December 13, 2021 - 2:15pm
Over the last 20 months, we have kept families apart, banned people from going to work, denied children education, plunged people into poverty and condemned thousands to die alone. We’ve spent £400bn and delivered over 100m vaccinations.
And yet, despite expending vast resources to try to control the pandemic, we seem to have come full circle. Now we are facing a new Covid variant that Ministers believe could result in a surge in hospitalisations.
The Government’s response to this threat, to be voted upon by Parliament tomorrow, is to bring back restrictions including masks, working from home, vaccine passports and mandatory vaccination for healthcare workers.
As I sat in the Chamber last Wednesday listening to the Health Secretary announce these new measures, I felt a sickening sense of déjà vu. Back in June, ‘Freedom Day’ was delayed, I wrote here that we were setting a dangerous precedent.
Ministers have always said that we are not pursuing a Zero Covid strategy, that life would return to normal once the vulnerable were vaccinated and that we must learn to live with Covid — and its inevitable alphabetic variants — as we live with flu.
We have unquestionably met all of those aims. Covid is still circulating, but deaths account for a small fraction of overall mortality. 95% of UK adults have antibodies and Covid now has a case fatality rate comparable to influenza.
But a dangerous precedent has indeed been set and so inevitably, with the discovery of the Omicron variant, we are to be plunged into another period of invasive and discriminatory restrictions.
Though it may be futile in the face of Opposition support (I use the term ‘opposition’ loosely), I will vote against the regulations tomorrow for three reasons.
Firstly, the collateral damage to wider society will be high. Many people have written at length about the appalling costs of lockdowns and restrictions and evidence of permanent damage continues to emerge.
Secondly, there will be a further undermining of confidence in the rule of law. Good laws are clear and based on consensus; they should not be difficult to interpret or adhere to or make criminals out of ordinary people. Far from uniting us, these regulations will invite conflict, judgement and segregation.
But perhaps most significantly, the new measures threaten to cement a permanent shift in the balance of power between the Government and the British people that has been brought about by two years of ‘hokey cokey’ restrictions on our freedom. This is a shift that is no doubt being celebrated by those on the Left, but it should chill Conservatives to the core.
Do we want to live in a society where Ministers can — at no notice — impose serious, damaging restrictions on individuals instead of trusting us to behave responsibly? Do we want a society where people are judged and discriminated against by their health status? Or where the state, far from being a stabilising force, becomes an unpredictable and overbearing menace, perpetuating a climate of fear?
I don’t believe that the Government has deliberately set out on a road to authoritarianism, but we must acknowledge that this is the path we now tread.
That is why I and many other Conservative MPs will vote against the new restrictions tomorrow. Now that we have done everything reasonable to mitigate against the effects of Covid-19, we must strive to return to a society based on freedom, tolerance and personal responsibility before it’s too late.
Miriam Cates is MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge
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SubscribeWell said. At last some common sense. Miriam Cate for Prime Minister (and not being sarcastic).
“I don’t believe that the Government has deliberately set out on a road to authoritarianism,”
Exactly, like I do not believe the sun going down at night causes darkness, because willful ignoring and disbelieving makes something untrue.
I mean, Come on…..Authoritarianism is the Zeitgeist of the modern times. Free speech has been crushed, Correct thought is being engineered by the Government handing ‘education’ over the the Neo-Marxist Post Modernists. The Social Media has taken the ‘Town Square’ and banned dissent. Laws by the thousand are being made out of air by Parliament, PM Decree, by Judges, by ‘Expert Advisory Groups’ (sage, etc), Police, Councils, Antifa/BLM (tacit if not actual law) and one must at all times be either anonymous or self censor everything one says. (but HMG, pushed by Soros and his Ilk are out to stop this anonymity online – thus all be doxxed, and so terrified to speak out)
You current Gov people – you are bring on 1984, you are in fact “
I don’t believe thatthe Government has deliberately set out on a road to authoritarianism,”The Nuremberg Trials gave us many laws guaranteeing freedoms because the Fas *ists had shockingly destroyed them. One was in response to Dr Mengele doing horrible medical experiments on people – like Fauci, Like Boris ‘Mandates’, totally ignored for the Vax agenda….. The Australians, Canadians, Austrians build Concentration Camps….
Ms Kates, I hope you are serious, and not just on this one, small, issue – because you MPs have been going along with this the whole time – saying this, ‘against plan-B’ does not ring as sincerity. Too little too late.
Wouldn’t it be more concise to say that there is a world conspiracy and Ms Cates is part of it?
Definitely a useful Idiot doing her part….
All higher politicians are Sociopaths basically. The election process weeded out anyone with morals. To move up one must get the backing of the Political Parties and the funding machine. Both are 100% owned by ‘The Donors’, the Global Elites.
To climb the greasy pole of politics one must walk over the backs of many to even get to it – then sell ones integrity at each hand grip higher – and at the top one is completely owned. But you will get paid well if you do as told when there.
Great wealth fallows success in office. A good, high, gov elected job will bring in $10 – $300 Million of pure gravy from inside advice and corruption – A Million for giving speeches is common, after an office with power. Like Pilosi – $300,000,000 from insider stock advice.
This covid response has nothing to do with health, it is all $$$$$ and Power. Anyone complicit is part of it, even if naivety was the issue and one merely a useful Idiot – one carries some culpability.
Unless her voting record says she voted against all of the lockdowns, don’t thank a Nazi for being slightly less of a Nazi.
That is an exceptionally foul thing to say, old son.
it was tactles, but the logic, if put politely, is there. She should have laid out her voting history on this issue, so we can see this is not just some vote getting flip-flop.
If you don’t think that Nazi is the appropriate term, then you have been asleep/in denial for the last two years. You certainly haven’t been watching Kate Wand’s videos or listening to Mattias Desmet. I’ve been using COVIDNazi since Day 1 of lockdown, since the historical parallels of strategy and objectives has been obvious ever since then. Blindingly obvious.
I’ve never heard of Kate Wand or Mattias Desmet. Why would you expect anyone to have watched their videos, and why should we?
Splendid woman ! I agree with her 150%
I sometimes wonder what the people in/writing these Unherd articles think of us BTL yahoos and our posts, and the up/down arrows. I wish Ms Cates would reply.
I sometimes wonder what Unherd thinks of us, and if, like most places, one day comments will be disabled, as we are a rough audience.
I complained on a couple of occasions a few months ago about one or two Unherd writers indulging in the racist practice of capitalising ‘black’ while not capitalising ‘white’. They emailed me acknowledging the soundness of my complaint, and undertook to prevent this happening in future. I was thoroughly gratified by their response and felt respected.
