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There are two more increasingly popular Spectator TV videos to view, brilliantly presented by Andrew Neil.
Each of the episodes below is one hour long, but it is unlikely that those seeking real news and analysis will be bored.
As a supporter of President Trump, I was somewhat less impressed with Episode 3, from September 17, which downplayed his chances for re-election as well as his foreign policy, as many of us consider it a peacetime triumph:
Sweden’s state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell was the first to be interviewed about his nation’s handling of coronavirus. As we know, they had no lockdown.
Tegnell regretted not having controlled the many deaths in care homes — similar to those in other Western nations. There were also other lives that could not be saved because of co-morbidities. He said that a lockdown would not have saved them.
The problem in the care homes related to their separation from a national health care system, again, not dissimilar to the tragic result seen in other nations, particularly the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
He indicated that Sweden wanted to ensure that care home fatalities were resolved going forward as well as those among minority populations. He said that an EU commission was looking into those challenges.
Neil asked why Sweden was one of the few countries that ignored the projections from Imperial College London earlier this year. Tegnell replied that Imperial’s models were ‘quite extreme’ and ‘doubtful’. He added that models are not made ‘for prognosis’ because ‘you don’t really know’ what is going to happen.
He said, ‘This is not a competition’ and expressed his desire for more international collaboration and discussion to find a common pathway towards fighting the a second wave of the pandemic as well as agreement on testing.
He said that Sweden had been conducting 80,000 tests a week with no recent deaths.
Good for Sweden. They did well considering they bucked all the odds.
In case the interview is difficult to listen to because Tegnell is on a train, here is another transmission:
Episode 4 of Spectator TV, from Thursday, September 24, covered a multitude of health, economic and political topics:
Kate Andrews talked about the broadcast that Dr Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance made about coronavirus last week. Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer, gave a statement last week on a winter economic programme. It focussed on a change from furlough, which expires in October, to a jobs subsidy for viable employment. She said that there is no doubt that unemployment will rise in the UK in the coming months.
James Forsyth echoed that and said that Rishi Sunak’s plan is to retain as many current jobs as possible but also to create many more.
On that note, Katy Balls said that there is some tension between 10 and 11 Downing Street. Boris errs on the side of health and personal safety. Rishi is more focussed on the economic numbers in order to keep Britain afloat.
With regard to coronavirus, Dr Flavio Toxvaerd, an economic epidemiologist from Cambridge University, said that epidemiologists do not have a good estimation of human behaviour. He did not believe that we were likely to see the latest coronavirus predictions from Whitty and Vallance’s graphs come true. That said, there is a delicate balance to be struck between health and the economy in dealing with COVID-19. Both are critical at this time. Neither can be viewed in isolation.
With regard to his eponymous amendment anticipated to be brought before the House of Commons, Sir Graham Brady said he felt confident that any future coronavirus-related statutory instruments would have to be brought before the House of Commons for debate and a vote prior to implementation.
Questions have been raised as to Boris Johnson’s future as Prime Minister. Katy Balls and James Forsyth both thought that he would not be gone by the end of the year, as many have predicted over the past several days. Leaving the EU, they predicted, will put fuel in the tank for 2021, so to speak.
Turning to the upcoming US elections, Dominic Green said that a Biden administration would favour the EU more than the United Kingdom emerging from Brexit. Again, this assumes that Joe Biden will win the election. Green rightly warned that polls are unreliable. (We saw the same situation four years ago with the polls and the ‘Trump can’t win’ theme. We are seeing it again now.)
Thousands of us are grateful to the NatWest Group for sponsoring these useful broadcasts.
There were so many insights on coronavirus last week that I couldn’t fit them all in.
On Friday, I summarised Michael P Senger’s article about China’s role in the coronavirus crisis.
More information follows:
Rather sagely, a lady replied:
As did another:
The day before, there was the confession from a Facebook whistleblower about online political persuasion:
The article, dated September 14, features quotes from former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang.
The article states (emphases mine):
The 6,600-word memo, written by former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang, is filled with concrete examples of heads of government and political parties in Azerbaijan and Honduras using fake accounts or misrepresenting themselves to sway public opinion. In countries including India, Ukraine, Spain, Brazil, Bolivia, and Ecuador, she found evidence of coordinated campaigns of varying sizes to boost or hinder political candidates or outcomes, though she did not always conclude who was behind them.
“In the three years I’ve spent at Facebook, I’ve found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry, and caused international news on multiple occasions,” wrote Zhang, who declined to talk to BuzzFeed News. Her LinkedIn profile said she “worked as the data scientist for the Facebook Site Integrity fake engagement team” and dealt with “bots influencing elections and the like.”
She added:
I have personally made decisions that affected national presidents without oversight, and taken action to enforce against so many prominent politicians globally that I’ve lost count.
The BuzzFeed article continues:
The memo is a damning account of Facebook’s failures. It’s the story of Facebook abdicating responsibility for malign activities on its platform that could affect the political fate of nations outside the United States or Western Europe. It’s also the story of a junior employee wielding extraordinary moderation powers that affected millions of people without any real institutional support, and the personal torment that followed.
“I know that I have blood on my hands by now,” Zhang wrote.
According to the article, Facebook allegedly delayed taking action on the following:
- It took Facebook’s leaders nine months to act on a coordinated campaign “that used thousands of inauthentic assets to boost President Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras on a massive scale to mislead the Honduran people.” Two weeks after Facebook took action against the perpetrators in July, they returned, leading to a game of “whack-a-mole” between Zhang and the operatives behind the fake accounts, which are still active.
- In Azerbaijan, Zhang discovered the ruling political party “utilized thousands of inauthentic assets… to harass the opposition en masse.” Facebook began looking into the issue a year after Zhang reported it. The investigation is ongoing.
- Zhang and her colleagues removed “10.5 million fake reactions and fans from high-profile politicians in Brazil and the US in the 2018 elections.”
- In February 2019, a NATO researcher informed Facebook that “he’d obtained Russian inauthentic activity on a high-profile U.S. political figure that we didn’t catch.” Zhang removed the activity, “dousing the immediate fire,” she wrote.
- In Ukraine, Zhang “found inauthentic scripted activity” supporting both former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a pro–European Union politician and former presidential candidate, as well as Volodymyr Groysman, a former prime minister and ally of former president Petro Poroshenko. “Volodymyr Zelensky and his faction was the only major group not affected,” Zhang said of the current Ukrainian president.
- Zhang discovered inauthentic activity — a Facebook term for engagement from bot accounts and coordinated manual accounts— in Bolivia and Ecuador but chose “not to prioritize it,” due to her workload. The amount of power she had as a mid-level employee to make decisions about a country’s political outcomes took a toll on her health.
- After becoming aware of coordinated manipulation on the Spanish Health Ministry’s Facebook page during the COVID-19 pandemic, Zhang helped find and remove 672,000 fake accounts “acting on similar targets globally” including in the US.
- In India, she worked to remove “a politically-sophisticated network of more than a thousand actors working to influence” the local elections taking place in Delhi in February. Facebook never publicly disclosed this network or that it had taken it down.
The BuzzFeed article reports that Facebook’s spokesperson Liz Bourgeois said:
It’s highly involved work that these teams do as their full-time remit. Working against coordinated inauthentic behavior is our priority, but we’re also addressing the problems of spam and fake engagement. We investigate each issue carefully, including those that Ms. Zhang raises, before we take action or go out and make claims publicly as a company.
BuzzFeed says that it did not reproduce Ms Zhang’s full text because it contains personal information.
The article added:
In her post, Zhang said she did not want it to go public for fear of disrupting Facebook’s efforts to prevent problems around the upcoming 2020 US presidential election, and due to concerns about her own safety. BuzzFeed News is publishing parts of her memo that are clearly in the public interest.
“I consider myself to have been put in an impossible spot – caught between my loyalties to the company and my loyalties to the world as a whole,” she said. “The last thing I want to do is distract from our efforts for the upcoming U.S. elections, yet I know this post will likely do so internally.”
Zhang said she turned down a $64,000 severance package from the company to avoid signing a nondisparagement agreement. Doing so allowed her to speak out internally, and she used that freedom to reckon with the power that she had to police political speech.
“There was so much violating behavior worldwide that it was left to my personal assessment of which cases to further investigate, to file tasks, and escalate for prioritization afterwards,” she wrote.
That power contrasted with what she said seemed to be a lack of desire from senior leadership to protect democratic processes in smaller countries. Facebook, Zhang said, prioritized regions including the US and Western Europe, and often only acted when she repeatedly pressed the issue publicly in comments on Workplace, the company’s internal, employee-only message board.
“With no oversight whatsoever, I was left in a situation where I was trusted with immense influence in my spare time,” she wrote. “A manager on Strategic Response mused to myself that most of the world outside the West was effectively the Wild West with myself as the part-time dictator – he meant the statement as a compliment, but it illustrated the immense pressures upon me.”
A former Facebook engineer who knew her told BuzzFeed News that Zhang was skilled at discovering fake account networks on the platform.
The second half of the article is also worth reading — and circulating.
Michael P Senger, the author of the article I cited on Friday, tweeted coronavirus-related news about Pennsylvania’s continued lockdown:
Note that China was mentioned.
The title of Stacy Rudin’s article for the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) is ‘Federal Court Holds “Stay at Home” Orders and Mandatory Business Closures Unconstitutional’.
Excerpts follow, emphases mine:
For six months, Americans in 43 states have lived under unprecedented executive orders restricting freedoms as basic as whether they can work, leave their homes, and expose their faces in public. These mandates are not duly enacted laws — they are orders issued by one of the three branches of government. They constitute a system of one-person rule — something none of us expected could ever happen in the United States — and no one, apart from the 43 newfound state dictators, is sure when it will expire.
Today, after six months of this, a Pennsylvania Federal Court in Butler County v. Wolf reviewed the indefinite “emergency” restrictions imposed by the executive branch of Pennsylvania government, declaring limitations on gathering size, “stay-at-home orders,” and mandatory business closures unconstitutional. Refusing to accept the alleged need for a “new normal,” the Court stated that an “independent judiciary [is needed] to serve as a check on the exercise of emergency government power.”
About time. The Judicial Branch is coming to save us.
The article is worth circulating. It goes into American history, beginning with the Constitution in the 18th century and citing President Lincoln in the 19th.
The Pennslyvania Federal Court stated:
There is no question that our founders abhorred the concept of one-person rule. They decried government by fiat. Absent a robust system of checks and balances, the guarantees of liberty set forth in the Constitution are just ink on parchment.
Furthermore:
In times of crisis, even a vigilant public may let down its guard over its constitutional liberties only to find that liberties, once relinquished, are hard to recoup and that restrictions — while expedient in the face of an emergency situation — may persist long after immediate danger has passed.
The AIER article went on to say:
We cannot allow our freedom to become “ink on parchment.” Many of our governors seek to do just that — they won’t even designate an endpoint to their “emergency” powers. When does the “emergency” end? This should be easy to say — X number of deaths per million, X number of deaths over X number of weeks — yet they will not say it. They want us to live under the constant threat of house arrest and livelihood deprivation, even though all we ever agreed to was a two-week effort to “flatten the curve.” We never agreed to an indefinite or permanent “new normal,” or to do whatever our wise governor dreams up and declares necessary to “eliminate infections.”
