took half-measures:

    • Lockdowns too late, while infection rocketed.
    • No border quarantine.
    • No quarantine facilities.
    • No support below the middle classes; casual workers still forced to work and mingle.
    • Travel restrictions not enforced.
    • No municipal food distribution; people forced to mingle when shopping.
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    #74245 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    One thing covid has proven conclusively – if there really was a biological attack, we’d be completely fucked. We simply don’t have the self discipline to defend ourselves against it.

    #74252 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    I guess the sort of thing you want us to do would not in the long term be any use.
    There are places like Sudan where people are regularly slaughtered on ethnic or religious grounds, these people sometimes flee and then migrate to North Africa, the Middle East or Europe.
    I can’t imagine the vaccine roll-Out is that good in Sudan.
    There will be wave after wave after wave after wave coming our way, we must not keep locking down.
    For us vaccination will be our outcome – good or bad.
    The nearer we get to one hundred percent vaccine coverage, the better for us it will be.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-57899843
    Untill most of the World gets ninety percent coverage by vaccination, this is not going to stop, not in Australi, Taiwan or China, it will keep on coming after the unvaccinated.

    #74257 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    The purpose of trace-and-test is to avoid having to lock down.

    The purpose of fast, local, brief lockdown is to get trace-and-test back into the lead.

    We don’t yet know how well vaccination will work. Vaccinated people can still spread the infection, and can still get ill; this strongly suggests that people who’ve had covid before also can still get ill. Then there’s the long term damage; we can’t possibly be sure that we know all the long term effects, and the ones we’ve already seen aren’t even understood yet. Some viruses cause cancer, eg. human papilloma virus causes warts, but a few years later it can cause cervical cancer. In ten years we could be struggling under an epidemic of cancer caused by SARS-CoV-2, because we let it run riot.

    It seems sad that so many people would rather just give in, to a mere virus,the most primitive life form possible. I guess our society is decadent and well on its way to collapse.

    #74258 Reply
    SA
    Guest

    Michael
    Any reason why you are picking on Sudan? Also are you aware that it is now two countries?

    #74261 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    “There will be wave after wave after wave after wave coming our way, we must not keep locking down.”

    Waves are not inevitable; trace-and-test can prevent them. Repeated lockdowns are a sign of repeated failure – ONE lockdown, done right, puts trace-and-test into the lead; China and Australia have proven it.

    We’ll be a sickly society if everyone has to get covid every couple of years, especially if a proportion get damaged long term each time. Maybe not, maybe it’ll be fine, but only time will tell.

    #74262 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    “There is not much point trying to compare a Western Democratic country with the ruthless communist regime.”

    Eh, why the hell not? Isn’t that exactly what we ought to be doing, measuring the relative success of one strategy versus another.

    Is the west not tending towards a ruthless totalitarianism itself? Persecution and repression of whistle blowers such as Craig Murray and Julian Assange? Extraordinary rendition and torture, forever wars in Syria, Yemen, Sudan. Repressive economic sanctions for Iran, Cuba etc. China has been enormously successful over the last 50 years or so. They gotta be doing something right.

    It isn’t that many years prior to Tiananmen that in the USA similar was happening to black people (and still happening in reality). The UK’s Bloody Sunday, a massacre on 30 January 1972 in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland, when British soldiers shot 26 civilians during a protest march against internment without trial. Please tell me what the difference between that and Tiananmen square is. The west is by no means a paragon of virtue.

    China’s policy dealing with covid has been way better than most of the west and we ought to be comparing what we do and what they do.

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    #74264 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    SA

    “The war in Darfur began in 2003 after ethnic African rebels revolted against former President Omar al-Bashir’s Arab-dominated government.

    Bashir responded by arming local Arab militias – infamously known as the Janjaweed – who targeted non-Arab tribes”

    yes I am fully aware that after a lot of slaughtering Sudan has cleaved.
    Largely the dry remnant North is Muslim and Arab, largely the rain forest South is Black and Christian.
    The former ruler is now in prison and awaiting being transferred to The Hague
    International Criminal Court (ICC) to face genocide and war crimes charges

    #74268 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Possibly, China is like GOD shinning light, freedom, truth and tolerance across the World but possibly not.
    Ask people in Taiwan if they feel wonderful that Big Brother is watching them?

    While a multitude of covid reservoirs exist around the World, there seems to me two choices, shut your borders for years, like Australia or vaccinate almost everbody, then get on with life.

    #74277 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Japan Olympics could be super-spreader-event

    The WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus withering indictment of the global effort comes as the Tokyo Games are set to open this Friday, after being postponed last year due to the PANDEMIC.

    The Tokyo Games have come under fire for pressing ahead, despite cases raging in Japan.

    Cases around the Japanese capital have risen by more than 1,000 new infections daily in recent days.

    Now who would have thought that.
    The locals did not want it but the Elite said it does not matter what the locals think, they are getting it.

    #74278 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    “…or vaccinate almost everbody, then get on with life.”