Thank you for the stand you’re taking,
If only the opposition didn’t relish the prospect of more coercive powers for the state to act as a precedent for when they take power, it might have been possible to prevent this dystopia (at least in England).
what is the Labour party for these days? is it merely a nursing home for anti-Semitic cranks.
Well they are the National Socialists.
Medieval law limited the size of the stick you could use to hit your wife with – that is all she is proposing…..
No, it didn’t. For decades, feminists have told the lie that the phrase “Rule of Thumb” refers to an old law that it was illegal for a man to beat his wife with a stick thicker than his thumb. No such law has ever existed.
Rule of Thumb actually refers to measurement estimation – a foot length is approx the size of a man’s booted foot, a yard is approx the length of a man’s stride, an inch is about the size of the phalange of a man’s thumb.
Modern usage – a rule of thumb is a pretty safe guess.
Sorry for the lecture, but that old feminist lie is a particular bugbear of mine! :o)
Actually – I used that as a example of craziness, not as literal. Although there are many historic legal decisions on such actions, so really you are nit-picking. USA has always had it illegal to beat a wife, but in the old world it was legal till the Renaisance times mostly, and legal decisions were made on cases, so laws did exist on specific matters of this. Also Islam has a good bit on the legality of such – some very codified.
Laws were made on the legality of beating apprentices, servents, and family members, throughout old Europe – some very specific – I remember one place in England where it was illegal to beat family members with a dried Bull Pizzle (which were sometimes used as a walking cane)
So lets change my post – what this MP is saying is the beatings may continue, but not with a Bull Pizzle.
You’re right about the origin of the phrase “rule of thumb”, but it is still true that Qur’anic law states that a man should beat his wife for disobedience, but that the stick should be no thicker than his thumb. The feminists mixed up Islamic and Christian customs. Nowhere in Christian scripture is the beating of women condoned.
You’re thinking of Islamic law. The prophet decreed that the stick should be no thicker than the man’s thumb.
I remember reading somewhere that the thumb story is basically unattested before Blackstone wrote his massive commentaries on English common law, and the only reference he made to it was a case from the American colonies that even then was archaic, where the judge specifically refers to it as something that has been handed down from the dim and distant past, but such medieval customs aren’t to be tolerated in the modern and enlightened 17th(?) century, to which Blackstone in the 18th centruy says ‘and quite right too’. So basically I’ve always assumed that the whole thing was a shaggy dog story that everyone had heard about but everyone thought ridiculous, that was then taken far more seriously than it ever should have been by radical feminists who had an axe to grind, but it would be interesting to discover there actually was a law like that, even if in a different civilisation. Do you have a source for it?
Granted we are not there yet (in the UK, anyway) but consider the issue of mandatory vaccinations. There are three reasons to force vaccination.
The first is to protect the health of the person vaccinated, even against their wishes. But if we go that route, then we should forcibly treat obesity, stop people playing sports like rugby, totally ban cigarettes. Good luck with that.
The second is to protect the health service. But the same applies in this case as well.
The third is to protect other people. That is, we vaccinate people A, B, C … against there will to protect some other people X, Y, Z … Now, we can argue about the magnitude of side effects but there will be people who are permanently damaged by the vaccine, and there will be some people who die as a result of the vaccination.
Outside of war time, there is a term we normally use for this: human sacrifice.
Answer a simple question, then: How many deaths from COVID is it worth to prevent one case of mild myocarditis from vaccination? How many deaths from COVID is it worth to prevent one death from vaccination?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
See the trolley problem. But, basically, we do not do this. If you push someone in front of a car to save a group of children crossing the road, you will be charged with murder. The point is, the choice is not yours to make.
Can I conclude from this that you would prefer, say, 100000 deaths from COVID to a single death from mandatory vaccination?
Many more died to protect freedom than 100,000.
Second – is the vax does not stop the spread, third is harming youth to save old and infirm is WRONG, and one could go on and on
But last – I think the vax is likely to cause many more deaths than it saves from unexpected consequences (not from the vax its self, but some deaths from it, maybe a lot) – note how the highest hospital rate is always where the vax rate is highest? Correlation/causation? But more died in 2021 With the Vax, than died in 2020 without it. The response has about destroyed the global economy – it is a dead man walking, and will result in MANY, many, millions of deaths globally from poverty and even much more lives destroyed.
‘Harming youth to save the old and infirm’ has been the basis for national defence throughout recorded history, with a few notable exceptions, by the way. Why change a winning formula, especially one developed and supported over the centuries by the elderly, wise and valuable?
It is only done by Vampires, taking youth to extend old age.
Vampires and lockdown advocates.
Oh lordy, I forgot to click the ‘irony font’ button again.
Prefer it? No, but so what – the point here is that you nor any of us should even be in a position to make such a decision to begin with.
And of course all your numbers are made up. For all we know vaccines could be more dangerous than COVID. The medical system refuses to categorize even blatantly obvious vaccine injuries as being so, thus we can safely assume most of them aren’t being detected. We’re really all flying blind here.
We are indeed flying blind – which just means that we have to act on incomplete information. But, like it or not, deciding which and how many people would have to die is neither uncommon nor avoidable, regrettably. Ever hear of triage?
Triage is a different situation. You cannot save everyone, you make a decision, those who are left to die can be seen as a sin of omission. Vaccinating and killing is a sin of commission.
I won’t say you have no point at all – but I would rather cause one to die and ten to live, by commission, than cause one to live and ten to die, by omission, and then stand their burn ishing my halo.
If the vaccines truly worked fine, but you need to look at the data and also think about what the vaccine currently is. The data shows that the vaccines do NOT prevent infection or spread and that they are ineffective after 6 months, hence the need for a booster(s) despite having no evidence as to whether the booster is (a) effective and (b) prolongs protection against severe disease. Second the vaccine itself is designed to express only the spike protein of the original variant. The original variant is long gone, and hence the effectiveness of the vaccine is only going to go down. Third, vaccinating with a non-sterilizing vaccine during the course of a pandemic is absolutely foolhardy as it simply promotes the generation of new variants. Far better to use selective vaccination for those at highest risk (i.e. the old, and those with the relevant co-morbidities). Finally, you cannot justify vaccination of everybody if the vaccine does NOT prevent either transmission or infection. If all it does is reduce the severity of the disease, then surely it is up to individuals to decide whether they wish to be vaccinated or not, and to decide for themselves what the risk/benefit ratio is.
One other thing. Try and get you medical facts straight rather than repeating ad nauseam MSM talking points. Myocarditis that requires hospitalization is NOT and never will be mild. when the ejection fraction is reduced below 50%, you’re in cardiac failure, and the cases reported that require hospitalization (and those are the only cases that are known because any sub-clinical myocarditis or “mild” myocarditis” will never be diagnoses, especially not by a GP) are by definition severe and generally have ejection fractions around 25%. That’s really bad new territory.