The article thanked Judge Stickman, speaking for the Pennsylvania Federal Court:
Thank you, Judge Stickman, for recognizing our predicament, and for taking the first step towards restoring our freedom today by reminding those with authoritarian leanings that “governors cannot be given carte blanche to disregard the Constitution for as long as the medical problem persists.” The response to an emergency cannot undermine our system of constitutional liberties, or the system of checks and balances protecting those liberties. Liberty before “governor-guaranteed safety” — this is the American way, famously stated by Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Pennsylvania’s Governor Wolf appeared to back down (italics in the original):
Incredibly, Governor Wolf responded that his stay-at-home orders are “not actually orders at all, but merely recommendations,” and that they are constitutional because they do not “shock the conscience.”
Yet, the article’s author says:
I’m willing to bet that Pennsylvania citizens would beg to differ.
The Court’s decision stated that large populations were never quarantined (some local populations, e.g. St Louis, were during the Spanish Flu).
Not only that, the judges traced the origin of the virus to China:
In analyzing the constitutionality of “lockdowns,” the Court first traced the origin of the concept to its source — Wuhan, China — and recognized that population-wide lockdowns are “unprecedented in American law.” Even during the Spanish Flu, the deadliest pandemic in history by far, “nothing remotely approximating lockdowns were imposed.” Although the United States has faced many epidemics and pandemics, “there have never previously been lockdowns of entire populations — much less for lengthy and indefinite periods of time.” Quarantines are legally recognized, but refer to the isolation of sick people and those known to have been directly exposed to sick people. They are statutorily limited to the duration of the incubation period of the disease — a period which Governor Wolf’s “lockdown” plainly exceeded.
Not only have lockdowns never been imposed in American history, but they are not even mentioned in recent pandemic management guidance offered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”). In its 2017 guidelines for managing pandemics, the CDC recommends numerous protective measures such as hand washing, limited-duration school closures, and cancellations of mass gatherings, but nothing “even approximating the imposition of statewide (or even community-wide) stay at home orders or the closure of all [‘non-essential’] businesses.” Even for pandemics of “Very High Severity,” the CDC recommends only voluntary isolation of sick persons and their household members. “This is a far, far cry from a statewide lockdown such as the one imposed by [Governor Wolf’s] stay-at-home order.”
The article goes on to discuss small and medium business issues, which are of primary importance today. The court decided, in their own words (emphasis here in the original):
The Constitution cannot accept the concept of a ‘new normal’ where the basic liberties of the people can be subordinated to open-ended emergency mitigation measures. Rather, the Constitution sets certain lines that may not be crossed, even in an emergency. Actions taken by Defendants crossed those lines. It is the duty of the Court to declare those actions unconstitutional.
In related news Daniel Levitt, who works for tech firms in Silicon Valley, tweeted:
Ah, but increased testing is taking care of that issue. Hmm.
A podcast host from Ohio found that the WHO never stated that quarantine stopped influenza. Coronavirus is not influenza, yet it seems to share some of the same characteristics. Even more interesting is that, with the presence of COVID-19, influenza — the big worry of the cold weather season — seems to have disappeared south of the Equator.
Interesting:
It’s all a bit of a mystery, but Kyle Lamb goes on to answer questions:
Does Kyle Lamb know more than our respective chief scientific officers? Perhaps. Perhaps not. In any event, he has gone further by probing the subject, which is more than our chief scientific officers have done.
Meanwhile, in the UK, an NHS GP pleads with Prime Minister Boris Johnson to change course on lockdowns. Here’s yet another newspaper article mentioning a time period of a fortnight (yawn).
I pity the remaining vulnerable, especially the elderly. Click the image to see the article in full:
I could not agree more.
Message to the NHS: get on with it! You’ve had since May.
Since the summer, England’s Nightingale Hospitals have been stood down for lack of use:
What will happen? A repeat of March and April?
My head is spinning at the prospect.
Once again, private care will turn out to be no better:
Good grief.
Then there is the matter of testing.
This thread is about the North East of England. The author is Professor of Industrial Economics Nottingham University Business School and states clearly that he is expressing his own views:
Sunderland is in the latest coronavirus hotspot area.
Understandably, residents are anxious to get PCR tests.
Yet, the queue was two miles long at the local testing centre:
The queues are for people who have booked a test:
It’s the same in London, as per Tom Copley, the Deputy Mayor of London for Housing. Again, you need a code (obtained online) in order to get a test:
After all these months, this is unbelievable, especially from a notionally Conservative government.
As Tim Worstall said on September 17:
You’ve had 6 months to get testing sorted out. It’s possible to do basic tests – basic note – for £1 a piece with reagent dosed paper hankies.
Also:
… seriously, why do we give, or have taken from us, 35% of everything to a structure that can’t even manage this?
I could not agree more.
In closing, Dr Li-Meng Yan, a physician and virologist who also holds a PhD, is a Chinese whistleblower who worked at a WHO lab in Hong Kong. She is now out of the country in a secret location but has given at least two interviews in the past week.
The first was on Friday, September 11, on ITV’s Loose Women, a lunchtime chat show in Britain:
She explained that she had access to a lot of secret information about COVID-19 and could no longer keep quiet, even if it meant losing her social credit score, which she did. She said she had been warned at the outset ‘not to cross the line’ because ‘she could be disappeared’. She said that the Chinese government deleted everything about her that had appeared online. One wonders if her bank account was also frozen. It happens.
She told the show’s panel that the virus was engineered in a lab and that it is not a natural virus.
She said that the Chinese government has downplayed her role in Hong Kong and is discrediting her.
The panel asked her why China would do such a thing and she replied that she had no insight into the government’s ‘evil thinking’, then added that whatever they did ‘worked’: meaning — although she left this unstated — illness, death, panic, lockdown and economic damage.
I am glad that Loose Women interviewed her, because the show gets good ratings. Consequently, a lot of women in Britain will have found out more about the Chi-vi, as I call it.
On Tuesday, September 15, she appeared on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, to present the same details:
Tucker wasn’t quite sure what to think. He acknowledged he does not have the scientific background to probe further.
A tip of the hat to my cyberfriend Wolf for the next part of this story.
Dr Yan, along with three other researchers, published a scientific paper on Monday, September 14: ‘Unusual Features of the SARS-Cov-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route’.
This is the introduction (emphases mine):
Yan, Li-Meng; Kang, Shu; Guan, Jie; Hu, Shanchang
The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has led to over 910,000 deaths worldwide and unprecedented decimation of the global economy. Despite its tremendous impact, the origin of SARS-CoV-2 has remained mysterious and controversial. The natural origin theory, although widely accepted, lacks substantial support. The alternative theory that the virus may have come from a research laboratory is, however, strictly censored on peer-reviewed scientific journals. Nonetheless, SARS-CoV-2 shows biological characteristics that are inconsistent with a naturally occurring, zoonotic virus. In this report, we describe the genomic, structural, medical, and literature evidence, which, when considered together, strongly contradicts the natural origin theory. The evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 should be a laboratory product created by using bat coronaviruses ZC45 and/or ZXC21 as a template and/or backbone. Building upon the evidence, we further postulate a synthetic route for SARS-CoV-2, demonstrating that the laboratory-creation of this coronavirus is convenient and can be accomplished in approximately six months. Our work emphasizes the need for an independent investigation into the relevant research laboratories. It also argues for a critical look into certain recently published data, which, albeit problematic, was used to support and claim a natural origin of SARS-CoV-2. From a public health perspective, these actions are necessary as knowledge of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and of how the virus entered the human population are of pivotal importance in the fundamental control of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as in preventing similar, future pandemics.
ZeroHedge posted excerpts from the paper, which is way above my pay grade. The article ends with a reminder from ZeroHedge that they were suspended from Twitter months ago for alleging the same theory:
As a reminder, Zero Hedge was banned from Twitter on Jan 31 for making just this allegation, following a hit-piece written by an alleged pedophile (who was later fired for plagiarism) and countless so-called “scientists” screaming that our take was fake news and nothing but propaganda. Five months later Twitter admitted it had made a mistake, stating “we made an error in our enforcement action in this case.”
Speaking of Twitter, on September 15, ZeroHedge also reported that Dr Yan’s Twitter account was quickly suspended, days after she created it this month (emphases in the original):
On Sunday afternoon we asked how long before the twitter account of the “rogue” Chinese virologist, Dr. Li-Meng Yan, who yesterday “shocked” the world of establishment scientists and other China sycophants, by publishing a “smoking gun” scientific paper demonstrating that the Covid-19 virus was manmade, is “silenced.”
We now have the answer: less than two days. A cursory check of Dr Yan’s twitter page reveals that the account has been suspended as of this moment …
If Yan was wrong, why not just let other scientists respond in the open to the all too valid arguments presented in Dr. Yan’s paper? Isn’t that what “science” is all about? Why just shut her up?
Because if we have already crossed the tipping point when anyone who proposes an “inconvenient” explanation for an established “truth” has to be immediately censored, then there is little that can be done to salvage the disintegration of a society that once held freedom of speech as paramount …
We hope Twitter will provide a very reasonable and sensible explanation for this unprecedented censorship.
Indeed.
Back now to the contents of the paper that Dr Yan co-authored.
US Army Colonel Lawrence Sellin (Ret.) explained it in layman’s terms for the Gateway Pundit: ‘Dr. Lawrence Sellin: The Unequivocal Evidence Chinese Scientist Dr. Li-Meng Yan Provides Proof COVID-19 was Created by China’s Military’.
Dr Sellin gives us the overview, which is still scientific (emphases in the original):
China has claimed that a bat coronavirus named RaTG13 is the closest relative to the COVID-19 virus, but RaTG13 is not actually a virus because no biological samples exist. It is only a genomic sequence of a virus for which there are now serious questions about its accuracy.
Dr. Yan suggests that RaTG13 may have been used to divert the world’s attention away from the true source of the COVID-19 pandemic.
She claims that the COVID-19 virus originated in laboratories overseen by China’s People’s Liberation Army, using bat coronaviruses ZC45 and/or ZXC21 collected from Zhoushan, China and used as the viral “backbone” for genetic engineering.
Those bat coronaviruses were originally isolated and characterized between July 2015 and February 2017 under the supervision of the Third Military Medical University (Chongqing, China) and the Research Institute for Medicine of Nanjing Command (Nanjing, China).
The article goes on to explain how the receptor binding motif (RBM), which defines the coronavirus’ ability to bind to the specific human angiotensin converting enzyme-2 receptor (ACE2) underwent genetic manipulation.
That critical segment of the COVID-19 virus is bounded by two “restriction sites” not found in any related bat coronaviruses, which allow researchers to easily splice, that is, cut and paste components of other viruses into the viral backbone.
The presence of those restriction sites is a known marker for genetic manipulation.
