Lockdown Ferguson on What I Got Wrong (Part Two)
Here’s the rest of what Ferguson had to say to the science editor of the Observer.
Despite the vituperation, UK scientists have done well, Ferguson believes – not just in terms of research, but in investing time in communicating their research to the public. “What is paradoxical is the fact that the UK has punched well above its weight in its epidemiology, in its vaccine development and in understanding the virus – yet we have the worst per capita mortality for Covid-19 in the developed world. The eventual public inquiry will have a very mixed bag of conclusions to make about our handling of Covid.”
A major problem for the UK – and for much of Europe – has been the assumption that controlling the virus is a matter of having a trade-off between the economy and imposing lockdowns. “That is a false dichotomy,” says Ferguson. “If you act early when you impose lockdowns and other restrictions, you don’t just minimise deaths, you minimise economic disruption because you can lift lockdown so much earlier.”
As to the differential impact of the disease on society, Ferguson is unequivocal. “The poor have been worst affected in multiple ways. They have the lowest job security and have the least ability to work from home. They tend to work in frontline professions where they are more exposed to the virus. They also tend to have poorer health and have more co-morbidities so that they get more severe reactions to Covid and suffer higher mortality rates. There needs to be a real effort to address these issues in the coming few years.”
Ferguson’s group at Imperial College was one of those asked recently by the Cabinet Office to model the likely outcomes of emerging from our current lockdown at different speeds, from a very rapid rate to a very cautious one. “I think the government listened to what we had to say and have learned lessons from the past. Certainly, there’s no appetite to end up in a situation where they’re forced to lock down again.” This has led to the current very cautious approach being taken by the government in lifting restrictions.
Ferguson describes himself as “80% sure” that the country will be a different place in a few months. “It is highly likely that we will have driven Covid down to very low levels of case numbers and we can begin enjoying summer. We will still need to monitor things very carefully, and there has yet to be a proper discussion about what we do in autumn. Certainly, I think it is highly likely we will have to roll out a booster vaccine to protect against possible new variants.
“So, while I am optimistic overall, I still think there is a 20% chance things could go wrong – with the possible appearance of dangerous new variants which undermine immunity given by vaccines.”
In general, though, Ferguson takes the view that the news is likely to be good over the next few months – and that makes a considerable change from the warnings he has had to make for the past year.
Note that there is no science in it. Ferguson is no more a scientist than the builder who puts in an estimate for roofing your house that bills you for ten times more tiles than you need, because he can’t tell square feet from square metres. And does the same thing to all your neighbours for twenty years. The builder who does that goes bust or goes to prison. The epidemiologist who demonstrates a similar incompetence is fêted like a princess crucified by the horrid media.
Ferguson, speaking as an expert, describes himself as “80% sure” that the country will be a different place in a few months. Because that’s the only expertise he has, the ability to put a percentage to his hunches. Speaking as an expert, I’m 80% sure that Ferguson will still be in the same place in a few months, and so will McKie, on his knees with his tongue firmly ensconced between the twin cheeks of Science and Power.
A year ago I wrote a piece that was certainly the most widely read thing I’ve ever written, since it was taken up by WattsUpWithThat, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and the Europäisches Institut für Klima & Energie. It was also the most wrongheaded, idiotic thing I’ve ever written, since it proposed that the failings of “the science” surrounding the response to the Covid crisis would result in a more sceptical attitude to the science surrounding climate change. As McKie’s article demonstrates, precisely the opposite has happened, with the hysteria about scientists under attack from sinister bots being repeated word for word in the case of the fake science of epidemiological prediction.
Climate Scepticism 
Geoff,
Ferguson is very fond of his marketing style percentages. Take, for example, his “up to 70% more transmissible” as applied to the Kent variant (although I seem to remember that he accidentally omitted the ‘up to’ bit whenever he used that statistic). The 70% applied to the upper bound of the plausible range of uncertainty, and he bloody well knew that. Is only mentioning the upper limit how a scientist is supposed to express uncertainty? Or could it be that his ideological opinions were influencing his language? I note that he is so quick to condemn the anti-lockdown movement as being ‘ideological’. I say, epidemiologist heal thyself.