It is absolutely unethical to vaccinate anybody against their will when the potential adverse effects are really severe, and on top of that the vaccine is none too effective (unfortunately).
And this Substack is dedicated to Rsmus:https://ianmsc.substack.com/p/part-2-masks-and-vaccine-passports?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzU1MDE0MywicG9zdF9pZCI6NDU0MjY0MjUsIl8iOiJEem90cyIsImlhdCI6MTYzOTQ0Mzk4NiwiZXhwIjoxNjM5NDQ3NTg2LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMzQyMzM2Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.gk_lvY05a-j7xTbS7svT0sJurty93rhIS90sP-xM0BI
It really highlights in graphs from data directly from the WHO just how well lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccines have done. (not).
In your concern for others, I take it that you are giving up your car? And, in fact, most aspects of modern life – there are plenty killed in procuring those things that we all value.
Secondly, if someone chooses to sacrifice their life for another, that is a moral and heroic thing. I saw a video last night describing how the Japanese government asked young men to give up their lives for others, Kami something pilots.
Finally, should the young sacrifice themselves for those who have enjoyed decades of life more than them? Doesn’t seem fair to me.
I’m not convinced that HMG measures are necessarily about saving lives from COVID but are mostly due to trying to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. This is a wise aim whether or not we agree with the tactics. We are no longer flying blind, the diseases overwhelming attacks the very old and very vulnerable; the cost of protecting them and allowing them a few more months is a heavy one to place on the young.
Rasmus is a Dane, probably has a bike….
It’s the vaccinated who are suffering most from Covid nowadays, as well as from the effects of the vaccine itself. So your arguments are spurious.
I take the moral absolutist position. The question is, how many deaths are you prepared to tolerate? 1 vaccine death for 10000 Covid deaths? OK, what about 1 for 1000. Or 1 for 100. Whatever position you take becomes normalised, and the drive to reduce death rates without vaccinations disappears. Essentially, I see your position as a council of dispair.
Rasmus it is just not your choice to make.
The problem with the application of the trolley problem to real life is that as this pandemic illustrates those tasked with making choices have precious little solid information as to whether their intervention is going to save five at the expense of one or will actually save less than five lives that were due to be run over by a trolly in the next couple of years anyway at the expense of more than five who had a chance of a longer life if say their cancer had been spotted earlier.
We would all be a lot more confident that the government had made the sensible stab at the right decision if proper comparative risk calculations had been made and published even if they inevitably had a wide margin of error. At least we would know the issue had been thought about instead of the government being stampeded by Sage’s alarmist predictions and MSM hysteria alone.
That depends on who you vaccinate. Old and infirm OK, young people <30 bordering on criminal if mandatory.
Different question. The risk/benefit balance depends on age, sure, and we can discuss that. The question was, how many COVID-related deaths (also in third parties, remember) you were willing to accept to prevent one vaccine-related death.
But nobody is arguing against (covid) vaccines.
The question is whether the state may mandate them (and since we are at it, there is plenty more stuff to mandate).
Consider this, I have a diesel car which we bought because the government thought a few years ago that they were less polluting than petrol cars, so you got all sorts of incentives, including no road tax.
Now the same car (which was made in 2014, not eons ago) is seen as the devil incarnate pollution wise, so much so I won’t be able to drive it into the city centre in a few years.
It is not a problem for me. The car is going well and we’ll drive it until it dies, but how could the government have made such a blunder in just 5 years?
The vaccine related mortalities might not start to become evident until a few years down the line if the effect on the other parts of the immune system are negative. Multiple boosters in frequent succession ? Is this wise? In the worst case these could be astronomical. We may look back and wonder why and how this could be allowed to happen. My gut feeling is that you don’t mess with the immune system more than you absolutely have to (eg. MS) and for an influensa+ illlness you let the body and non-invasive treatments play out.
I can’t seem to edit my comment so I’ll add this. How many vaccines historically have been recommended with a three month intervall? Six months+ was the standard a few weeks ago. Are BigPharma and their investors rubbing their hand with glee?
This looks ominously like the scenario depicted by Peter Daszak in 2015!
This is clearly not an ideal vaccine. Maybe it could only ever have come up against a new disease, since any established disease would have had a lot of population immunity, and people would not have rolled out a vaccine till they had something better than this. For the rest, you never know what might happen in twenty years, so you have to go with the probabilities and what data you have. If you go on ‘but what if’ no over-the-counter medicine would ever get approval.
As for the original question, vaccine mandates would depend on whether vaccination reduces (not eliminates) transmission, and whether we are willing to pay for the increased load on the health service from people who could have protected themselves with a simple jab but chose not to. I do not claim this a no-brainer, but when people start talking about ‘human sacrifice’, without even considering the potential benefits of vaccination, I think it is worth reminding them that there is such a thing as a trade-off.
The benefits of vaccination accrue to the people who take it, and who would otherwise have been at risk of getting sick.
When people are taking it who don’t need it, or worse, are being forced to take it, in order to benefit other people, then that’s really bad.
When taking the vaccine doesn’t even benefit other people because they took it themselves anyway, it has become an irrational form of human sacrifice. Like all such sacrifices it doesn’t make logical sense. It exists to appease the gods and hope they smile on the ones who remain.
This is really one of the most common mistakes people make. They forget that herd immunity is only relevant for people who don’t take it. Or they remember, and then try to claim that hospital beds are somehow the same thing or a good justification (they’re not: if there aren’t enough beds the solution is to train more people).
Well said. I guess Rasmus and his ilk would like to go back to Inca times and have real human sacrifices with blood, rather than having an unusual number of football players collapse on the field with cardiac arrythmias and other severe career ending cardiac events. A very strange phenomenon unless somehow all these players are overdosing on metamphetamines.
Rasmus, you are beating a dead horse. Just try and open your eyes and try to pretend how clever and knowledgeable you are when you’re talking out the back of your head. Here’s the deal with these vaccines compared to all others: the incidence of significant adverse effects (i.e. those reported in the US VAERS data base, the UK Yellow book and the EMA database), exceed those of all other vaccines combined. At least 50% of the people who have been vaccinated, and the younger the individual the higher incidence, experience some some sort of adverse effect that is significant enough to lay them up for a day or two, but not significant enough for the individual to go to the hassle and effort of reporting it to the relevant databases. You can bet that when a vaccine or drug has that sort of incidence of adverse effects that are not mild but not severe enough to require hospitalization, the incidence of severe adverse effects is going to be high. The fact of the matter is that if this weren’t COVID and our governments and public health authorities hadn’t gone completely mad, these vaccines would have been withdrawn from the market a long time ago, just as the swine flu vaccine had to be withdrawn in short order.