Furthermore, the COVID-19 virus contains a furin polybasic cleavage site with an amino acid sequence of proline-arginine-arginine-alanine or PRRA that facilitates membrane fusion between the virus and the human cell and widely known for its ability to enhance pathogenicity and transmissibility.
Such a sequence is not found in any other related bat coronavirus and, so far, there is no natural evolutionary pathway identified that could explain the appearance of that PRRA segment.
In contrast, techniques for the artificial insertion of such a furin polybasic cleavage site by genetic engineering have been used for over ten years.
Dr. Yan and her colleagues note that the two arginine amino acids in that PRRA segment are coded by the nucleotide sequence CGG-CGG, which rarely appears in tandem and strongly suggests that this furin cleavage site is the result of genetic engineering.
In addition, the presence of a “FauI” restriction site at the furin polybasic cleavage site is also an indication of genetic manipulation.
Goodness me. We have these scientific allegations and all the UK government is thinking of is a second lockdown.
It is sad that we will not be reading or hearing about this paper in the media. Once again, please circulate the links with family and friends. Thank you.
COVID-19 testing is often too sensitive, picking up other strains of coronavirus instead of this year’s pandemic strain.
This leads to false positives and a misinterpretation of ‘cases’, many of which do not require hospitalisation.
Informative tweets follow:
The cycle threshold for the UK swab tests at is 40 or 45, so that is likely to be picking up all sorts of ‘old’ virus:
No one is saying there hasn’t been an uptick in real cases or hospitalisations, but health advisers should be looking at this testing issue more closely, not only from a diagnostic aspect but also one of public trust:
This is an interesting Q&A:
Indeed. Cui bono?
A number of Americans think that the continuing US lockdowns will last until the election to prevent President Trump from winning re-election.
That explains nothing about what is happening in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Do we have to be collateral damage for the US presidential election?
No.
This is part of the Great Reset, so that Western society can be got rid of and replaced with socialism. I do not think that will happen, but it could, given everyone’s compliance this year.
Anyway, here is a good graphic (despite the typo) and a video about testing that you can share. Be sure to click on Justin Hart’s graphic to see it in full. It says that Ohio’s governor tested positive and negative on the same day:
This leads to all sorts of confusion amongst the public. As far as I know, no one has been able to isolate the RNA from COVID-19, making the tests questionable:
The answer to testing could be to drop the PCR swab test currently in use and switch to a saliva-based test which might be more accurate.
The tweets below are from physicians in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts:
More to come on COVID-19 testing tomorrow.
Yesterday, I saw the following tweet on Guido Fawkes, Britain’s top website for all things political.
He rarely tweets about President Trump or MAGA, so I was intrigued:
Naturally, I went to read Guido’s post, which simply featured this 3:37-minute long video:
Ricky Rebel and his team of talent, including The Deplorable Choir, defused hostility and turned it into a rousing dance party in the streets:
On AUG 22, 2020, a violent #BlackLivesMatter mob swarmed the Trump Unity Bridge in Beverly Hills. The Trump Unity Bridge responded to #BLM with a DANCE OFF to their unifying theme song MAGA / YMCA!
They rewrote the lyrics to the Village People’s YMCA to fit the positive unity of Trump supporters. The lyrics are in the video. Stay tuned until the end to read the clever credits, which are also in the YouTube description.
This is great fun to watch — and gutsy.
That’s the way to do it. Well done!
Last weekend, the summer chaos and unrest affecting Portland, Kenosha and Washington, DC spread to other cities.
Rochester
This city in upstate New York was disrupted by violence on Friday, September 4.
This was in retaliation for the death of a local man in March. Police were attempting to take him into custody.
The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (via MSN) reported:
Daniel Prude died in March of asphyxiation after Rochester police officers trying to take him into protective custody pinned him to the ground while restraining him on March 23. The death has been ruled a homicide and is under investigation by the state Attorney General’s Office.
Video of that interaction was released Sept. 2 and has prompted daily protests by people outraged over it. The union representing the seven police officers in the video has said the cops were following protocols.
A hostile march took place:
The article has photos of the mob disturbing outdoor diners who wanted a pleasant evening out:
Several thousand people marched down East Avenue from downtown, and turned right on Alexander Street before approaching restaurants with diners eating outside at around 9:35 p.m.
Video footage shows protesters crowding the landing at Swan Dive on Alexander Street. Some cleared tables of people eating outside, causing the diners to get up and leave. A chair was thrown toward the building and a number of protesters can be heard decrying that behavior.
Minutes later, members of the group crossed the street and entered an outdoor seating area at Ox and Stone, where several large groups of diners were seated. Chairs were overturned and glasses were shattered on the tables as protesters motioned for the dining groups to get up and leave.
Here’s a video, also included in the article:
Protesters also lit a fire:
The next day, a city councillor blamed Rochester Police for the violence (hmm):
Earlier on Friday, it appears as if people were filling jerrycans with petrol then hiding them in rucksacks.
This photo was taken at the same petrol station:
Protests continued the following night:
Louisville, Kentucky
Because of coronavirus, the Kentucky Derby, which takes place at Churchill Downs, was postponed to Saturday, September 5.
Spectators could not attend this year, but one group, not interested in horse racing, showed up across the street:
Interesting. In the UK, walking around in paramilitary uniforms is illegal, although the police ignored one group in London dressed that way this summer.
Their spokesman gave the group’s grievances to the police guarding Churchill Downs. Afterwards, they left:
Dallas, Texas
On Saturday, ex-Democrat Brandon Straka, a hairdresser from New York City, held a rally in Dallas.
Straka founded the #WalkAway movement to encourage Democrats to leave their party in support President Trump. #WalkAway has been growing by leaps and bounds in the past year:
Unfortunately, a BLM protester assaulted #WalkAway’s security guard. Police arrested the security guard!
Afterwards, Brandon and his organisers were en route to the police station when they were set upon by violent protesters. Note that the protesters are supposed to be gay-friendly and feminists. Therefore, does #WalkAway have the ‘wrong kind’ of gays and women because they support Trump?
Fortunately, this sad episode seems to have had a just ending:
I was struck by the sentence (two tweets above) saying that all the Dallas news stations were there when protesters were chasing Brandon and his team.
How does that happen?
This article, ‘Reality Hacking Caught By Patriots — The GuginoGate Timeline’, explains. It tells the story of how a 75-year-old activist, Michael Gugino, had a confrontation with police in Buffalo, New York, on June 4 this year.
Interestingly, an NPR reporter was also there at the scene. The article has a photo of both men talking to each other before the confrontation.
The media reported that the man was trying to shake the hands of the policemen, but a closer view shows him with a mobile phone in his hand. It looks as if he was filming their weapons, a definite no-no:
Most of the media outlets covering the story said that police knocked an innocent, elderly man to the ground for no reason.
However, the New York Post ran an article saying that, according to Buffalo’s mayor, the man was disobeying requests from the police to leave the area.
In any event, he was rushed to hospital:
But I digress. I only meant to illustrate that media must be getting tip-offs on where to be and when.
—————————————————
OAN has a two-part series by Jack Posobiec on what might happen as the presidential campaign season progresses. I haven’t seen it, but this is the trailer:
As for Portland, Oregon, here is more information on the shooter, whom the Feds shot fatally in Washington State last week:
Team Trump have put out a new advert:
On a much brighter note, I’ll close with the Trump flotillas:
MAGA!
Heartfelt thanks to all the many ex-Democrats who now intend to vote for President Trump. They are always welcome aboard the Trump Train.
Recently, The Atlantic published an anti-Trump article saying he has no regard for military veterans.
The article also has other falsehoods in it about President Trump’s time in the White House, supplied by anonymous sources:
First Lady Melania Trump tweeted:
The Atlantic wants to help Joe Biden win, of course:
President Trump is angry with Fox News for pressing on with the lies. This Twitter user says that the reporter in question is married to another journalist who works for NPR, which is pro-Democrat:
I’ll get to that story tomorrow.
Trump’s former press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is angry about The Atlantic‘s article:
Former ambassador John Bolton, who has written an anti-Trump book, also says that The Atlantic‘s article is wrong. The American president did not show up at a military cemetery in France in 2018 for a memorial ceremony because his security detail would not allow it. Breitbart carried the story:
Bolton, who has emerged as an adversary of the president since leaving the administration last fall, wrote in his tell-all book about Trump that the visit to the cemetery by helicopter had been canceled because of weather. Driving, Bolton wrote, was not an option because of the “unacceptable risk” of being stuck in traffic if an emergency arose. He criticized the media for falsely reporting that Trump skipped his visit because he was “afraid of the rain.”
He also denied the accusations about the president’s words:
On Friday, Bolton confirmed his account in an interview with the Times, and added that he never heard Trump say “losers” or “suckers”:
He got support from an unlikely source on Friday when John R. Bolton, his former national security adviser who has broken with him and called him unfit for office, said he was on the trip in question and never heard Mr. Trump make those remarks. “I didn’t hear that,” Mr. Bolton said in an interview. “I’m not saying he didn’t say them later in the day or another time but I was there for that discussion.”
History tells us that the Democrats used the same tactic with Abraham Lincoln, who was also a Republican:
Let us fast-forward to 2007 to Donald Trump, real estate mogul and proprietor of the golf club at Mar-a-Lago. He welcomed veterans every Monday and said that their wives were in tears:
Veterans have been on to Obama’s vice president Biden for some time, as this video from March shows. Biden had no Secret Service detail earlier this year because he was not the official nominee at the time:
Fast forward to the present day. These three disabled veterans say that President Trump has done more for minorities and the military than any other US president. The retired Marine says that he was a staunch Democrat, but no longer because of what the Democrats have been doing over the past several years and because President Trump has cleaned up the Department of Veterans Affairs, enabling them to get the health care they need:
This US Army veteran says that Joe Biden doesn’t care about American troops and would cut military funding. He says that President Trump has always been there for all the armed forces:
This man is a retired paratrooper and tells of all the reforms President Trump has put into the Department of Veterans Affairs and the military, making both stronger than ever. He says that The Atlantic is ‘a disgrace to journalism’ and ‘fake news’:
This veteran says that Joe Biden and the Democrats want to ‘burn down’ America and turn it into ‘a socialist crap-hole’, but ‘we’re not going to let that happen’. He staunchly supports President Trump:
This veteran is also pro-Trump. Contrary to what the Democrats and their water-carrying buddies in the media said in 2016, Trump has started no wars and is trying to get troops out of Afghanistan:
This veteran also supports Trump for the same reason:
I hope these tweets help put to rest the lies that have been circulating about President Trump.
Hats off to OAN’s Jack Posobiec, a Navy veteran, for starting the #VetsBackTrump trend on Twitter.
My apologies. This is a long but important post on the endgame for coronavirus, as things stand at present.
On Wednesday, September 2, 2020, the House of Commons’ adjournment debate was about coronavirus measures in England.
Sir Christopher Chope MP (Conservative, Christchurch) voiced disapproval on behalf of his constituents.
Sir Christopher has a good track record for representing the people, such as in this heated debate on Brexit in March 2019:
Before Parliament reconvened on Tuesday, September 1, many English residents became concerned about the Government’s response to coronavirus, particularly after lockdown began to be lifted early this summer. The following tweets reflect their concerns:
In the middle of August, The Human Unleashed Team posted an excellent article about two possible strategies the Government has. Excerpts from ‘COVID: The Case Against the UK Government’ follow, emphases in purple mine.
