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November 8, 2021 - 3:45pm
As we approach Winter, the threat of more lockdown-style restrictions has been re-appearing on the horizon. Just yesterday Health Secretary Sajid Javid tweeted that it was a “national mission” to get jabbed so that we “can get through Winter and enjoy Christmas” while Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Vam-Tam last week threatened Plan B if people acted “like Covid was over”.
But is all this pessimism really warranted? After all, Covid infection rates in the UK have been falling for over two weeks and, compared to the rest of Europe (where cases are rising), it does not look in bad shape. To get a more balanced picture, Freddie Sayers spoke to Dr. Raghib Ali, a clinical epidemiologist from Cambridge University and himself a frontline doctor. Last month, he gained nationwide attention when he published ‘The Lockdown Myths that need challenging’, arguing (among other things) that it was incorrect to say that the UK’s high death rate was attributable to locking down late or that lives would have been saved if we lockdown earlier. In today’s UnHerdTV, he expanded on his thinking and explained why he didn’t think restrictions would be coming in before Christmas:
Do mask mandates work?
Why Plan B is a “distraction”:
Why we shouldn’t compare the UK to Europe:
Will Sweden have a third wave?
Are we going to have bi-annual vaccines indefinitely?
On the ‘myth’ that the UK should have locked down sooner:
Why Dr. Ali supported lockdown:
On vaccine passports:
Thanks as ever to Dr. Ali for his time.
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SubscribeThe Establishment Justifies the Establishment actions in shocker interview…..
I know he is a ‘Moderate’, but still, he is working hard to NOT say the wrong thing (or truth, as it were..) and show the lockdown in its real light. He keeps saying things like ‘Obviously we are all out for the same goal, to save lives’ When it is so obviously untrue. This thing was not about health, but power. The fact that natural immunity is not even mentioned by the health departments shows it is not about the virus – but about the vaccine and control and $. That the studies on Ivermectin and other medicines are not allowed shows they are not after a cure, but control.
Freddy asks him ‘So how can you know masks will not make a huge difference?’ Come on – how do you know anything? I mean, if all males between 18 and 35 had testosterone suppressed, for the good of society, it would make crime and violence reduce by 90%. How about mandatory mastectomies after menopause? Save lives. Forcing medical intervention (injecting mRNA ?) is not freedom. Forced medical intervention for your own, very tiny, good? Loss of all rights and freedoms for slight good of society? This is pure tyranny.
The Doctor mentions how economic factors should also be considered, but then does not, and they have not been considered… So how if that was the societal norm? Say if Education had no economic component in how it was planned and done? Everyone became artists and psychology students and Gender Relations advisors, and the Nation became broke. What if the NHS had its budget multiplied by 20X? It would save lives – it would mean much greater longevity – that it would bankrupt the nation should not matter – IT WOULD SAVE LIVES.
It is 1930 all over again it would seem, laws trampling freedom are global – economies crushed by debt which has doubled the wealth of the very rich, the workers savings destroyed by inflation, business lost so mega corporations may monopolize the entire commerce and industry…and obviously Government and Financial and industrial complex are becoming One. Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Dorsey more powerful than the President…
Thank you Freddie, for asking such good questions.
At the beginning of March, the proportion of the adult population that was fully vaccinated was about 3%. That month the number of deaths registered with the ONS for each week in England and Wales fell below the prepandemic five year average for the first time in 6 months.
Between March and August, about 85% of the adult population had received at least one dose of a vaccine. But each week since (for about three months), there have been more than 1000 excess deaths. Dr Teck Khong claims some of these deaths are due to cardiovascular disease, which might be a side effect of the vaccine.
No such effects were reported in the vaccine studies. But on Friday, the BMJ reported severe concerns about the conduct of an influential vaccine trial in Texas and the quality of the side effect reporting.
Last week, a deputy editor of the BMJ has publicly questioned whether these American studies show that the vaccines reduce all-cause mortality.
Now, an American drug company has released a statement describing a new oral product that significantly reduces hospitalisation and mortality. The drug has a different structure but a similar mechanism of action to Ivermectin, the highly controversial widely available protease inhibitor.
I lived on the South Island of New Zealand in 2020 and cases evaporated over six weeks because there was social cohesion on Social Distancing but Masks were nowhere to be seen. The South lsland remains free of cases.Life was essentially normal whilst I lived there.
I now live in Abu Dhabi where the gateway to life is the Alhosn app with a Green Pass system based on being fully vaccinated and a PCR every 30 days. Vaccination is not mandatory you just cannot go out and about. Children and medical conditions are exempt. Masks are mandatory inside and out. Cases are on the floor. There is social cohesion and massuve observance of the rules. Life is essentially entirely normal. You can point to the fact that social cohesion is mandatory but given much of life is conducted in an air conditioned environment and the Virus is airborne I think the Mask wearing can but help. Masks in an “all in.” society are a great signaller when out of a population of 10,000,000 cases are less than 100 a day and it would be easy to become complacent. Where I think the UAE have made an important decision is in recognising that life as normal as possible is good for moral and especially family life. Restrictions were lifted in July of 2020 and have never gone backwards that too should be valued and as the interviewee recognised the consequences of lockdowns have never properly been debated or their disadvantages quantified. Wearing a mask on the rapid transit system or in a taxi to join friends for supper at a restaurant or the cinema or to go Kayaking or to the Beach just doesn’t register for me but being able to do all the things I value does.
You will never NEVER get a straight answer from an establishment doctor/epidemiologist/ whatever. The ones who are giving straight answers have been cancelled/ fired etc like the GBD trio.
Why didn’t Freddy ask about India ? Such a big delta wave controlled by natural immunity (not vaccines) . So how certain are we that it’s the vaccines that have controlled the deaths and not previous immunity?
This drama has still to play out longer till it will become clear that the vaccines were unnecessary for general public . They were only necessary for the vulnerable.
Why did we not hear about this new drug that now treats Covid? Surely now vaccines have become redundant in light this? If someone falls very sick, they can now be effectively treated with this drug .
A study investigating the effectiveness of masks in preventing the spread of the virus monitored nearly 350,000 people across rural Bangladesh. The study’s authors showed that the widespread use of surgical masks reduced transmission of SARS-CoV-2 by about 10%, but they were unable to show that the use of cheap cloths masks had any statistically significant effect.
I agree with most of this excellent discussion, but I remain puzzled about masks. Prof Tim Spector said on 28-Oct “We now know that masks add a layer of protection, so wearing them on public transport and in crowded places is a good idea”