    That’s if vaccination works; only time will tell. So far it has only lessened disease severity. It hasn’t stopped people from getting ill, it hasn’t stopped transmission, and I have seen no reports about its effects upon long covid.

    If a vaccine resistant or a more highly lethal variant arises, the only tools we’ll have are social measures, and we’ve just proven that we do those so badly that we just give up. Our situation looks decidedly shaky.

    #74283 Reply
    SA
    Guest

    Let us try not to be too gloomy. It is not just vaccines that have drastically reduced mortality but better understanding of the pathological processes and counteracting them, and better general clinical care. The other development I hope would be in the field of either antivirals or other interventions that can reduce the complications and possibly long-term effects. Everyone seems to be focusing only on vaccines.

    #74289 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Spain and France upticking a fair bit, Germany still quite low, 30 times less than U.K.

    If only we could figure out what the U.K. does so badly compared to how brilliantly the Germans tamp down covid, it is a mystery.
    When Mrs. M. went to look at the bad floods this week, her and her chums were not wearing masks.
    That must be because the Germans are so brilliant and they barely have any covid, so they do not take precautions.

    #74317 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    I think Germany’s trace-and-test closure percentage would tell us most. If it’s nearly 100% then Germany really is doing well at last. If it’s 90% or lower (at a guess) then Germany is on its way to another wave, and the current big UK-Germany ‘difference’ is just that our waves and theirs are occurring at different times. Germany hasn’t been a big success story; they’ve had three massive waves so far with around 92,000 deaths overall.

    Looking at floods seems pretty low-risk – indoors is five to twenty times riskier than outdoors.

    #74360 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    WHO – CHINA

    “China has rejected terms proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to further investigate the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

    WHO head Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on China to be more co-operative about the early stages of the outbreak, including with audits of laboratories.

    Zeng Yixin, deputy health minister, said it showed “disrespect for common sense and arrogance towards science”.

    He said the plan was politicised and that China could not accept it.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-57926368

    The China Authorities seem quite reluctant for the origin of covid to become known. It will remain a mystery that has caused millions of deaths but hardly any in China.

    #74366 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    BBC

    “Yuan Zhiming, director of the National Biosafety Laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,
    also appeared at the press conference. He said the virus was of natural origin and maintained no virus leak or staff infections had occurred at the facility since it opened in 2018.

    More than four million people have died worldwide since the start of the pandemic and the WHO has faced growing international pressure to further investigate the origins of the virus.”

    I would suggest it is quite likely that CHINA REGIME has pressured Yuan to claim nobody who has ever worked at his Level Four Laboratory has ever become ill by contacting a viral infection.
    That statement is preposterous.

    #74377 Reply
    Penguin
    Guest

    You did notice the plan to make everyone have a vaccine passport to leave their house? The plans for constant booster shots? The denial of basic freedoms?

    #74376 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    It looks likely to me that it was a US government funded project, outsourced by Peter Daszak of Ecohealth Alliance (New York), to Wuhan Institute of Virology. Some of the work was being done under merely Biosafety Level Two. The Chinese government is certainly obstructing investigation, but so is Daszak, who has a copy of the vital genetic database but refuses to publish it:

    Scientific arguments:

    https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/

    Political wrangling and evidence of possible cover-up:

    https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-inside-the-fight-to-uncover-covid-19s-origins

    This has been discussed on the Origins of SARS cov2 thread started by SA.

    The US and Chinese governments sling mud at each other because both were responsible.

    #74378 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    The WHO has been very diplomatic towards the Chinese government. I expect that’s because the WHO would rather not lose the limited cooperation it has been getting.

    #74384 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    FRANCE

    The India – Delta variant of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 is now the main variant circulating in France, Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Wednesday, adding that 96 percent of the 18,000 new cases reported the day before were among the unvaccinated.
    “We’re in the fourth wave,” Castex told TF1 television.
    https://www.france24.com/en/france/20210721-96-of-new-covid-19-cases-among-non-vaccinated-people-says-french-pm

    I have just got in from walking with a friend in intense heat.
    We were discussing this.

    The French Prime minister has said, that now, 96% of persons newly contracting covid are unvaccinated.
    My friend claimed that 50% of people newly catching Delta in U.K. are unvaccinated.

    If he is correct, that means 50% have been vaccinated but still have caught it?

    So what percentage of those still catching Delta in the U.K. are fully vaccinated?

    #74387 Reply
    glenn_nl
    Guest

    Penguin: “You did notice the plan to make everyone have a vaccine passport to leave their house?”

    No – I must have missed that one. Can you send a reference to the plan – it’s been discussed in Parliament, I take it?

    #74392 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    SA, the registered covid positive cases in JAPAN, are starting to skyrocket.