It begins as follows:
Has the U.K. Government acted in good faith over the COVID-19 crisis?
In this post, we’ll examine the UK Government’s actions around the COVID crisis alongside various data published by official sources. The goal is to get insight into whether the Government has acted honestly and in good faith.
For now let’s put aside the science around whether the disease known as COVID-19 is caused by the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) and focus on the evidence as it emerged.
Let’s keep two alternative possibilities in mind as we look at the facts.
The first, “Case A” is that the UK Government has conducted itself in good faith, in the genuine belief that this is a pandemic, and has done all it can to reverse it, so that the country can safely return to normal as soon as possible.
The second possibility, which we’ll call “Case B“, is the possibility that the UK Government knows that the pandemic is no longer present, but does not wish a swift return to normal, and is therefore continuing to push the pandemic narrative for some other reason.
The article is complete with graphs, such as the one charting talk about a second wave when the initial deaths from the first wave had only just appeared in March:
If Case A (the Government is acting in good faith), this really does not make sense. The public did not suddenly starting talking about it for no reason. Why would the key influencers (WHO, Government, and media) seed the idea of a second wave so soon?
It only makes any sense in Case B (the Government is knowingly rolling out a prepared agenda), where it could be argued that the idea of “second wave” is being implanted into the public’s consciousness. Why? Is it to set expectations of a second wave that is already planned?
Talk of a vaccine started trending two weeks before that, at the end of February:
Considering that the public’s interest is guided by the media narrative, it is interesting that the public’s attention was guided to terms like “second wave” and “vaccine” so early in the lifecycle of this pandemic.
Once lockdown started (Monday evening, March 23) ‘flatten the curve’ disappeared quickly from the official narrative:
Why was “flatten the curve” hailed as the nation’s priority in March, but then swiftly dropped even before the fatality curve peaked?
Furthermore (and this is a recurring theme), if flattening the curve was ever truly the goal, we would now be celebrating the fact that the curve has been flat for nearly two months. We are not. Neither the Government nor mainstream media have been cheering the fact that the COVID wave has, to all extents and purposes, ended and that the country can return to normal.
The death curve has been flat since the end of July:
Even in the hardest-hit groups (60 years and 80-plus), the curve is now objectively flat. Why are we not partying in the streets? (When it comes to younger age groups, the picture is even more ridiculous. The official NHS numbers show that only two people aged under forty have died in hospital in the past month related to COVID.)
If Case A were true, you would expect that the Government would be proudly announcing its success in halting COVID mortality. However, there have been no such announcements. On the contrary, the narrative from both Government and state news sources continue to stress the threat of another wave. Case A makes no sense.
It does all fit with the Case B scenario. If the Government’s purpose involves perpetuating the fear level thus justifying continuing the increased level of control over the population’s freedoms, then you can see why they would choose to ignore the simple fact that today there is no epidemic in the UK.
In fact, this summer, there were more fatalities from seasonal flu than there were from COVID-19:
You can see that, following a tremendous spike in death rates, since mid-June deaths linked to COVID have been significantly lower than flu/pneumonia deaths …
Again, if Case A were true, the Government would be wasting no time in announcing the end of the epidemic and delivering the good news that everything can now return to normal. Considering the incredible damage that has already been inflicted on the UK economy, you would imagine that the party in power would be anxious to lift the restrictions.
As none of that has happened, we must consider Case B. Not only has the Government resisted the clear opportunity to end all the restrictions, they have actually implemented new rules, including the requirement to wear face coverings in enclosed public spaces, backed up with the threat of a £100+ fine, since July 24th.
What can we conclude?
Think it through. If both diseases are the result of similar, communicable viruses, why are more people now dying every day from flu than from COVID-19?
One possible explanation that has been suggested could be that the virus that causes COVID-19 is far more contagious than the influenza virus. If that were the case, it would suggest the novel coronavirus spread like wildfire through the UK population, but killing the elderly almost exclusively. And if that were true, it would mean that we have already reached the fabled “herd immunity”, suggesting that you could make an argument that the elderly and infirm should still be protected, but that the rest of the UK public could return to normal immediately.
So we must conclude that we have either achieved “herd immunity”, which means there is no more pandemic and that the virus is no longer a high consequence infectious disease (which Public Health England in fact published back in March), or one or more of the above assertions are incorrect, suggesting that COVID-19 may not be caused by a communicable pathogen, in which case there is also no pandemic.
Over the summer, the Government’s focus turned to ‘cases’, which has kept the psychological fear factor up among the general public:
If Case A is true, and the UK Government’s priority is to protect the population and get through the COVID crisis as swiftly and as safely as possible, why would they stop talking about deaths and start talking “cases” as the death rate dropped towards zero?
Cases simply refer to positive test results. They do not mean that someone is sick, or at risk of dying. Yet testing has continued to grow week-on-week, now averaging over 150,000 tests being processed daily. Why would a Government whose priority is a rapid and safe return to normal keep increasing its efforts to find more “cases”, instead of applauding the vanishing mortality numbers?
Again, only Case B makes logical sense. The Government’s own actions show that it is continually pouring more resources into the search for “cases”, which could have the effect of spreading fear and panic, and choosing not to report the good news that now almost nobody is dying of COVID-19, which of course would have the opposite effect.
Then there were the inflated death statistics that have now been corrected. England now has 5,000 fewer COVID deaths. Hospital admissions were also erroneously inflated:
Let us be clear. In the middle of a global disease pandemic, the Government’s number one priority must be to evaluate the danger accurately. The responsibility falls on the Health Secretary, who completely failed to deliver. He had ONE JOB.
The article concludes as follows:
It is now clear, from observing its own actions, that the UK Government does not wish a timely return to normal life. If it did, it would be going to lengths to celebrate the practical eradication of the COVID pandemic in this country, and moving to reverse the extreme measures that limit the population’s freedoms that have resulted in such catastrophic outcomes.
Instead, the sum of this Government’s actions appear only to support the hypothesis that they wish to prolong the present restrictions by giving the impression that the pandemic is ongoing and far more serious than the data suggest.
The UK Government has some very, very serious questions to answer. This establishment must take responsibility for conspiring to extend the appearance of the alleged COVID pandemic, leading to disastrous economic outcomes for the country, but – even more importantly – the unimaginable health and emotional damage on the population of this country.
Keep all of that in mind as you read the excerpts from Sir Christopher Chope’s speech and the response on behalf of the Government from Paul Scully MP (Conservative, Sutton and Cheam), who is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
Wikipedia says (emphases mine below, link added in the next sentence):
Scully’s wife Emma is employed by Nudge Factory Ltd as an Office Manager and replaced her husband as ‘a person with significant control’ on 1 April 2018.[30][31]
The text from the adjournment debate can be found in Hansard: ‘Regulatory Impact Assessments (Legislative Scrutiny)’. The crux of the debate was that the Government made emergency laws without properly assessing the impact they would have on small business owners. That said, masks also featured in the debate.
I promise that you will not be bored reading the following excerpts. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my far better half also watched the entirety of this debate in another room. Both of us were gripped.
Sir Christopher wasted no time in making his points. He expressed himself politely but with all guns blazing, so to speak. (Bold letters for MPs’ names are in the Hansard document).
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I shall start with some quotes from my constituents about the Government:
“The most inept and incompetent administration in my lifetime.”
“Incoherent and indecisive.” “Authoritarian and arrogant.” “Inconsistent and incomprehensible.” “Socialist in all but name.” As these criticisms become increasingly difficult to rebut, it is indeed essential that the Prime Minister gets a grip. The constructive purpose of this debate is to remind the Government that one key tool to enable them to get a grip is to use regulatory impact assessments as part of the policy-making process.
A regulatory impact assessment is a well-established, internationally acclaimed toolkit for good policy making. It facilitates transparency and public accountability, promotes democratic discussion by enabling potential possible policy options to be evaluated and compared. It prevents the inconsistency that arises from knee-jerk reactions and policies being developed on the hoof.
It helps to ensure that sudden changes are the exception and are made in response to changes in hard evidence rather than in response to the chorus of a single-issue pressure group—and I think it is probably fair to say that the covid alarmists are the most successful pressure group in British history. If, for the past six months, the Government had been using this toolkit, it would not have been possible for commentators to observe, as one did on Sunday:
“Britain has become a paradise for those who like to answer questions with ‘rules is rules’; even when they’re clearly made up on the spot or nonsensical.”
Allowing beard and eyebrow trimming for men but not eyebrow treatments for women was but one ridiculous example.
Most fair-minded observers supported the Government’s initial response to the covid-19 pandemic. The Government had no option but to make their priority ensuring that our hospitals were able to treat all those seriously ill as a result of covid-19. Our NHS was not as well-prepared as it would have been if the recommendations of Exercise Cygnus had been implemented. Cygnus was a brilliant initiative to war-game a serious epidemic of respiratory illness in order to identify where investment was needed to fill the gaps and thereby ensure an effective response. Tragically, Public Health England did not learn the lessons identified and failed to put the recommended preparatory work in place. We, the public, have been denied access to the full results. It remains a mystery to me as to why the Government are so defensive about the whole matter—and have indeed been dodging parliamentary questions that I have put down on the subject.
… The purpose of this debate is to try to get some more assurance from the Government that they are going to apply these principles not just to covid-19 but to other regulatory measures that are, at the moment, being brought in with far too insufficient scrutiny.
Tomorrow it will be six months since the Department of Health and Social Care policy paper on coronavirus was published. This action plan, as it became, on which the Coronavirus Act 2020 was based, envisaged four phases: contain, delay, research and mitigate. The delay phase was to
“slow the spread in this country, if it does take hold, lowering the peak impact and pushing it away from the winter season”.
Because of the emergency timetable, the legislation had the sketchiest of regulatory impact assessments, without any cost-benefit analysis. But who would have thought that none of the regulations being made under that primary legislation would be properly evaluated before implementation? I certainly hoped that that would happen, but it has not.
The basic steps in the RIA process should involve consultation and an assessment of the nature and extent of the problems to be addressed. There should be a clear statement of the policy objectives and goals of the regulatory proposal, which should include the enforcement regime and strategy for ensuring compliance. Alternative courses of action should be identified, including any non-regulatory approaches considered as potential solutions to the identified problem. There should also be a clear outline of the benefits and costs expected from the proposal and identified alternatives. The conclusion should not only identify the preferred solution but explain how it is superior to the other alternatives considered. Finally, there should be a monitoring and evaluation framework set out describing how performance will be measured.
Although the processes I have set out could not be embarked on in the immediate emergency of introducing lockdown, they should surely form an inherent part of the process of easing lockdown, and ensuring consistent and timely relaxations of the regulations. It is the failure to do this that has resulted in sudden and contradictory changes to the regulations.