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Junk pseudoscience, CCP-style. ‘If we’d locked down harder and sooner, we could have released so much earlier and saved lives and the economy’. We’ll see how that theory fares in September shall we, when ‘Variants: The New Batch’ starts showing in empty cinemas around the country.
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JAIME
I gave your comment a “like” before noticing your reference to “Junk pseudoscience, CCP-style.” I don’t think the Chinese Communist Party does junk pseudo-science. Those who know suggest their science on the Covid crisis has been good, and certainly the Chinese students abroad who publish on climate science seem to know what they’re doing, e.g. Zhu et al 2016,
https://cliscep.com/2016/10/22/the-greentrashing-of-ridley/
most of the authors of which are from Chinese institutions. Their finding that the world was greening due to higher temperatures and increased CO2 has huge implications for the autonomous region of Tibet, where some of them are based, and seemed to upset one of the authors, the Boston-based professor who invented the techniques used, since he issued an explanation that in no way should the fact that the world was greening be taken to mean that global warming was a Good Thing.
The headline you didn’t see: “Chinese scientists make important discovery: U.S. co-author calls it politically incorrect.”
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Geoff, that’s why I said ‘CCP-style’, not Chinese style. Of course the Chinese do damned fine science – when they are allowed to by their Communist overlords. ‘Lockdown’ was Xi Jinping’s baby. There is no ‘science’ behind it at all.
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China (the country) and in particular our government’s willingness to work with them on the supposed threat of climate change and adopt their ‘solutions’ to pandemics (supposedly to be made more frequent by climate change) presents a huge threat to our economy, our civil liberties, our society, our entire western way of life. Johnson is a menace to the British people.
“In a stance that risks provoking outrage from Conservative MPs, the report takes a much softer tone on China than to Russia, saying that although it is an ‘authoritarian state’ it will be ‘an increasingly important partner’.
‘China is an increasingly important partner in tackling global challenges like pandemic preparedness, biodiversity and climate change. We will continue to pursue a positive economic relationship, including deeper trade links and more Chinese investment in the UK,’ the document says.
And worryingly the document says another pandemic is a ‘realistic possibility’ this decade. ‘Infectious disease outbreaks are likely to be more frequent to 2030,’ it says.
In his statement this afternoon, Mr Johnson warned that Western values are not guaranteed to come out on top.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9367389/Tory-revolt-review-calls-deeper-trade-links-China.html
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@ Geoff, we may not have won, & we may not be winning yet, nor for a while. But we will win. Our victory does not depend on our popularity or powers of persuasion. It depends on two things: physics, and the principle that people prefer to have money than to not have money.
Of course, sceptics won’t get any credit for the victory – in fact the future powers-that-be, presently in the waiting room for high office, or maybe the kindergarten, will tell us how they were always suspicious about the Net Zero policy. Nevertheless, they went along with it because they trusted what they were being told about its affordability, and all the green jobs that would be created, and the disastrous consequences of inaction. Eventually they came to realise that they had been sold a pup. The medicine was worse than the disease, and the pain had to be stopped before the entire country went to rack and ruin. The sceptics? Pah. They might have been right, but they were right for the wrong reasons, by sheer coincidence. They just went around systematically saying “Non!”, and didn’t know what the hell they were on about.
Sometimes I wonder whether we are just too nice. Our opponents did not get where they are by respectful argument.
A permanent public list of everyone of importance who has supported the Net Zero insanity might begin to concentrate a few minds; it’s what the green zealots would do if the roles were reversed. Thankfully we’re too nice for that.
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JIT
Speak for yourself. There have been a couple (at least) of quite acerbic threads recently – one between Andy West and Ben Pile, and one between Andy and Brad Keyes – in which Brad and Ben took Andy to task for arguing (and I paraphrase and probably traduce his reasoning) that there’s no point in moralising about the turpitudes of climate activists because they’re in the grip of a culture which is by definition irrational and that they are therefore immune to rational argument. Brad and Ben’s point was (and I simplify) that warmists are lying bastards and should be called out as such.