It is time to take a step back and look very carefully at what is going on with the vaccines and address these issues carefully and openly, rather than trying to deny that serious adverse effects exist and claiming that the vaccines are as safe is drinking a can of coke or taking a couple of advil (ibuprofen).
It is all the more tragic because every indication indicates that the Omicron variant is largely harmless (i.e. gives on a bad cold for a couple of days) and since it appears to be more transmissible than delta will likely take over. That should be regarded as great news because that will provide deliverance.
I have heard your anecdotes before. If the side effects are that bad, it should be fairly easy to produce a reliable and validated account of them.
The Government’s own Yellow Card system, and the US Government’s VAERS system records extremely high numbers of deaths and serious adverse events linked to the vaccines – but the MHRA in this country and the equivalent body in the US have totally failed to investigate these reports as they are bound to do. Meanwhile such is the pressure on the population to believe in these vaccines, and on medical staff not to file the reports, that only a fraction (10% at most) of serious side effects get reported.
Why don’t you spend a couple of hours and listen to the in-depth McCullough interview with Jo Rogan: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0aZte37vtFTkYT7b0b04Qz
He gives plenty of references to published work so you can take notes and check those papers out if you don’t believe what he’s saying.
The fact is, there are long-established, proven safe, cheap and readily-available drugs and vitamins that greatly reduce the symptoms of Covid, potentially avoiding almost all fatalities – except that these treatments have been banned for use in Covid in most countries. The reason being that the “vaccines” could only get emergency use authorisation if no other treatments were available. The intention all along was to bring in universal vaccination by suppressing life-saving treatments, pretending there is no alternative. That is a lie. It is murder, and absolutely evil.
Agree. “Covid policy” has been a criminal enterprise. It’s not much use knowing about and deploring horrors in Manchuria and Germany 70 years ago, if one doesn’t recognize it when it crops up in one’s own back yard.
Your question is totally apt. Something important has been forgotten: we should be protecting the weakest in our society, not the strongest. That is what civilisation means.
Many people can’t think for themselves. They have to told what to do to save themselves.
That is not what vivisection means.
My mistake. Predictive text on phone.
Why the down votes – I would have thought it was clear that many people dont know how to think properly ?? hence rampant obesity etc etc. We need far more conversation about what effectively protecting the weakest looks like in practice AND WHAT THEIR CHOICES ABOUT THAT WOULD LOOK LIKE – rather than assuming they want to live in a lockdown scenario. Many elderly people i know have come to terms with the whole death thing and would rather be consulted on whether they want to be coddled and therefore not spend time with their nearest and dearest……………Plus I have to say that if someone chooses to eat themselves into unhealth etc etc then they really need to grow up and accept some consequences which will happen regardless of covid !!
There is no such thing as “mild myocarditis” whatever the media doctors say. Heart muscle damage does not repair, longer term prognosis is rarely good. The mass vaccination approach is a sleight of hand, “give them false choices” money-making monopoly. What you should be asking is why is the Western world so unable to allow multiple options for cheap, safe, effective early (pre hospital) treatments? Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch just one more highly qualified person to be highlighting this corruption and malpractice in the last 18 months. Calm, rational, super informative and damning in the extreme. I recommend this eye opening interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXAi_ABL3pE
The reason that the Western world does not license cheap, effective, early (pre hospital) treatments is surely that, to the best of our knowledge, no such treatments have yet been found. And, sorry, if you know different, could you please point me to a reliable published study that shows it? For something this important I am not taking my information from video interviews, even with Harvard epidemiologists.
You really are obstinate aren’t you. Su Mac is 100% correct. You are 100% wrong. The reason the US, UK and EU have tried to ban various treatment protocols that make use of cheap repurposed drugs is that if such protocols were shown officially to be effective, then the EUA for the vaccines (a cash cow) would have to be withdrawn. Here’s the thing. These various protocols have bene used extensively by many many doctors. I suggest you listen to the Dark Horse podcast interviewing Peter McCullough. While every attempt has been made of cancel McCullough, the fact remains that he is one of the most highly cited cardiologists around (with an h index of well over 100 on Google scholar, which puts him into stratospheric territory as a physician-scientist). He has had great success with various treatment regimens given at the very onset of symptoms. He has also looked at the incidence of myocarditis and it’s a lot lot higher than you might imagine. And I might add that a recent study in Hong Kong puts the risk of myocarditis at around 1 in 2000; the previously Israeli study was 1 in 5000. This is no longer some tiny 1 in a million thing. It’s a really big deal and in my eyes a complete deal breaker which is why I absolutely will not be getting a booster.
McCullough’s credentials and long career are truly impressive and he is now being hounded, vilified, discredited and called a quack. You have to be short of logic to not connect the dots.
Look, we know how it works when you are looking for a cure. Some get cured, some get better, some get worse. There are always variations in what is given, when it is given, patient circumstances. If you have a strong desire to find a cure (and, boy, do people have a strong desire), all it takes is a minimum of bias, or cherrypicking, or your particular study being on the right side of randomness, and you get completely convinced that you have the cure. Even without dishonesty or political preconceptions. And any number of worried or desperate people will choose to believe you. That is why they have all those requirements for statistics, double blind trials, … – to minimise the chance for people to promote a harmless, useless chemical to the cure and fool a lot of desperate people by selling them remedies that do not work.
If you want reliable medicine, you need to stick to the research procedures that minimise the number of false positive results. They may slow down the odd drug, but they keep hundreds and hundreds of duds off the market. And if you want to sell placebos, stick to homeopathy and vitamins. That is guaranteed harmless, and no one is in any doubt about what is involved.
May I suggest you visit the site https://ivmmeta.com/ which pulls together the results of (currently) 70 studies for Ivermectin and other treatments in a meta-analysis. The reports are of varying quality and that is taken into account in the meta-analysis. It’s also convenient for drilling down to the original papers.
As far as vaccine safety is concerned this paper in Toxicology Reports should set your mind at rest: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221475002100161X?via%3Dihub
If you dispute the findings of these reports you are of course free to submit your comments to the journals in question and engage in scientific debate with the authors and referees.