This has also led to unacceptable mission creep, which increasingly embodies a gradual shift in objectives. Hon. and right hon. Members will remember that the original objective was to enable the NHS to provide the best care to all the victims of covid-19 who needed it. That clear mission has now widened into a mission to suppress the spread of covid-19 as an end in itself, regardless of the cost. The irony is that, in allowing the original objective to be blurred, the important subsidiary objective of preventing the virus peaking again in the winter is being put in jeopardy.
The easing of lockdown has, sadly, become a veritable shambles. While the number of deaths from covid-19 has mercifully plummeted from its April peak, there has not been a corresponding relaxation of the emergency regulations. I shall refer later to the OECD principles of best practice for regulatory policy, but one of the key principles is:
“Proposed solutions should be appropriate to the risk posed, and costs identified and minimised.”
In the statement he made yesterday to the House, the Secretary of State for Health [Matt Hancock] said that there are now
“60 patients in mechanical ventilator beds with coronavirus”.—[Official Report, 1 September 2020; Vol. 679, c. 23.]
This compares with 3,300 at the peak of the epidemic, and he then said that the latest quoted number for reported deaths is two in one day. Today, The Sun newspaper has calculated from these figures that the odds of catching covid-19 in England are about 44 in 1 million per day. Economist Tim Harford, who presents what I think is one, if not the only, good programme on the BBC—the statistics programme, “More or Less”—has said:
“Covid-19 currently presents a background risk of a one in a million chance of death or lasting harm, every day.”
While age, gender, geography, behaviour and other aspects affect the risk, it is now far lower than the risk of death or serious injury in a motor accident. On average, five people continue to be killed each day on our roads, yet I have not yet heard from the Government any proposals to ban people from driving because of the risks associated with so doing.
One sure way of ensuring consistency would be to impose the discipline of a regulatory impact assessment on each and every continuing restriction, so that the justification for loss of personal liberty could be evaluated against the alleged benefits. It is not too late for this to start, and I hope that the Minister, in responding to this debate, will provide an assurance that the forthcoming six-month review of the legislation will include a full regulatory impact assessment and an evaluation of the performance of the emergency regulations introduced.
The public would then be able to see the evidence about whether the decisions taken were correct. For example, was closing schools and setting back the education of the covid regeneration a proportionate and necessary measure? Was the postponement of 107,000 weddings across the United Kingdom justified? Could any of the 4,452 weddings which should have taken place last Saturday have been permitted? Why can people sit safely side by side with strangers on an aircraft, but not at a wedding breakfast or in a church, a theatre or a concert hall—or even in this Chamber?
Why was the World Health Organisation advice, which was originally that there should be 1 metre social distancing, not applied from the outset? We introduced a 2-metre or 6-foot rule, but that has now been modified with the 1 metre-plus rule, but at the same time the additional safeguards required for the 1 metre-plus situation are being applied to the 2-metre situation, which is creating all sorts of problems, conflicts and uncertainties for our constituents.
Is it protecting the NHS to create a situation where, as was revealed in The Times on 27 August, 15.3 million people are now on the hidden waiting list for treatment? Is it reasonable that we should try to prevent two deaths a day and keep 15.3 million people on waiting lists for treatment, with all the dire consequences that flow from that? Madam Deputy Speaker, I do not know whether you were listening to the Secretary of State for Health when he made his statement yesterday, but in my view his responses on the issue of NHS waiting lists were the weakest and least convincing parts of what he had to say.
Is the continuing economic cost of lockdown now disproportionate to the benefits? Well, let us have an exercise and see. Let us see the data presented, so that we can have a proper debate about it. I raised the importance of regulatory impact assessments in public policy making with the Leader of the House at business questions on 2 July. It was his response on that occasion which caused me to apply for this Adjournment debate, which I am delighted that we are having this evening. I said that we would be able to achieve much more consistency in Government advice with regulatory impact assessments. The Leader of the House [Jacob Rees-Mogg], however, argued that
“if we spend too long doing all this, by the time we have done it we have moved on to the next stage of the lockdown.”
He accused me of “calling for bureaucratic folderol”, which would inhibit moving
“at a pace to ensure that things happen in a timely manner”.—[Official Report, 2 July 2020; Vol. 678, c. 534.]
Would that they were. But I must correct the Leader of the House, because, far from being the worthless trifles described in the expression “folderol”, regulatory impact assessments are fundamental to ensuring that we make the right decisions as legislators.
It is incredible that, instead of lockdown continuing to be relaxed, new restrictions on freedom, such as mandatory face coverings, have been introduced. The consequence is that I detect a growing atmosphere of gloom and foreboding as we see winter approaching: no vaccine availability for many months; the economy in a worse state than most of our competitors; and the prospect of the resurgence of the pandemic coinciding with the flu season. I do not like the expression “waves” because it makes it seem as though we are talking about something equivalent to the Atlantic rollers so much enjoyed by our former Prime Minister and colleague, David Cameron. We are not talking about waves. We are talking about the potential resurgence of the pandemic—not everywhere, but in particular hotspots.
This scenario demands a rational evaluation of conflicting risks to the economy and public health, together with a cost-benefit analysis, and now is the time for the Government to reinstate the intellectual rigour of the regulatory impact assessment process. Sooner or later, the incredible economic cost of the Government’s failure to remove lockdown restrictions in a timely and effective manner will become apparent. If that coincides with the Government asking their natural supporters to pay the price for their failure through higher taxes, the political consequences will indeed be dire. It is for that reason that I commend to the Government what the OECD says about regulatory impact analysis. It describes it as an
“important element of an evidence-based approach to policy-making…that…can underpin the capacity of governments to ensure that regulations are efficient and effective in a changing and complex world.”
I will not read from the whole OECD regulatory impact assessment report on best practice principles for regulatory policy, but it extends to about 40 or 50 pages and is extremely well researched and documented. As I understand it—the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—these principles are supported by the Government; the trouble is that they do not seem to be being implemented by the Government and by Government Departments. I hope that in his response the Minister will tell us what he is doing to try and put that right.
The Government should revert to following their own “better regulation framework” established under the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015, which requires that
“A RIA should be prepared for all significant regulatory provisions as a standard of good policy making and where an appropriate RIA is expected by parliament and other stakeholders.”
The interim guidance issued in March this year sets out a general threshold for independent scrutiny of regulatory impact assessments and post-implementation reviews, where the annual net direct cost to business is greater than £5 million. It calls on Government Departments to undertake proportionate cost-benefit analysis to inform decision making.
The trouble is that this is not being done, and I will give just one topical example, to which I referred in my brief comments in the previous debate. Under the Coronavirus Act 2020, there was specific primary legislation saying that residential tenancies should be protected from eviction until 20 September this year. On Friday last week—27 August—regulations were made extending that period from 20 September for another six months. The regulations came into force on 28 August, which was last Saturday, the very same day that they were laid before Parliament. Regulation 1(2) says:
“These Regulations come into force on the day after the day on which they are laid”.
Those regulations have caused a storm of protest from residential landlords in my constituency; they are apoplectic about the fact that they are not going to be able to recover possession of their premises. Notwithstanding the contractual agreements they have entered into with their tenants, they are not going to be able to recover their premises until 31 March 2021.
It says in the explanatory notes to the regulations that they amend schedule 29 of the 2020 Act. This is primary legislation being amended by subordinate legislation subject only to the negative resolution procedure, and so one might have expected that there would be a regulatory impact assessment or something which would indicate to us, on behalf of our constituents, that the Government have thought this whole process through, but that is not there, and instead there is a little note which says:
“A full impact assessment has not been produced for this instrument due to the temporary nature of the provision” …
Bob Stewart [Conservative, Beckenham]
It makes us look like clowns.
Sir Christopher Chope
I hope that that is on the record—it makes us look like clowns. That is why I hope that we can persuade the Government to reform their ways. It is also extraordinary that the excuse should be put forward that this is a temporary arrangement and that is why there is no need for a regulatory impact assessment. That is not set out anywhere in any of the books on this, and it is a novel interpretation of what should be happening.
Switching away from the regulations directly related to coronavirus, I have received support for raising this issue from the Internet Association, which is the only trade association that exclusively represents leading global internet companies on matters of public policy. The organisation responded to the Government’s invitation when they went out to consultation in June inquiring about the reforming regulation initiative. It said, “Regulation in the digital sector has a wide range of potential impacts which extend beyond traditional economic impact analysis. As a matter of course, the Internet Association recommends that Government Departments and regulators undertake a wider impact assessment of their proposals covering not only the economic impact, but also issues such as technological feasibility and impacts on freedom of expression and privacy.” It goes on to say that “there have been a number of recent policy and regulatory initiatives in the digital sector where it has not been clear whether an impact assessment has been conducted and/or the impact assessment has not been published for external scrutiny.” It gives an example of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport/Home Office online harms White Paper. The Internet Association believes that wider regulatory impact assessments, as specified, should be required for major digital policy and regulatory initiatives. Therefore, this extends into that field also, as it does to all legislative and Government policy making—or it should do—and I hope that we will be able to get ourselves back on track.
The interim guidance to which I refer, which was published in March this year, referred to the Government considering how best the better regulation framework can be delivered
“more effectively over the course of this Parliament”.
Now is the time, surely, to take some action. As their first step, the Government should promise that the six-monthly review of the Coronavirus Act 2020 will be accompanied by a full post-implementation review and that a full cost-benefit analysis of those emergency regulations that it recommends should be kept in place. I hope that the Minister will announce that he is going to do that tonight and thereby help to restore public confidence in the Government’s decision making and the ability of Parliament to scrutinise it, because that is fundamental. I am grateful for the opportunity to put this point to the House.
This was the Government minister’s response, which entailed further lively debate:
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
… Our commitment to conducting such impact assessments remains strong. The analysis that goes into impact assessments ensures that Government consider the need for and likely impact of new regulations to support legislative change. They ensure that we consider how regulation will affect the operation of markets and best enable businesses to innovate, and, in line with the subject of this debate, they inform parliamentary decision making …
The Coronavirus Bill, introduced in March this year, provided powers needed to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. The powers enabled the Government to introduce temporary emergency legislation to respond to the pandemic. To allow the Government to deliver at the required pace, formal regulatory impact assessments are not required for better regulation purposes for the temporary measures put in place in response to the pandemic. Further flexibility in the approach to impact assessments is appropriate where permanent measures need to be enforced urgently.
My hon. Friend mentioned some specific examples where we have assessed the impact in a different way. He is right to talk about the importance of regulatory impact assessments. Some of the guidelines that he mentioned fall within my area. The specific residential landlord and tenant issue that he mentioned falls to my colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, but in terms of the commercial Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 changes, we found from listening and speaking to businesses over a period that some companies that were struggling to pay their rent were being wound up by some landlords, so we acted.