While writing the above two posts on McKie and Ferguson I could observe myself morphing from Andy’s position to that of Ben and Brad. Ferguson has been churning out hopeless modelling for decades. He’s an academic, and you can’t sack him just because he’s wrong over and over and over. McKie is a specialist journalist who hasn’t the foggiest idea what he’s talking about, in the tradition of Evelyn Waugh’s Boot in Black Mischief. It shouldn’t matter, because there are other journalists, other academics, with other areas of incompetence, and somehow it will all come out right in the end (which is the argument of your first paragraph.)
And then suddenly there’s Ofcom, with the power to censure anyone who disagrees with official government policy. And Twitter and Facebook and Youtube… And Piers Corbyn being fined £10,000 for organising a demonstration, and us sceptics doing nothing about it… And the BBC lying and refusing to correct its lies when they’re pointed out (see Paul Homewood passim)
And when I came to McKie’s aside on climate scientists “who …have had to deal with similar vilification: targeted, highly personalised attacks mixed with the cherrypicking of evidence in order to try to discredit research,” I thought: Why should we put up with this? And at that point I normally get rude, which probably puts off some readers, and certainly means I’ll never get called to give evidence at a Parliamentary Committee set up by “the future powers-that-be.. [who] will tell us how they were always suspicious about the Net Zero policy.”
But what to do? Andy’s right, that they’re members and perpetrators of a vast unconscious cult that defies rational analysis. And Ben and Brad are right that they are liars and frauds who should be called out for what they are. You hope that physics will assert itself. I fear that the blob will do anything to prevent physics (or simple common sense) from asserting itself, up to and including a war against the sensible half of the planet.
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Gosh Geoff, you’re overly optimistic with “…war against the sensible half of the planet”. Us sensible ones would be slaughtered in our tens and hundreds, and trampled into the dust by the vast masses of woke and climate-fearing. We precious few are the Quixotic, ever tilting at green windmills and other beloved symbols of the mass delusion, convinced we have the stone tablets of truth.
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Well, I know I shouldn’t go there, but have you ever tried reading online comments at places like the Guardian and the Conversation? The almost-religious belief system on show, the total lack of logic and understanding on display, the absolute refusal to consider any point of view that contradicts their belief system, the snooty rudeness, they’re all their in spades. How do we respond to people for whom logic is an irrelevance?
A friend of mine had a motto – “Never argue with a stupid person”. Perhaps he was right, but if we don’t argue with them, how can we stop the madness? Maybe when the costs of it all start hitting home the debate will change, but by then we may well have passed the climate-madness “tipping point”….
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Hope, is it an option? Jest askin’.
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ALAN KENDALL
By “the sensible half of the planet” I meant Russia and China. You don’t have to be a fan of their régimes to see that their policy decisions are based on rational considerations of improving their international standing and the welfare of their citizens. They stick to the rules of international law by and large, and only bomb foreigners when requested by the legitimate government. They humour us by taking part in insane discussions about trace gases and only sign up to promises they intend to keep. There was a lot of fuss at Paris (or possible Copenhagen) about the Chinese insisting on a “should” instead of a “shall,” which the media interpreted as timewasting. In fact they care about their reputation in the eyes of history, whereas western politicians will make any old promise, knowing that it will be their rivals who have to pick up the bill in the future.
MARK HODGSON
Have I looked at comments at the Guardian or Conversation??!! I wasted a chunk of my life commenting there. The game was to get more “likes” than the opposition, which was usually not too difficult. Moderation was in the hands of readers, who could apply one of five or six criteria to get your comment removed. I was banned five times, the first two on specious grounds. I appealed pointing out (truthfully, I think) that CP Scott was my great great uncle, and they let me back the first time.