The site is impressive enough to deserve reading and comparing with other studies – which I have no time for during this working week. The last I had seen before was the nature paper at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01535-y dismissing ivermectin results – which was fairly damning. A lightning look does show me a couple of things that worry me slightly. It is not obvious that trials by frontline physicians are less biased than trials by drug companies – surely frontline physicians would generally have a bias towards believing that their idea worked, their treatment saved patients – and their positive results were publishable. One notes that two of the first high-effect trials were withdrawn because of suspected fraud, hardly an unbiased activity. Also the detailed discussion of how many confounding factors there are, and which trials should therefore be excluded, sounds uncomfortably like excuses – a more certain result would require less of this kind of discussion. Which of course does not prove anything either way.
Still, with this I’ll accept that at least there is fight in Ivermectin yet.
Oh, as for the safety record I do not need to read your link. I thought it was common knowledge, from its record as an antiparasite agent, that Ivermectin was safe.
Interesting that you should say it is “common knowledge” that ivermectin is safe…Did you miss the bit where the media, the govt medical agencies, Merck the pharma who makes it and assorted comedians/rock journalists/twitter influencers told everyone it was an unsafe medicine for humans, it is for horses and only stupid Deplorables would dose themselves with it. What was your reaction to that little campaign?
I am delighted to report that ivmeta.com has been forensically dissected by Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, Kyle Sheldrick and Avi Bitterman and found seriously wanting
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1422044335076306947.html
Someone here mentioned this site last year so I paid a visit and spent an entertaining 2 hours looking at their list of RCTs exploring early treatment and their Forest plots among other things.
At that time they had listed 11 studies as kosher RCTs for early treatment. In fact, having read them all, they weren’t e.g. 2 of them were unblinded, 4 of them compared ivermectin with other antiviral treatments with no placebo arm, 1 of them allowed random extra treatments to be added to their ivermectin arm … I could go on but I won’t and no, you can’t statistically correct for these sorts of inconsistencies in a credible meta analysis.
In addition, the summaries of the results they gave were laughably biased when one bothered to compare their words with what the actual investigators wrote in their discussions.
Also they had a para at the end explaining why they had excluded some studies. One example they gave was a study that recruited the treatment arm at one hospital and the placebo volunteers from another and yet one of their included studies did exactly this.
I did attempt to engage with them regarding these concerns but never received a reply.
Thanks for letting us know. I can probably content myself with a very quick look, then.
Here you go Rasmus (I don’t get notifications so maybe someone has given you what you need already..) Dr Tess Lawrie, a world respected UK medical meta-data analyst started this website to promote accurate information about one early treatment, ivermectin. This page and another 7 list trial, scientific papers etc, etc https://bird-group.org/health-professionals-resources/
They outlawed medicines as the vax was released on emergency grounds because no medicine supposedly existed – and so if Vitamin D, Zinc, Ivermectin, Fluvoxamine, and dozens of other potential medicines were found to work by early administration the vax would lose its emergency approval.
Therefore ALL Scientific studies were banned and de-funded and canceled under threat of the scientists future working life being destroyed.
This has been a very evil time with a cure not looked for, more like Hidden; the $$$$$ and POWER, Not Health, being the whole response.
Spot on.
But Remdesivir is approved…. ummm, I wonder why. The answer is not only that it is prescribed later in the disease!
Exactly so. We are dealing with extreme evil here. Many/most people can’t bring themselves to believe that this degree of evil exists in the “modern” world – they would prefer to believe it disappeared with the fall of the Nazis and Soviet communism.
No “They” didn’t
The RECOVERY trial got underway in the UK on March 23 2020 looking at mainly repurposed drugs. It got its first useful result in 3 months (dexamethasone – cheap as chips, in the management of patients with severe covid). Followed by Tocilizumab and REGEN-COV2. It is currently looking at :
The other trial in the UK looking at repurposed drugs for recovery at home (rather than in a hospital) is the PRINCIPLE trial, looking at Favipiravir and Ivermectin. The Ivermectin arm is temporarily paused due to “supply issues” whatever that means.
It Meant they were to stupid to do what I did and go to the farm supply outlet and buy some tubes of horse de-wormer.
$8.99 for a tube, with a handy dispensing gauge, and does 6 doses for a 200 lb person. $1.50 a dose….
Also available in injectable and as a ‘Dip’, but I went with the paste as being more convenient.
PS there has been some quite good results from some hydroxychloroquine studies lately, and when it all began in Feb 2020 I stocked up on Querctin and zinc, and filled my 80L O2 welding oxygen bottle and bought a medical O2 regulator and cannula for it…
In the UK the regulatory requirements for drug trials are very strict (for obvious reasons). The investigators would only be allowed to use pharmacologically pure Ivermectin produced solely for human consumption.
It seems to be the same in the US – the state of Texas won’t buy its pentobarbital from the animal hospital, even though there is a super-concentrated veterinary dose specially formulated for euthanasia.
Funny – I had no trouble at all buying 300 tablets over the last couple of month from an Indian pharmacy…
Death is guaranteed, life isn’t.
Rephrase that the problem to “how many lives is it worth destroying in order to change the words on the death certificate for one person?” and you may get a different perspective.
Unless of course the vaccine also provides immortality – in which case I almost certainly don’t want it.
Deaths from cancer, living in extended pain because a hip replacement has to be put back. Extending poverty. depriving the old & the dying of a loving hand, mandating masks for children the youngest of which will never recover from the trauma of these measures. I could go on
Her vote will unfortunately be fairly meaningless since the other side of the house seemingly have no problems with authoritarianism. She might be better engaged in trying to remove the weak, spineless and incompetent leader of her party and the country whose lack of judgement, courage and resolve just time and time again plunges the UK into a spiral of fear, irrationality and gross economic and social harm.
Unless the UK can find a level headed and courageous leader to implement an evidence based and reactive pandemic management (Sweden) for the country I will continue to despair. The current blindly proactive management is gravely damaging in a number of ways, particularly divisive vaccine passes and panic mass vaccinations of those jabbed a couple of months ago, again degrading the NHS capability for routine important treatments of more serious ailments. Reactive is important when you’ve no proven basis for knowing the actual characteristics and consequences (hospitalisations, not cases) of a new variant, possible more benign than the currently dominant one.
And he definitely should not be the person to announce the first mortality from the Omicron variant.
You mean the variant went round the world without a single death until one occured in a country the day before that country’s legislature was to vote on new restrictions?
Isn’t it odd how nature works…..
Yes. I love the latest American T-shirt: Alec Baldwin’s gun has killed more people than Omicron.
It’s important to note it said with omicron not from, probably picked up by routine testing just like in South Africa and nothing to do with the death.
And he definitely should not be the person to announce the first mortality from the Omicron variant.
“With the omicron variant” not “from” it was the telling choice of words
Ah, I see I’m behind Dawn with comment
Omicron is not the last letter. Even omega will not be the end of this over-long saga. I believe that they are going to name subsequent mutations after constellations.