This is on the basis of detailed, long-standing conversation and engagement with businesses on both sides of the debate. In my short time as a Minister, I have had around 500 meetings with, I estimate, 3,000 to 4,000 businesses, so I think I have a reasonable handle on retail, hospitality, weddings and the beauticians who do eyebrows and beard trimming that my hon. Friend mentioned. It is a source of great regret that we are unable to allow wedding celebrations of more than 30 people to occur at the moment. I have seen at first hand and heard from people in the wedding sector, which is an enormous contributor to the UK economy, how badly they are suffering as a result …
At this point, the responses from Paul Scully became brittle and defensive. More importantly, Scully said that some changes will be permanent:
Sir Christopher Chope
May I present a challenge to the Minister? Will he publish for our benefit a regulatory impact assessment on the issue of not allowing larger weddings? That would bring into the open all the issues with which he is familiar but which have not yet been exposed to public debate and scrutiny. Is that not what it is all about? This has now been going on for six months, and people want to know where the future lies for the small organisations involved in weddings. Will he offer to do that for us, notwithstanding the fact that his Department is very busy? That would be really helpful.
While I have the Floor, let me also say that I am concerned that the Minister seemed to distance himself from what is happening to individual landlords. Although they may not be incorporated, they are small businesses.
Paul Scully
To answer my hon. Friend’s last point, I am not distancing myself; I literally was not involved in that decision. I do not want to offer a line of thought on something that I was not involved in, but I understand his point.
On weddings and the public debate, my hon. Friend has clearly not been following my Twitter feed—totally understandably—which is full of such debates about the wedding sector. We are trying to work with the sector to make sure it can open. My primary concern is about ensuring we get our economy open again with a warm but safe welcome to people. The Government’s first priority has always been to save and protect lives, but restoring livelihoods, protecting jobs and protecting businesses are right up there, for the reasons that my hon. Friend set out. If we do not get this kick-started now, the effect on the economy will be huge, so it is important that we work together to give people not just confidence but joy, so that when they come out to use services in their local high streets and city centres they enjoy the experience and come back time and time again.
A one-off hit to our economy is not good enough. We know it is not going to go back to how it was in February, and there are some permanent behaviour changes that seem to be kicking in. None the less, we need to work with the new normal, which means working with the virus, because we will be living with it. My hon. Friend talked about a second wave, or spike or whatever he wants to call it. If we learn to live with it, there may be a third and a fourth until we get a vaccine, but live with it we must. There will be a new reality of the permanent behaviour change.
Well-designed and effective regulation, which my hon. Friend wants to see in our legislation, and which we are championing, enables markets and business to flourish, grow and innovate. It can provide certainty for investors and protection for individuals and society. The use of impact assessments in informing regulatory design can help us to achieve those outcomes. Excessive or poorly designed regulation can impede innovation and create unnecessary barriers to trade, investment and economic efficiency. We have sought to limit that by ensuring that regulation changes in response to the pandemic are targeted and time-limited.
Bob Stewart
One of the biggest things that the Government have insisted on is facemasks, which we have mentioned already. I would be intrigued to know whether there is a regulatory impact assessment on why we all have to wear facemasks in public and various other places, because I have not seen it. If there is one that could be made public, perhaps it could be put in the House of Commons Library. There are growing numbers of people in my constituency of Beckenham who are rebelling against that idea.
Paul Scully
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I get the train and the Underground into London each and every day, and the adherence of people to wearing face masks is, on the whole, good. Tube use, I am glad to say, is increasing substantially. London city centre—the central activity zone in London—is incredibly quiet. That is affecting the west end in particular, and the City.
The west end represents 3% of the entire UK economy—just the west end—so although we need to make sure that the whole country is able to restore the confidence and joy that I was talking about, it would be remiss of me, as Minister for London as well, not to showcase those areas that make up a massive amount of our capital city as a strategic and world city, so that it is ready for international travellers when they have the confidence to travel.
The Government’s focus has been on improving design and proportionality in regulation. That is done through the Better Regulation Executive, which is responsible for embedding smarter, more cost-efficient and better regulation across Government, and which has recently introduced new guidance templates and training to improve the quality of impact assessments. As a result, impact assessments have clearer presentation of results, better planning for implementation and more quantification of costs and benefits.
The better regulation guidance represents the agreed Government policy on evidence and independent scrutiny, including when to seek independent scrutiny. It is clear that legislation should be accompanied by robust evidence and assessment of impact.
Bob Stewart
Forgive me. The Minister is a really good friend of mine, but he did not answer my question. I would really like to see the Government’s justification, in writing, as to why so many people have to wear face masks. Can we know what that justification is in this House?
Paul Scully
There has been a long debate about the use of face masks, both on transport and in retail. There are arguments either side—whether it gives a false sense of security or whether people touch their face when they put on or take off their mask. None the less, we have a better understanding of the transmission of the virus and the aerosol nature of its transmission. That is why the World Health Organisation has changed its advice from the beginning, when it said people do not need to have masks or face coverings, to, “Yes, you do.” Actually, we can learn from history. In the 19th century, cholera was assumed to be transmitted by air, but by greater understanding and by working through it—they did not need a regulatory impact assessment to figure it out— eventually people found that it was the water supply that was causing cholera, so they were able better to tackle that particular issue at that given time …
By mentioning cholera (?!), Scully killed his own argument. He should read up on the 20th century instead, specifically, the 1918-19 influenza pandemic. In the early 1920s, medical experts concluded that masks did nothing to stop the contagion. However, I digress.
The debate continued:
Sir Christopher Chope
Is this body to which the Minister is referring going to look at the issue of face masks, or face coverings? In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) he has said that there are arguments on both sides of this. In those circumstances, why are the Government taking one side and criminalising behaviour instead of trusting people to reach their own decisions on the information provided by the Government?
Paul Scully
I am sure the necessary people will have heard my hon. Friend’s call for that to be examined, but on the use of face masks, it is the same as self-isolation as a result of the test and trace system: the number of people who are having to self-isolate at any one time means that millions of us can go about our relatively normal lives by going to retail, hospitality or our places of work, which we were not able to do for so many months.
Those changes are evolving. I, like my hon. Friend, do not take any infringement of our civil liberties lightly, but this is a situation—I am not going to use the word “unprecedented” even though I just have; it has been used an unprecedented number of times—that we have never had to face before. No Government have ever had to face such a situation, so we are learning as we go along. We will not always get it right, but we have to make sure we are using the best engagement, listening to both sides of the argument, and working through as the science evolves and as we see what is in front of us in terms of human behaviour.
My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch talked about the OECD, whose latest report acknowledged that better regulation is an area of strength in the UK. It notes that the UK has been a leader in regulatory policy in general, with the early adoption of the better regulation agenda. Our ambitious agenda is reflected in the results of the OECD’s monitoring of regulatory management tools, as displayed in the “OECD Regulatory Policy Outlook 2018”, with the UK displaying the highest composite indicator score for stakeholder engagement for primary laws. Our score for secondary legislation is also significantly above the OECD average. We also had the highest composite indicator score for regulatory impact assessments across the OECD. That includes strong formal regulatory impact assessment requirements in areas such as establishing a process to identify how the achievement of the regulation’s goals will be evaluated; assessing a broad range of environmental and social impacts; and undertaking risk assessments as part of regulatory proposals. So we should be justifiably proud of our world-leading reputation in this area.
These assessments are valuable documents, and the Government should be applauded for encouraging their production and the transparent scrutiny of them, but, as with some individual impact assessments themselves, there is always room for improvement. As with the principles underpinning better regulation, we are always looking for ways to learn and improve our approach.
Sir Christopher Chope
Obviously, we are fortunate in having a bit of extra time this evening, which is great. Will the OECD be asked to opine on the effectiveness of the Government’s regulatory response to the coronavirus epidemic? For example, will the OECD be able to comment on the distinction, which my hon. Friend has made, between rules on face coverings, for which there are lots of exemptions, and rules about isolation and quarantine, for which there are no exemptions. I am afraid that there is an anomaly there.
At that point, Scully could hardly wait to bring this important debate to a close, with no give on his part.
As you read the following (if you got this far), please note that the Government, not the requesting MP, is supposed to look into matters resulting from these debates:
Paul Scully
I am afraid I do not have the OECD on speed dial, but I am sure that my hon. Friend will be able to ask it to look into all these things. I am glad that we have extra time, because there is nothing I like more than to discuss regulatory impact assessments—I am afraid that Hansard does not detect sarcasm. Although I make light, it is good that we have parliamentary scrutiny of an important topic to cover.
As I say, there is a further cultural shift in Whitehall to make on such impact assessments across the board. We do have a responsibility to monitor the extent to which the laws we have passed are implemented as intended and have the expected impact. My hon. Friend is justified in raising this important issue, so that we can consider, learn and move forward together. The planning for monitoring and evaluating regulatory changes could be more effective. There is a risk that laws are passed that result in unexpected consequences or inappropriately stifle innovation. I have seen that at first hand as we have been changing and tweaking various support measures for businesses; we have had to change them so that they are supporting businesses as intended, rather than with an unintended consequence. Better planning for monitoring and evaluating will help to ensure that there is sufficient information to assess the actual state of a law’s implementation and its effects.
In conclusion, regulatory impact assessments, in themselves, have evolved into an important and valuable component of the UK’s better regulation system. The transparent publication of impact assessments has added accountability to the analytical dimensions to policy development, which has increased the amount of evidence presented alongside policy proposals, and the existence of the independent scrutiny has increased both the transparency of the process and the accountability of government. I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important issue.
Bravo, Sir Christopher. I hope that more of the old guard Conservative MPs continue along his line of debate. We, the people, need their support.
On the other side of the Pond, that same day — September 2 — Tucker Carlson had an excellent segment on the endgame of the coronavirus panic. According to the WHO’s Dr Tedros, who is not a medical doctor, the plan is to ultimately bring in a worldwide reset to fight climate change. Bill Gates approves.
This is a short but highly instructive video:
Given all of the above, do Britons think that the UK government has been acting in good faith over coronavirus?
Boris Johnson promised us a ‘people’s government’. It certainly doesn’t look like one at present.
Remember the events of March 2020?
It was only six months ago, yet, because of coronavirus, the world has changed dramatically for many of us in Western countries.
What was supposed to be a three-week lockdown has turned into a six-month socio-political experiment.
Science isn’t settled
On August 25, Dr Malcolm Kendrick posted yet another excellent analysis of the situation: ‘COVID — What have we learned?’
Excerpts follow, emphases mine.
During the past six months, the public have received contradictory messages:
We have learned that people who are asymptomatic can, cannot, can, cannot, can, cannot, can… spread the virus.
That the accuracy of PCR antigen testing is brilliant, useless, brilliant, useless, brilliant, useless.
That false positive tests are impossible, common, impossible, common, impossible, common.
That facemasks are useless, necessary, useless, necessary, useless… absolutely necessary.
We also know that some people are, are not, are, are not are, naturally immune. In addition, we know that having had COVID means that you can, cannot, can, cannot, can cannot – maybe you can, frankly who knows, get it again.
Let’s not forget that, in the UK, the government downgraded coronavirus as no longer being a ‘disease of high consequence’ on March 19.
On March 23, the UK went into lockdown.
Dr Kendrick says:
The only disease in history which has required lockdown, including the obliteration of many basic human rights, and the trashing of the entire economy. Yet it is not a disease of high consequence?
This happened virtually unremarked. Very quietly, you could almost say sneakily. What on earth went on here? My guess is this was done to stop healthcare workers suing the NHS if they contracted COVID at work – as almost no medical staff had adequate PPE. There may be other reasons, but I struggle to think what they may be.