My favourite commenter was a certain MoveAnyMountain, who somehow managed to post detailed comments eviscerating the article with scientific references within minutes of the article appearing. The Guardian held a poll to choose the best commenter, and MoveAnyMountain won. The prize was a free article in the Graun, and Move wrote an essay in defence of censorship. You can see his comments here
https://profile.theguardian.com/user/id/3084067?page=1
though they stop at page 100, so only cover a few months in 2010-2011, while his good climate stuff was earlier. The pages I’ve looked at he’s mostly defending Senator McCarthy, waterboarding in Guantanamo etc. There was a certain breadth of opinion at the Graun back then.
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I suspect that society’s attitude towards our campaigning very much reflects the relationship I have with my skin mites. I know they are there, but I rarely take their opinions into account when I make a decision.
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JOHN RIDGWAY
Does the Guardian have hundreds of articles on how to get rid of skin mites? Does the government pay dozens of academics to come up with ways of nudging them into behaving themselves?
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Geoff,
Yes, I know. It’s weird. But we do not receive this attention because we are perceived as skin mites; we are perceived as skin mites because we receive this attention. The more we are obsessed over, the more insignificant we must become. The more sense we make, the more nonsensical we must be.
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John. You seem to be in a very dark and twisty place, and to learn that you probably have démodex through which you see the world (most of us do) cannot help any.
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Alan,
Apparently, one’s demodex community increases in size the older you get. I’m old enough to be outnumbered but I am still the only one to get the vote.
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Given that this article once again transcends climate change scepticism and lockdown scepticism, I think it’s worth drawing attention to the flexibility of the precautionary principle. This was on the Lockdown Sceptics website today:
“It’s half amusing to see commentators decrying the Europeans for the the misuse of the ‘precautionary principle’ when suspending the Astra-Zeneca vaccination (e.g. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writing in the Telegraph that the “French Precautionary Principle is literally killing Europe”. Also the Economist’s Health Correspondent said on BBC radio today that it is folly to apply the precautionary principle during a pandemic. But it is the same precautionary principle that was invoked 12 months ago to justify lockdowns in the first place – on the grounds that we didn’t know the covid infection fatality rate, its reproduction number and because hospitals might possibly be overwhelmed. The same precautionary principle was later invoked to justify two-metre social distancing, face masks, school closures, further lockdowns, etc. ”
The obvious further point is that it’s the same precautionary principle that is invoked to justify net zero and suchlike, without any consideration of a cost/benefit analysis, whether financial or societal. It seems the precautionary principle is applicable in some case, but not in others. That’s science for you.
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The precautionary principle is an empty concept, since it can be applied equally to doing X and not doing X or doing the opposite of X. The only way you can determine whether to be cautious about doing X, or on the contrary be cautious about failing to do X, is to discuss what X is. The principle dissolves to nothingness the moment you touch it.
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What a travesty: the precautionary principle is employed to decide if the precautionary principle should be used. Then a third p.p. must be used to determine if the second p.p. should have been used and so on and so on. It’s the precautionary principle all the way down.
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I don’t think the Chinese Communist Party does junk pseudo-science
Have you seen their Covid statistics?
https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/cn
According to their statistics, they have had less than 5,000 deaths, and barely any for eight months. There is no-one in the world who will believe that number. No-one*. Yet they seem happy to run with it despite that.
* Which isn’t to say that some won’t pretend.
https://www.salon.com/2021/02/28/china-eradicated-covid-19-within-months-why-wont-america-learn-from-them/
The doublethink can be quite strong though. Because China has mostly abandoned lockdowns and life goes on as normal is taken as proof that the virus has been reined in — whereas the far more obvious conclusion is that if you are prepared to accept a few early deaths rather than cripple your economy, as the CCP is, then Corona isn’t that big a deal.