Sars-covid2 is never going away, so we must live with it. In a country where about 1600 people die every day the deaths from covid are not great. As Michael Richardson points out below, the covid casualties are mostly the people who are due to die of something soon.
We can’t go on living stunted lives in a crippled economy and accepting another jab every six months, forever.
“the coronavirus strain was named “omicron” – the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet, while the previous two letters “nu” and “xi” were missed by WHO. According to representatives of the organization, in the first case, the name of the strain would resemble the word “new” and would confuse people, and in the second it could cause a wave of anti-Chinese hatred and propaganda. The omicron strain is considered much more dangerous because of its potential to bypass vaccines.”
They skipped letter Xi – wonder why? The Chinese Virus skips the letter Xi…. Omicron is a nimble virus at skipping over things.
Thanks! Also it seems that WHO doesn’t go in for anagrams ….”moronic”?
Thank you Miriam. It is reassuring to know that there remain a small proportion of our democratically elected representatives who are prepared to stand up in Parliament and put a reasoned case for those of us critical of authoritarian overreach by this government, allegedly in the cause of managing the spread of the Covid 19 virus.
It was about time.. Words though is not enough, we all must do something as little as signing the petition: Repeal Coronavirus Act.
As you know it is needed 100,000, please sign.. Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom… Freedom… Freedom..
I do have a fear though.. the next PM or government what are they gone do? Since we have been in this mess, I understand from their comments in the news and their votes supporting every single tyrannical measure, that Labor and literally everyone else, would have taken the same course of actions and in fact many MPs have been asking for More Restrictions..!.. Are they all the same then?
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/592632
Thank you for the link, I’ve signed
Thank you too.
The actual act that matters is the Public Health Act. All such acts should be repealed.
OK then.. Go on and make your petition. I will be the first to sign!.. All of us, we realize that what is happening has very littlie to do with health..
Having watched Friday’s UK Column interesting piece on firstly how the Allegra situation could not have happened last year as the briefing room where she was was only revamped in March – watch it they are correct. Secondly the supposed Party date was 18th December last year and Boris only cancelled Xmas on the 19th. If so why has no journalist picked up on this?
Great observations, thanks
Johnson is being pushed out because he’s been dragging his feet over bringing in stringent measures (he still wants to be seen as lovable cuddly Boris the friend of Peppa Pig). He will be replaced by someone less squeamish about going down the totalitarian route. The faked-up party “scandal” is a smokescreen and an attempt to destroy whatever credibility he was thought to have by the general public. An easy target, of course.
Miriam for PM. Shame on the cabinet.
Thank you Miriam for your courage and principle and logical thinking! You can see as I can, that many will find one day soon themselves shamefully on the wrong side of history.
Very solid position. Unfortunately in my country we don’t have a single MP with courage to present arguments as you did or everyone there thinks exactly the same way, which is something to worry.
I’ve posted this before, but maybe there are still people who want to read up on the impact that comes with the policies being used to combat Covid-19.
Here’s a economic research paper that examines the cost/benefits of lockdowns.
Covid-19 Lockdown Cost/Benefits:
A Critical Assessment of the Literature
Professor Douglas W. Allen
Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13571516.2021.1976051
Here’s a video made by Professor Allen where he explains everything. It’s very helpful.
https://www.sfu.ca/~allen/CovidFacts.mp4
Just a brief look at the abstract gives the following:
He is saying that there is no correlation between having a lockdown and death figures, because people’s behaviour is in practice determined by many other things. Which may well be true. Notably he points out Sweden where ‘there was no lockdown’, but where there was also no explosion in cases. Largely, because the Swedes did many of the reductions in human contact anyway, even without a formal lockdown. In short, people are doing the right things anyway, so there is no benefits from a lockdown. Of course, if people are doing the same things anyway, there are no costs to a lockdown either. If I own a restaurant it does not help me that there is no lockdown if people are staying away anyway, out of fear. In short, he is not looking at the actual trade-offs between health and freedom of action, he is simply looking at the arbitrary label ‘lockdown’. One explanation is that the data are not available to do it properly, which is likely true. Another might be that Prof. Allen, like many others, is in favour of a high-death, high-freedom scenario, but is too squeamish to say so openly.
There may well be an argument that the costs of trying to keep people healthy outweigh the benefits, but it would have to be in terms of actual opportunities lost and actual deaths, rather than meaningless discussions about labelled policy measures like ‘lockdown’ or how many million dollars should be used to value a year of life.
I’ve noticed that you’ve made a lot of comments that have generated a lot of discussion. I am not here to convince you of anything. It is impossible to change what people believe, they have to do that themselves. You can choose an emotional path or one based on evidence. How you interpret the evidence is ultimately up to you, but facts don’t care about feelings or opinions. The link above is one possibility and an important viewpoint to discuss. We need to look at the collateral aspects of our actions or we will never learn and progress. I wish you all the best.
Rasmus is a favorite poster here, and one well appreciated for his (well argued and polite) stance, as an echo chamber proves nothing. He is our:
“Devil’s advocate
The advocatus diaboli is a former official position within the Catholic Church, the Promoter of the Faith: one who “argued against the canonization of a candidate in order to uncover any character flaws or misrepresentation of the evidence favoring canonization””
I’ve noticed there are a few regulars that post here…
Not at all. He hasn’t the intellectual and rhetorical capacity to be a “Devil’s Advocate”. He’s the equivalent of the kid in the playground with his fingers in his ears going “la-la-la-la” as soon as someone presents a reasonable and factual argument.
Upon whose behalf are you making all of these argumentative comments? You don’t seem to be on any particular side of the fence. I just can’t understand where you’re coming from, maybe others can? Apart from your general scepticisim to your neighbouring country to the east, what’s inspiring you?
Oh, only on my own behalf (and thanks for the undeserved interest). I like honing my arguments, trying to find some mutual respect with people I disagree with (and hearing the sound of my own voice 😉 ). Politically I am a sopping wet Conservative (like Ken Clarke). As they say, a Conservative is someone who believes that society has many groups with legitimately conflicting interests, and the task is to find sensible solutions and keep them all rubbing along.
As always thanks for your input Erasmas – no point in subscribing to Unherd if it becomes an echo chamber !!!!
Actually I remember doing a longish essay 35 odd years ago on Erasmus’ “in Praise of Folly” aka ‘Ignorance is Bliss”. May well have been the case during the Middle Ages when little changed over time but now change is so intense that feeling ignorant must be very anxiety provoking especially when ,as here, the truth is so difficult to clarify……….and,as always, the larger number of intelligent folk who are attempting that search for truth the better – as long as they all respect the sanctity of that search and dont get sidetracked by ego etc…….
if not vaccinated
get vaccinated, your vaccination protects you
else
your vaccination won’t protect you, get vaccinated
I wonder if the plan is to get a booster programming boosting like the clappers and well it turns out that there have been few deaths from omicron, they can tell us that they have all been jolly clever.