Then came the hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) controversy. HCQ used with azithromycin and/or zinc, according to a strict protocol (Drs Zelenko, Raoult) can help many (not all) patients in the early stages of COVID-19.
Yet, the doctors who have documented their success with HCQ, a long-standing anti-malarial drug, have been vilified. Is it because HCQ is available by prescription and is cheap as chips, alleviating the need for a vaccine?
As a physician, Kendrick read many papers on HCQ:
… having read around the area, it seemed that hydroxychloroquine might do some good. It was certainly pretty safe, and we had nothing else at the time. Thus, I recommended that it might be used.
Then, the distorting engine was switched to full power. Driven by two main fuel types. Type one was money. Companies with anti-viral agents, such as remdesivir, did not want a ‘cheap as chips’ drug being used. No sirree, they wanted massively expensive (and almost entirely useless) anti-virals to be used instead.
This resulted in a study published in the Lancet, no less, slamming hydroxychloroquine through the floor. It turns out the study was almost entirely fabricated, by researchers strongly associated with various companies who, surprise, surprise, make anti-virals.
The other fuel type was the hybrid money/vaccine. If hydroxychloroquine (plus zinc and azithromycin) works, then there was great concern this would lower uptake of any vaccine that was developed. In addition, it would not be possible to impose emergency vaccine laws, which would make the manufacture of any vaccine far quicker and easier.
Such laws, in the US, are known as Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA). If enacted, these laws mean that a vaccine does not have to be tested for safety and efficacy before use. Just whack it out there, untested. Also, there is no possibility of suing a vaccine manufacturer if it turns out the vaccine caused serious problems.
In the US, UK, and several other countries, complete legal protection against vaccine damage is already enshrined in the law, so nothing changes here.
Bottom line — the quest for money is determining how this scenario is unfolding, and scientists cannot agree as to how. Vested interests are at play, so the science is not settled:
So, what have we learned? We have learned that medical science is not a pure thing – not in the slightest. We have also learned that the world of research has not come together to conquer COVID, it has split apart …
It is said that the first casualty of war is the truth. Never has this been more certain that with COVID. In this case, first we killed the truth, then we killed science, then we beat inconvenient facts to death with a club. It is all extraordinarily depressing.
Lack of rational thinking
It has become clear that politicians and members of the public got caught up in a media-driven frenzy of fear.
Between March and June, I watched BBC News after each of the UK government’s coronavirus daily briefings.
In mid-March, prior to March 23, presenters and reporters pleaded for a lockdown, because every other country had one.
Two months later, BBC News was asking when lockdown would be lifted. They never mentioned that we were the last European nation to lock down. Therefore, it was logical that those nations had done so earlier would reopen earlier.
In between, the BBC drove us into a COVID-dominated news cycle, stoked with fear.
On August 24, John Church, an oil and gas professional, wrote a guest post on Hector Drummond’s website: ‘John Church: Burning Witches’. John Church doesn’t cite the media, but he does take the public to task for abandoning rational thinking:
It appears that human stupidity in the 21st century knows no bounds, and the mass stampede off the cliff that we have all made, with very few exceptions, is a testament to the validity of my concern. I don’t need to describe the absurdity of the world in August 2020, because one just has to open a newspaper to read about the catastrophic damage that has been done by our actions. Totally self-inflicted. All of this has been in response to a fear of death from a viral epidemic which did indeed kill some people, as is usual with viral epidemics. But not many, and the rest of us have survived with a survival rate somewhere between 99.9% and 99.99% depending on demographics, how deaths have been counted (or miscounted), and how effectively we managed to shield the truly vulnerable. But in summary pretty much every country has a survival rate well north of 99.9%.
What on earth were we thinking ? Or was it just a case of just not thinking ? At an individual level, of course there were good analyses and examples of critical thought, but the great learning from the last four months is how society can throw rational behaviour out of the window and, in a fit of hysterical panic, just run around like headless chickens.
I would put politicians in that basket, too. Ultimately, they enacted lockdown policies.
We need to begin thinking in an informed way about death on a national level:
There is the total lack of awareness about the ‘normal’ number of deaths in any year, month or week. Over 600,000 people die in the UK every year, and this is entirely normal! … In the UK, at a rate of about 1600 per day. We never hear this on the news. We never hear it said that thirty people died from Covid, but this was actually only around 2% of the daily death count. And a slight pause for thought would lead to other observations: such as that if 40,000 people in the UK have died from this virus, then it means 99.94% of us have survived. Or how if we take the gigantic step of looking at the age breakdowns which can be accessed with three clicks from the website of the Office of National Statistics, over 90% of the deaths are from people over 60. And almost all of these people also had serious other diseases. Most of us take far more risk getting into a car, and yet huge numbers of young and middle aged people were genuinely worried for their health. And still are. What were we thinking?
Mr Church wisely asks us to consider the difference between ‘lives’ and ‘livelihoods’:
Secondly, the way we almost point blank refused to allow any thought or discussion to be made about equivalences between ‘lives’ and ‘livelihoods’. Everyone wanted to save lives (“what if it was your granny?”), but no one seemed able to think about how much saving those lives would cost. It was like the sight of the oncoming tsunami of unemployment, impoverishment, additional deaths due to untreated cancers, and the general deleterious effects of a huge recession were going to happen to somebody else.
Thirdly, he rightly says that lockdown only suppresses the virus. It doesn’t kill it:
And thirdly, our total inability to see that the lockdown was not a solution, just a delay of the problem. Even Boris told us: we must lockdown to “flatten the curve”. But you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see beyond this brilliantly flawed strategy what the problem is. As soon as you release the lockdown, you just revive the problem you were trying to solve. Because it wasn’t a solution, just a delay.
Governments will be reluctant to admit they made a mistake:
… worse, once you have locked down it becomes difficult to admit it was a mistake because, through your own sacrifice, you are now emotionally invested in the enterprise. This is known as the sunk-cost fallacy. I look around the world in amazement and see how everyone was just totally blind to this obvious issue. It’s like a giant psychotic Ponzi scheme, with the hugely sad and final outcome that it will crash. Just look at Australia and New Zealand if you want to watch this tragedy unfold in slow motion. Every attempt to release themselves results in a resurgence of the problem, and, unlike European countries, the problem hasn’t even really started there, so they still have it all to come. It is genuinely tragic to watch these once proud and free nations implode. What on earth were they thinking?
What should the UK have done? We should have kept going with social distancing and maintaining life as normal:
… by mid-April it was clear we had over-reacted and we should have changed track. We didn’t. We doubled down, moved the goal posts and four months later this is where we are. Future generations will look back and remark on the illogicalities, the inability to mentally execute simple trade-offs, and the staggering numerical illiteracy of the people of the world in the early 21st century. For all our technological and intellectual prowess, we are no better than those who used to burn witches because the harvest failed.
Unsubstantiated ideas we fell for
On August 23, Stacey Rudin wrote an excellent article for the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER): ‘Save Yourself: Stop Believing in Lockdown’.
The first myth she explores is that ‘lockdown saves lives’. The West took unprecedented action based on the what China (?!) was doing:
Blind faith in lockdown rapidly took hold in March 2020 like a fire in a haystack. The spark that ignited it was terror, lit by the media’s sensationalist reporting of the “disaster” in Northern Italy, shortly followed by the doomsday predictions from fancy-sounding (“Imperial College! London!”) modelers. Those same modelers offered a lifeline: — lockdown, the long awaited real-life opportunity to test a pet theory. Too bad we never stopped to question their credibility (“they sound so fancy!”) and motives (“we’ve been waiting for this moment!”) before taking any action — particularly drastic, life-altering action …
A second, even bigger credibility issue is found when we consider the first lesson we ever learned about “lockdown.” That lesson came from China. None of us — or even our parents — had ever heard of a population-wide quarantine until the Chinese government planted the idea with a highly-publicized “lockdown” of its own.
This normalized the concept, preparing our minds to accept it as a scientifically-supported measure to manage infectious diseases. Then, after bombarding us with images of its citizens’ sacrifices, China predictably declared, “It worked! We defeated the virus! Disease is gone!”
The lifeline. The island of escape. Thank you, China — because of you, we will not die.
Little did we know that decades of public health work unequivocally established the opposite: “There is no basis [in science] for recommending quarantine either of groups or individuals.”
The second myth is that everyone must avoid getting COVID-19:
Some people, particularly the very elderly with serious comorbidities, should indeed try to avoid infection. But for the millions of people at low risk, COVID should be treated the same as the flu. They should circulate normally, serving humanity by exposing themselves to the virus without hysteria, as the Swedes did. This will minimize overall mortality by reducing the duration of the epidemic, freeing the high-risk elderly from confinement earlier, and avoiding all of the lockdown deaths and other traumas. It is a scientific fact that every epidemic ends at the threshold of “herd immunity” — not before.
The alternative we have chosen — an epidemic identical in size, but longer in duration, with people at statistically zero risk hiding inside their homes getting more stressed, fatter, and sicker — is utter madness. The most tragic part is Imperial explained this to us on March 16, and posted it online for everyone to see:
While Imperial designed lockdown as an ICU-capacity management strategy, it apparently did not foresee the difficulty in persuading people terrified by lockdown to go right back out and live two weeks later. “All clear! We have thousands of ICU beds staffed and ready for you! Good luck!”
I will come back to the ICU-management strategy versus extended measures tomorrow. It was the subject of a debate in the House of Commons this week!
The third myth is that people aren’t safe without masks:
Established science says that masks and distancing don’t work, anyway — COVID-19 spontaneously shows up on naval ships 49 days into isolation, and similar viruses have appeared during the 17th week of perfect Antarctic quarantines. But at least you will feel like you’re doing something.
The fourth myth is feeling stupid for having fallen for lockdown:
There is no shame in falling for such a sophisticated propaganda scheme. Most people did. A few shining stars have since emerged to admit their mistake, quietly adopting the Swedish approach.
The fifth, and final, myth is that coronavirus is more dangerous than the flu:
Nope. As stated above, in terms of mortality impact, Sweden already proved that COVID-19 is indeed similar to the flu. The diseases are similar in other respects — both can have long-term health effects, both kill random outliers (the flu even kills young teachers), and both can cause hospitals to overflow, as influenza did as recently as two years ago. They have similar survival rates: ~997 out of 1,000 for COVID, ~999 out of 1,000 for flu. Over fifty percent of Americans don’t even get the flu shot, yet we have destroyed the planet to “stop” COVID-19.
Why did it happen? Because the media chose to depict this virus as Black Plague — and we believed it. Now that we know that the media can do this, we can understand why the U.K. Prime Minister — and others in his position — was afraid of its powers. He reportedly imposed lockdown because he was threatened as follows: “If he didn’t lock down, journalists will ask him on national television to accept responsibility and apologise to the families of those who have died as a result of Covid-19, because the rhetoric would have been that it was his fault for not locking down.” In other words, the media had a three-step plan: (1) convince us that politicians have the power to stop death, (2) put the politicians in the position of needing to do what the media suggests will “save our lives,” (3) watch as we drive ourselves over a cliff.