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Criticising China is not allowed; not even criticism of the Chinese Communist Party leadership it would seem. The anti anti China/CCP culture is strong, across governments, institutions and even obscure blogs the world over. They can do no wrong it seems. Even carting Uighurs off in train loads to ‘re-education camps’ is merely evidence of “different norms”, according to fake President Bidet. They gave us the Rona; we destroyed our economy, civil liberties and society fighting it the Chinese way, but they got away with a few thousand deaths out of billions of people (despite ‘authentic’ videos of people dropping dead in the streets) and their economy is roaring away. Well I never.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/17/biden-says-uighur-genocide-is-part-of-chinas-different-norms/
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Mark, Geoff,
The problem I have here with the invocation of the precautionary principle is not that it led to an incorrect strategy. The problem I have is that it is complete nonsense to refer to the strategy to halt vaccination as having had anything to do with the precautionary principle.
In matters of societal well-being, one would normally like one’s decisions to be based upon the balance of risk. However, when dealing with unknown probabilities, or in circumstances where the impacts of an incorrect decision are potentially extremely serious, the calculation and comparison of risk becomes very problematic. It is in such circumstances that one may resort to the precautionary principle. In the case of AstraZenica, the probabilities of there being large scale health damage caused to the population by vaccine-induced blood clotting were extremely well known. Basically, the probability of such an outcome being caused by the vaccine is essentially zero and the probability of such an outcome being a result of not vaccinating is pretty much unity. The only thing we don’t know is whether the probabilities presented to the individual as a result of vaccination are miniscule or zero. This is, therefore, a very straightforward example in which basic risk analysis is perfectly possible, and there is no need to apply the precautionary principle. The countries that halted the vaccination were not applying the precautionary principle — they were applying basic risk analysis and getting the answer horrendously wrong.
Except, it is inconceivable that anyone could be that stupid. What I think actually happened here is that a purely political decision was taken, and the claims for the invocation of the precautionary principle were pure bullshit. It seems to be the principle of preference for those who have something up their sleeve.
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John. I certainly don’t understand even the basics of risk analysis but I do strongly suspect that the total or partial banning of Astra-Zeneca vaccine use is politically based, as you suggest. Covid-19 gives you blood clots even if you are using medication to prevent blood clotting. I should know, when I contracted Covid-19 last year I was already was on medication to prevent blood clots. Nevertheless I was wheeled into an NMI where I was shown to have two embolisms in my lungs. I was immediately switched to a more powerful anticoagulant – warfarin. This knowledge that Covid-19 causes blood clots and the insistence of my doctor to seek for blood clots even though I was already taking an anticoagulant, probably saved my life.
So for me, the maths are clear: catching covid-19 is linked with a high risk of having lung embolisms, whereas contracting blood-clots from a proven to be highly effective vaccine is an extremely low risk. So I don’t need your refined evaluation John: although I am greatly reassured to have it. Even though I have antibodies from my previous infection I took the AstroZeneca vaccine without murmur as soon as it was offered.
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Alan K – spot on. I was listening to Radio 4’s Today Programme while driving to the north east yesterday (fully compliant with the rules, delivering food to a vulnerable person), and one of the experts who was being interviewed responded with a short and sharp reply to Justin Webb’s attempt to say the EU/European politicians were justified in their concerns that the AZ/Oxford vaccine might cause blood clots. His reply (I paraphrase) was basically “If you want to get blood clots, catch covid”.
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JOHN RIDGWAY
If I understand you correctly, the reason the precautionary principle is irrelevant in the case of vaccine v. disease is because the nature of the risk is the same in both cases, i.e. an embolism. The risk analysis which you apply in this kind of case consists in weighing up the quantities of risk in the two scale pans. Whereas it would be reasonable to apply the precautionary principle where the risks are of different kinds, e.g. the risk of doing nothing about CO2 is flooding and heatwaves, and the risk of doing something is of doing the wrong thing, or wasting money, etc. i.e. it’s like having one scale pan full of feathers and the other full of lead shot – a more difficult balancing act to manage – which means one should take precautions.
My point still holds that the precautionary principle is null and void – philosophically non-existent – because it’s not a principle.A principle is something that holds in all circumstances, which means you don’t need to look at the individual circumstances to draw conclusions. Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take precautions – against rising sea levels, or against wasting money on useless windmills, or whatever. But there’s no principle involved, it’s just common sense.