I came to the conclusion a few days ago that the unvaccinated are a very important control group to have around in order to be able to judge the efficacy of the so called vaccines, particularly for a milder virus variant which Omicron might turn out to be. If it is established to be milder even in the unvaccinated then the vaccination hysteria will be unwarranted, but that would not be good news for certain parties.
Thank you so much for opposing this Plan B nonsense. Segregating people according to some arbitrary mark has never led to good outcomes and we need to oppose it.
Also omicron is now 50% of the daily cases and deaths seem to be actually dropping.
We really need leaders like you. Thanks again!
I was double vaccinated and have now tested positive on PCR and flow tests. Dr Peter McCullough says there are no confirmed cases of people getting CV twice – so… I’m not getting a booster. Why is everyone talking about boosters without bringing up the large number of people who have acquired natural immunity? Well, why do you think?
As Charles Mackay was quoted to say: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one”. With that in mind, I welcome the support of Miriam Cates. After voting against these draconian and worthless measures today I urge her to send a ‘no-confidence’ letter in to the Conservatives 1922 committee – this administration is long past saving.
Chaos in Westminster as Tory MP discovers backbone.
Amen to that!!
The key bit is the “zero covid” scenario that invariably keeps propping up and must be the only possible desirable outcome to justify these (or indeed ANY) restrictions.
Thank you for your courage in standing up for democracy and the people.
It was good to know that 100 Conservative MPs still believe in the aims of a Liberal Democracy and the upholding of Conservative values. I presume the Liberal Democrats also voted against.
We have been fed propaganda for the last two years in order to get us to comply with legislation which has ruined businesses and people’s livelihoods, denied children the right to an uninterrupted education (which is still going on) and crippled the natural communication between the generations.
To recommend a course of action (as in Sweden and the relevant American states) should have been the chosen way for a Conservative government to act but the Prime Minister (and Health Secretaries) seem to be too weak to stand up to pressure from their appointed officials.
Making vaccines compulsory is immoral. The Prime Minister seems to believe that this will make everyone comply but he is wrong. There are religious reasons why some people don’t get vaccinated and there are also those, like me, who have had a bad reaction to the vaccine. I suffered severe headaches for a month after my second vaccine and will not be having a booster…
.
Some real honesty is required. It’s clear that the population have to be told the limits to their care in this trade off. That’s already true for some treatments. The myth is that the NHS can provide limitless care and cure anything. The issue is the image of untreated people dying or long term ill. Some will from other causes of course. So how many dead or ill if no further measures? Just be honest or bandy vague ideas of liberty or lockdown as if there’s no cost either way.
“I don’t believe that the Government has deliberately set out on a road to authoritarianism”
Either she is lying or she is slow, very slow.
Oh my goodness this was heartening to read!!!!
Excellent. She also opposes the ‘gender’ nonsense.
There is no mystery about why the Northern working class turned against Labour. MPs like this aren’t really Tories. They are just people who stand up for their constituents and for common sense.
All power to them.
Why is Miriam Cates not prime minister already?
You missed a rhetorical question, Ms Cates
Gates:Do we want to live in a country where the government does not care how many people die, provided nothing interferes with the Christmas parties?
True, there is no way of knowing for sure how many might die because of the governments’ refusal to take proper precautions. The numbers are hard to predict. But Ms Cates
Gatesand friends do not even ask the question, from the way they talk they are against precautions on principle, regardless of the death count. In short, there is no reason to think that they care.Thousands of people are going to die of this every year and there are always going to be new variants. This is no different from any other virus. As 98% of the most vulnerable have anti bodies, we need to consider that the virus is now risk managed to the point that we just get on with life – as is vital for human physical and mental health and as was the accepted wisdom (based on evidence and risk assessment) prior to March 2020.
It’s not just about canceling Christmas parties therefore, it’s about when we are allowed to live as normal and this unprecedented and never before advocated experiment ends. By all objective criteria, it should have never been started.
Terrible as it is, death is a natural part of life. COVID is becoming like that old story where the genie appears and asks the main character whether they would prefer to live ten years living like a king or a hundred years living as a boring person?
Everybody dies, eventually, and the age-profile of Covid deaths is almost exactly in line with the age-profile of all-cause deaths. In other words, by and large, people who die of Covid would, absentia Covid, have died of something else.
Rasmus, you have an almost supernatural ability to miss the point. This is not about “Christmas parties” it is primarily about how we perceive the relationship between the state and the individual and lines which should not be crossed. It is also about the misconception that we can somehow control everything based on a rampant risk averseness, leading to an irrational “safetyism” Last, but not least, it is about the collateral damage that is caused both economically and socially which far outweighs any potential damage the virus is now capable of inflicting.
Your post, which had rather sneering undertones in its dismissiveness towards genuine and well founded concerns, seems also to be oblivious to the fact that this cycle will simply go on and on as reasons can always be found to perpetuate the fear and panic at every twist and turn in the natural evolutionary life of a virus.
On a purely logical level, your argument is flawed as it presents a false dichotomy which is very common amongst those who hold the views you seem to hold. You assume because someone does not hold view X then it follows that they must follow view Y. That is shallow and simplistic.
Oh and it is Miriam Cates, not Gates.
When you have a choice with important consequences, I generally expect people to evaluate the costs and benefits of both courses of action, and to acknowledge them when they announce their decision. I do not think this is unreasonable
It may be that you think the cost of additional COVID cases add up to less than the cost of allowing the state to impose lockdowns (and of forcing people to miss their Christmas parties). If so I would expect you to add up both sides of the ledger and tell me what you found. This is a reasonable discussion, and you might even convince me at some point – we cannot continue lockdowns for ever.
Or it may be that you think that, say, 30000 premature deaths is a reasonable price to pay for keeping the governments’ powers in check (and having those parties). If so I would expect you to acknowledge it openly, so that it is clear, also to yourself, what you are trading off.
But when people start getting hysterical about ‘a society where people are judged and discriminated against by their health status’ and do not even mention how much death and suffering those measures might or might not save, I get a little impatient. Surely, if you can assume without evidence or argument that ‘the collateral damage that is caused both economically and socially [] far outweighs any potential damage the virus is now capable of inflicting’ I can assume that you basically do not care how much damage the virus will cause as long as nobody encroaches on your freedom?