    #74394 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    Patrick Vallance had to correct himself on Twitter because he had said at a press conferance that 60% of hospitalisations were previously vaccinated when he said he meant to say 60% were unvaccinated (implying 40% were in the previously vaccinated group). I see an article in the Guardian detailing falling antibody levels post vaccine which may require booster shots.
    It is hard to call what’s going to happen. Positive test rates are more than 3 times higher that they were when last there were similar rates of hospitalisations and ventilated patients. Thta’s positive but then again there is the lag time between rise in cases and rise in healthcare metrics. (hospitalisations and ventilated)

    #74395 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Germany registers 20 – 40 times less cases per day as does the U.K.

    Germany has done = 65,845,568 covid tests
    U.K. has done = 160,800,000 covid tests

    you might conclude that if you do not test you will not find?

    #74397 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Sorry, that was nonsense the figure I gave for the U.K. was actually for Russia

    U.K. has done = 236,677,745 covid tests
    while Germany has done = 65,845,568 covid tests

    U.K. = 3,467,228 / million people
    Germany = 783,260/ million people

    So U.K. test more than four times as many/million as does Germany.

    May be they just don not want to know?

    #74399 Reply
    Dawg
    Guest

    Penguin: “You did notice the plan to make everyone have a vaccine passport to leave their house?”

    glenn_uk: “No – I must have missed that one. Can you send a reference to the plan – it’s been discussed in Parliament, I take it?”

    Of course he can’t – it’s a conspiracy, so it has to be a secret. The conspirators aren’t allowed to tell anybody about it – not journalists and especially not Parliament!

    We wouldn’t even know about it unless Penguin availed us of his (secretly acquired) insider knowledge. How does he know about these things? Maybe he’s in on it himself and is whistleblowing on the website of a recognised whistleblower?

    Alternatively, maybe he’s just “blowing” – in a metaphorical sense. (However, it’s a secret – so he’s not allowed to tell us…)

    #74406 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    “May be they just don not want to know?”

    Or maybe they are just not at the same point in a wave as UK is (yet). Maybe they don’t have as many people requesting testing. The previous waves in different countries didn’t all happen at the same time. As far as I can tell, from informaton on https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus, Germany and UK count tests performed. A more useful figure would be persons tested (and sepearate episodes). If someone has a lateral flow test that shows positive then subsequently has a confirmatory PCR test, that is one test to me not two. Also, some testing for those self isolating requires more than one test at different time periods. If they are on the same person in the same episode then really should count as one test.

    @Mods
    I have posted the link to ourworldindata because it allows you to compare different countries by selection for various data which is very useful when looking at timelines. I have specifically tried to show Michael that although the UK is showing high rates of cases and Germany low it doesn’t mean that at some point that position will be reversed.

    #74421 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Apparently in some parts of the World, they are starting to talk about “The British Experiment”

    I guess what they mean,
    you have two thirds of your adult population double jabbed but almost no teenagers and children jabbed
    School is out for Summer and Freedom Day has come.
    “Let The Games Begin”
    as they say in Japan.

    #74422 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Michael norton – “you might conclude that if you do not test you will not find?” and “May be they just don not want to know?”

    The difference more likely reflects how well targeted the tests are.
    – – – – – – – –

    Some people have been claiming that high case numbers are purely the result high rates of testing, and thus do not tell us the prevalence of infection. But if this were true, the curve of positive test results would be a similar shape to the curve of number of tests performed. Those two curves can be compared:

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

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

    The two curves bear no resemblance to each other, so something else must be responsible for the shape of the positive tests curve.

    Until the vaccination programme, the hospital admission curve, and the two different deaths curves, all followed the shape of the positive tests curve, lagging by about one week and two weeks respectively. So the positive tests data was predicting hospital admissions a week later, and deaths two weeks later. That is very strong evidence that the tests are reflecting the prevalence of infection.

    Remember that no one gets sent to hospital just because their test comes back positive; they’re merely asked to self-isolate. People attend hospital or get sent there based on their symptoms. One of the deaths curves is based on positive tests, but the other is based on death certificate data, ie. clinicians’ assessment of cause of death.
    – – – – – – – –

    However, the more idea the testers have of which people to test, the more likely each test will be positive – ie. they don’t use so many tests on randomly checking people who turn out to be negative.

    A perfect trace-and-test system should find all positives without checking anyone who hadn’t been exposed to infection. The entire population of New Zealand could be checked without finding one positive case, because there is no infection within New Zealand.

    #74423 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Penguin, yes I have noticed the things you’re alluding to. I have also noticed that you’ve both grossly exaggerated them, and entirely omitted the context.

    Have you noticed the, er, pandemic thingy? ‘Cos it’s pretty bloody obvious.

    #74424 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Hello Clark, what I was trying to suggest that all though Germany only posts positive cases at 1/20 – 1/40 that of the U.K. they probably have more cases, possibly many of low symptoms, that are not tested.
    We in the U.K. are testing close to four and a half times as many /million of our population but as Clark rightly points out, very few are now die from covid.
    What I think this is pointing to, is that there is a huge amount of people in the World who have some covid in them but these people are mostly not ill.

    #74425 Reply
    Clark
    Guest
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