The media cannot do this without our participation. We can stop them immediately by refusing to believe their superstitious, pseudo-scientific proposition that this is the only disease in history that needed a politician-imposed lockdown to abate. They cannot trick us into burning down our own houses once we simply stop believing that politicians have the power to stop death. Standing firmly on this foundation of scientific truth, we will finally be at peace, realizing that COVID-19, like every disease in history, will infect a certain number of people, kill a minute percentage of them, and then move along, lockdown or no lockdown.
We really must stop believing otherwise. Our credulity is destroying us …
As we enter September, not much is really opening back up. Sure, it might be doing so on paper, but, in the UK, many people are still working from home. That has a huge impact on local economies in cities. London is still a ghost town. Think of all the shops that rely on intensive daily trade: from sandwich places to shoe repair shops.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, had a restaurant programme that ran throughout August from Mondays to Wednesdays: Eat Out to Help Out. I’m sure it helped the restaurant trade to some extent, but if people need to travel in a mask on public transport, including taxis, then it will be some time before we can return to normality.
Furthermore, if department stores have to be one-way and COVID-compliant, no one is going to be shopping for the pleasure of it, especially if they have to wear masks. Online orders beckon.
In the beauty industry, some close-contact procedures on men and women were banned for months.
I had expected better by now, but, then, I was foolish enough to think that the lockdown was only going to last for three weeks.
How wrong I was.
How wrong our government is to persist with ever-changing rules on how businesses can and cannot operate.
If Boris and Rishi expect things to start humming along, they’re going to have to persuade Health Secretary Matt Hancock to let go of the strings and let us manage our own lives — sooner rather than later.
Reason had two stories on September 1 about Democrats flouting coronavirus laws.
Philadelphia’s mayor
Philadelphia’s mayor Jim Kenney has banned indoor dining in the City of Brotherly Love. So what did he do when he wanted to go out to eat?
Jim Kenney travelled out of state to dine indoors in comfort.
Reason‘s article, ‘Philadelphia Ordered Restaurants Closed. Then the City’s Mayor Went Out To Eat in Maryland’, has a photo of Kenney sitting at a table. There was no social distancing. There were no masks.
Reason reported:
Restaurants and bars in Maryland are allowed to offer limited indoor dining—capacity is capped at 25 percent of what would normally be allowed in an attempt to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Establishments elsewhere in Pennsylvania are operating under similar restrictions as well. But in Philadelphia, indoor dining is still fully forbidden under restrictions imposed by the city government—the one that Kenney runs. The city’s ban on indoor dining, which was extended in late July amid fears of a “second wave” of COVID-19 cases in Philadelphia, is scheduled to be lifted on September 8.
But Kenney apparently couldn’t wait that long. A sharp-eyed restaurant-goer caught Kenney dining indoors in Maryland on Sunday. The photo quickly went viral, and Kenney’s office confirmed to a local TV station that the mayor had gone south of the border to visit “a restaurant owned by a friend.”
Kenney said that he went to Maryland on Sunday, August 30, because their COVID-19 rate is so low.
By way of apology, he tweeted a photo of a Philadelphia restaurant and said:
The reopening this late in the year will be a long slog for Philadelphia’s restaurant owners. This is true in other cities, too, where dining establishments are allowed to accommodate only 25% of their usual capacity indoors.
On June 19, Reason interviewed restaurateurs as lockdown was being lifted and replaced with reopening restrictions which are insufficient to retain a thriving business (emphases mine):
Restaurants that have had to subsist on takeout and delivery are like “a person being on 25 percent lung capacity,” says industry analyst Aaron Allen. “You can sustain that for a period of time but it’s not healthy to do it over an extended period. With a few more chairs on the patio, you just went from 25 percent capacity to 28 percent. You need to be at a minimum of 90 percent lung capacity.”
A May survey of restaurant owners conducted by the New York City Hospitality Alliance found that two-thirds of them said they would need to reach 70 percent occupancy in order to survive.
The Open Restaurant guidelines released today specify that business can place tables on the sidewalk only directly in front of their storefront, and that they must maintain eight feet of distance between their seating and the curb.
“I’m only excited for Phase Two because it gets us closer to Phase Three when we can have a 50 percent capacity indoor crowd,” one restaurant owner told the Post.
Talk about crumbs from the table.
San Francisco
On Monday, August 31, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had her hair done indoors at a San Francisco salon.
Coronavirus rules for the city prohibit hairdressing indoors.
However, Pelosi can flout the rules.
Fox News reported on the story: ‘Pelosi used shuttered San Francisco hair salon for blow-out, owner calls it “slap in the face”‘. Included is a photo of a be-gowned Pelosi with wet hair.
The salon’s owner allows independent hairdressers to rent her unused chairs.
She explained how the situation unfolded:
Salon owner Erica Kious, in a phone interview with Fox News on Tuesday, shared details of Pelosi’s visit. Kious explained she has independent stylists working for her who rent chairs in her salon.
“One of the stylists who rents a chair from me contacted me Sunday night,” Kious said.
A screengrab of the text message she received from one of her stylists, and obtained by Fox News, said: “I’ll be there at 2:45 tomorrow. Pelosi assistant just messaged me to do her hair.”
Kious replied: “Pelosi?”
“I was like, are you kidding me right now? Do I let this happen? What do I do?” Kious told Fox News, while noting that she “can’t control” what her stylists do if they rent chairs from her, as “they’re not paying” at this time.
Kious was disgusted at the double standard:
“It was a slap in the face that she went in, you know, that she feels that she can just go and get her stuff done while no one else can go in, and I can’t work,” Kious told Fox News, adding that she “can’t believe” the speaker didn’t have a mask on. (From the footage, it appears Pelosi had some kind of covering around her neck.)
“We’re supposed to look up to this woman, right?” Kious said. “It is just disturbing.”
Pelosi’s spokesperson defended Madam Speaker’s hair appointment:
Asked for comment, Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill maintained that the speaker was following the rules as presented to her.
“The Speaker always wears a mask and complies with local COVID requirements. This business offered for the Speaker to come in on Monday and told her they were allowed by the city to have one customer at a time in the business. The Speaker complied with the rules as presented to her by this establishment,” he said.
Kious objected to the statement from Pelosi’s office. Whilst a wash is fine under the city’s coronavirus restrictions, a blow-dry — for whatever reason — is not:
Kious said Pelosi received a wash and a blow-dry, but told Fox News that “you’re not supposed to blow dry hair” according to coronavirus safety precautions for hair salons.
“We have been shut down for so long, not just me, but most of the small businesses and I just can’t – it’s a feeling – a feeling of being deflated, helpless and honestly beaten down,” Kious said.
Later, Pelosi hit back.
On Wednesday, September 2, the San Francisco Chronicle reported:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declined to apologize Wednesday for her controversial visit to a San Francisco hair salon, calling it “a setup” and suggesting that she had been tricked by the business owner.
Pelosi said she took responsibility for falling for the “setup” to have her hair done inside at a San Francisco salon on Monday, which is prohibited by the city’s regulations.
That said:
The San Francisco Democrat said if anyone was owed an apology, it was her by the salon.
“I think that this salon owes me an apology, for setting me up,” she said at an event about school reopenings in San Francisco’s Noe Valley.
Also:
“I take responsibility for trusting the word of the neighborhood salon that I’ve been to over the years many times and when they said, ‘We’re able to accommodate people one person at a time,’ I trusted that,” the speaker said during a combative exchange with reporters in the empty school yard of Mission Education Center Elementary School.
Pelosi’s response acknowledged she was not aware of local rules prohibiting such indoor treatments. She wasn’t asked why she didn’t know the city’s rules. Pelosi splits her time between her home in San Francisco and her work in Washington, D.C.
Her response seemed to add fuel to the firestorm over her actions, rather than quell it, as conservative critiques jumped on the cleanup effort as hypocritical.
As to why she did not have a hairdresser pay her a home visit:
The speaker had been having her regular stylist do her hair at her home, but that person wasn’t available, her spokesman said. Instead, she arranged to have her hair styled at eSalon after being told it was OK.
Her not wearing a mask after having her hair washed would not have been such a big deal if she were not making such a big deal about Republicans’ notionally lax (in her estimation) attitude towards masks.
Pelosi answered her critics:
“I don’t wear a mask when I’m washing my hair. Do you wear a mask when you’re washing your hair? I always wear a mask,” she said, adding the short clip that was released was when she had just left the shampoo chair.
Pelosi’s critics seized on the visit as hypocritical, saying she was breaking the very rules she was scolding others for not following.
President Trump chimed in:
The Republican National Committee seized on the controversy:
In an email blast to reporters, Republican National Committee spokesperson Liz Harrington noted that salon owners who have opened their business against local laws have been jailed. “You can’t get your hair done, eat inside at a restaurant, travel, attend a funeral, or protest without mandatory quarantining. But Democrats can,” she wrote. “This isn’t about health or science. It’s about power. Democrats want to rule your life. But don’t expect their rules to apply to them.”
Masks and business closures have been at the center of political and culture wars amid the pandemic.
Back to the Fox News article. Salon owner Kious envisages a dark future post-coronavirus, not only for herself but also for similar salons:
Kious told Fox News that she had expected to be able to reopen her salon in July, and prepared her space in accordance with local guidelines.
“There were rules and regulations to go by to safely reopen, which I did, but I was still not allowed to open my business,” she said, noting that she installed plexiglass partitions between sinks and seating areas, and ensured that all salon chairs were six feet apart, along with proper air circulation from open windows.
“They never let us open,” she said, while adding that she is unable to reopen outside because her salon specializes in hair color, and using chemicals outside is prohibited.
But Kious said she is not alone in the hardships she has faced amid closures during the coronavirus pandemic.
“This is for everybody,” she said. “I am sharing this because of what everyone in my industry, and my city, what every small business is going through right now.”
Even though Kious has received help from the CARES Act, she believes that she will be:
forced to shut down her salon for good within the next 30 to 60 days.
“No one can last anymore,” she said. “I have also lost 60 percent of my clientele because everyone is fleeing the city.”
Kious said that the area where her salon is located has turned into “a third world country,” saying that “every other storefront is completely vacant and shut down and boarded up.”
“And because of the shutdown, and the store closures, we’ve lost people, my clients, and my employees, and that is due to the politics in San Francisco,” she said, adding that the homeless population is “everywhere” and “defecating” all over the city.
“It has gotten so extreme,” she said. “It is so night and day from what it was a year ago, that everyone is fleeing.”
I couldn’t help but think of San Fran Nan and her freezer filled with designer ice creams, a treat that Kious and her children can probably only dream of at the present time:
Something must be done, specifically, lifting the remaining coronavirus restrictions with common sense. That includes the UK. Yet, more and more entrepreneurs are being driven out of business by politicians’ embrace of ‘science’ rather than pragmatism.
My heart goes out to the countless business owners affected by these destructive policies, putting our countries on the road to Venezuela.
I pray that our political leaders see sense, especially the Democrats.
Until then, it’s a case of ‘for thee, but not for me’.