‘
What I think you don’t understand is that for many people whether they support lock-downs or not, whether they wear masks or not, whether they get vaccinated or not are less to do with medicine or epidemiology or even concerns about freedom of action it is all to do with ideology. I’m not just saying that this happens on one side alone because I know people from both ends of the spectrum and they are more concerned about posturing than anything else.
You are probably right. Of course my gut reactions are not free from ideology either. I am just trying to push people (myself included) into paying attention to the facts. That way you can maybe reach some kind of agreement. If it is all about ideology it is all about who shouts the loudest – which is a poor way to run a railroad.
You seem to be fixated on Xmas parties. I actually bloody well hate parties so that is a total red herring. As it happens, I also live a very quiet life and have not been abroad since 2015. I am reasonably comfortable financially and have managed to continue earning money as I work from home anyway. So it is not about “my freedoms” I live alone but thankfully am generally OK with my own company. That said, I was not able to see any of my family for a lengthy period and with an elderly parent not in great health and who also lives alone – and has struggled with restrictions – that was difficult. I chose not to break the rules last year and spent Xmas alone. I would not do that again.
Again, you argue in a binary fashion and merely repeat your assertions, culminating in a moralising judgement based on a presentation of the argument implying that anybody who does not agree with you is insouciant regarding death. This is weak argument. It also fails to engage with the broader implications. I do think you need to take more care in terms of what you imply of the morality of others.
Of course we have no compelling data yet but I strongly suspect that many more lives will end up being blighted by persistent restrictions than by the virus. We have not even begun to count the cost.
I also return to the central question of the shifting of the relationship between the state and the individual. This has been profoundly damaged, and of course not just here in the UK. Liberal democracy is a precious commodity and there has to be a very good reason indeed to imperil it. Be in no doubt, imperil it we have.
I am not any kind of hysterical libertarian: I have always thought of myself as moderate and centrist but the actions of supposedly democratic governments has pushed me towards a more libertarian stance. there are some things that are of overriding importance.
‘Strongly suspect’ is fair enough. I rather suspect you are wrong, but here we are talking the same language. at least. Your concerns are real enough; I have a strong objection to people who refuse to even consider there could be any costs associated with their favourite opinions, so I had better not make the same error myself. The impression from the debate is that there are lots and lots of people who feel so strongly about their freedoms that they will meet any information they do not like with total denial. But it does not look like you are one of them.
For decades we are being indoctrinated of equality and diversity and that none should be judged and discriminated on the grounds of color, disability, health, ethnicity, religion, gender, political view etc.. and there you are… discriminating against those who do not accept the narrative and deny vaccination.. But these people are the most healthy population and available for work. Why they are being stigmatized? Does this not tell you anything? I am healthy and I will never behave as sick!!.. NO, never! I have been taken care of myself and succeeded again and again.. and again.. All by myself.. I never expect that the politicians could care about me!!.. This thought is totally funny.. ! As for the scientists and doctors unfortunately they want us.. all of us, sick and needy, that is the only way to keep the lights on them! Unfortunately science and medicine are bringing themselves down, fast.. very fast.. out of greed perhaps and to my understanding because they have hit a wall.. they cannot achieve their desirable progress although they state otherwise. That is in fact good news!.. Can you imagine what they gone do to us if they could!! They can no longer continue to consume our focus, energy, money and by no means they can decide about our bodies, lives and future. NO, I will not sacrifice my good health for anyone, and I will not inject my body with anything other than water, good food and exercise. I am not responsible, and I have no clue why people get sick? If the doctors and scientists cannot take care of the sick and vulnerable then we need other solutions But to target and damage the health of the most healthy, young and ready for work amongst us, it is an evil and sinister plan!
Anyone does not care for Democracy and Freedom please move to North Korea and China.. and never.. never come back..
Please see what is happening in the EU.
Bravo !! to Christian and his companions!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzPRxrHrXgg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUUmK4u0kj8
You’re totally lacking in perspective. How many in the UK are going to die or suffer serious untreated illness in the next 6-8 weeks caused by the panic, confusion and unprioritised treatment created by the defective brain cells of the PM and his blinded advisors.
That is an important question. I do not know. I also do not know how many are going to die or suffer serious untreated illness from COVID or overfilled hospitals, because the PM cannot bring himself to tell people to stop partying in the face of a raging pandemic. I would listen to anybody who could give me an unbiased estimate of both sides.
One thing we can hopefully agree about is that a PM who tells people to work from home but to keep going to Christmas parties is way out of line, no matter what the COVID facts are.
I really don’t think that is the question. People will die of a whole range of things, many direct results of lockdown. The emotive “they prioritise economics over death” argument just locks in the tribal elements of the debate.
The question is actually about NHS overwhelm. If we know how fast the variant infected number doubles, know (or can estimate) how many of that number will be hospitalised, and know how many hospital beds we have, then simple arithmetic will tell the government when the news is going to be full of people lying on gurneys in hospital car parks. It might, now, only be as deadly as flu, but it spreads many times faster.
Politically no government can afford that optic and morally they should stop it happening if they can.
I agree with her protest. I’m concerned about government overreach, which is a very real thing. At the same time I’m struggling to see how else the government should react. A massively increased booster programme, allied with some “slow it down” measures, seems like the least worse option.
In future we clearly need to build significantly more redundancy into the health system but right now, we are where we are, and have to muddle and bodge our way through it.
You make an important point in your last sentence. Just as the army has an army reserve and territorial army so the National Health Service should have a reserve of people trained to rapidly expand the service in time of emergency and pandemics. This can consist of retired doctors and nurses that are happy to be called on, but also younger volunteers from ordinary life who learn the basics of caring for patients and who will step in to help the NHS cope during pandemics, just as the volunteers of the RNLI do when there is an emergency at sea.
Good to hear creative solutions which would effectively increase the options available to govts etc – and therefore make possible the return of individual choice and responsibility a la Sweden !
Yes, we shouldn’t need to bring the economy and social life to a halt to “save the NHS” every time we have a pandemic. The NHS needs to be made robust and flexible enough to cope with expanded demand. At present it seems to start wheezing like an asthmatic every winter – it needs to be a bit fitter.
Very sensible.
I thought Boris and Ferguson were
GatesYes I want to live in such a country. Governments aren’t very good at “caring” – their idea of caring is more like some sort of bear hug of death. I’d rather they didn’t care how many people die, outside of warfare.
Good observation. Governments aren’t designed for caring, One should never confuse them with someone who gives a damn about individuals. They are delegated agents, given a soapbox and some money, to do the dreary jobs we need done. They need continuous reminders to know their place and keep to it. They should never be glamorized, taken seriously or seen as in loco parentis. Ms. Cates seems to have some character. That puts her in the top drawer.