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Alan, Mark,
Dr Ken Rice recently tweeted that, “We should applaud European regulators’ decisions to adopt a precautionary approach to the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.”
He goes on to cite the following:
AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots: European regulators are right to be cautious. (slate.com)
The article states:
“But this crisis isn’t about science at all. It’s about public trust, and scared citizens cannot be easily convinced by expertise that feels remote. Our solutions need to reflect that.”
The article goes on to claim that the precaution was justified as a means to convince and reassure citizens who had doubted the vaccine’s safety from the outset.
So the idea, it seems, was to misrepresent the scale of risk, then falsely proclaim the necessity for a precautionary approach and hope that the citizens who were scared of the vaccine may then be reassured by such pseudo-scientific precaution.
Well if that was what it was all about, I agree with the article. The crisis wasn’t about science at all, it was all about a stupid, disingenuous attempt to manipulate public perception in order to restore confidence in a stupid, disingenuous authority.
There is no difference here to the tactics adopted for climate change in AR5, Chapter 2. It’s not about the science. It’s all about manipulating perception and generating fear in order to nudge people in the right direction. Somehow I’m not surprised that Dr Rice approved.
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Ken,
You act surprised that ATTP is in favor of using sciencey words to support a lie.
His entire shtick argues otherwise.
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Geoff,
That’s not quite what I was saying. You are right to say that to make a risked-based decision there certainly has to be a meaningful comparison to be made regarding the respective impacts, and that is conveniently the case in this instance, since blood clotting is the common factor. However, one would be surprised how often seemingly non-comparable risk can still be compared. Ultimately, most things are considered fungible and there are methods such as Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to fall back upon. So this would not be the reason why the precautionary principle is invoked in preference to a standard risk assessment.
The real problem occurs when deep uncertainty renders the calculation of probabilities impossible, or when the posited impact is catastrophic, i.e. zero tolerance is required because the impact is unacceptable even for the smallest of likelihoods. But that is absolutely NOT where we are with the vaccination conundrum. The impact to society of the vaccine-related blood clotting was not large enough to invoke the precautionary principle, nor is there any deep uncertainty. But you are right, the most damming thing is the total absence of a risk free alternative to vaccination. So even if the precautionary principle were relevant, its invocation would immediately self-destruct. All that has happened here is that somebody has adopted a zero risk policy with respect to a tiny and insubstantial risk and called it a precautionary approach, notwithstanding the massive negative health impact such a policy entails.
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Alan K, Mark
The thinking behind all vaccines is that if you give a person a small does of a disease that will trigger an immune response in the body. So if a disease causes blood clots, either by direct action or by the body’s response to the disease then a vaccine is likely to also tend to cause blood clots.
There is a tendency for people to see vaccines as some sort of magic bullet. A more sceptical view, from a doctor, can be found in these two blog posts:
my-feelings-about-the-vaccine-debate
a-second-look-at-vaccination-answers-that-cannot-be-questioned
As for myself, I’ll be sceptical as long as governments provide vaccine manufacturers indemnity from liability for wrongdoing.
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Geoff,
Hopefully you’re joking about the rational half of the planet.
Sadly there is no rational half ofthe planet’s leadership at this time.
We are effectively close to a world dominated by totalitarianist oligarchies. Some speak native Chinese, others speak English, German or Russian.
To say that China is engaged in policies to help its population by the rational use of science raises interesting questions. For instance about how a certain German father figure of the 1930s sought to institute policies to raise the living standards of his people. Or for that matter, how Lenin, Stalin or Mao set out, applying what many called the “scientific truths of Marxism”, to raising the standards of their respective populations.
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John and others,
If it’s about the Precautionary Principle at all, it’s about the highly partisan and wong-headed use of the Precautionary Principle. In reality, the argument is about risks vs. benefits. There’s a demonstrable risk of a large number of different side effects associated with taking any of the Covid ‘vaccines’. The EU identified one particular risk associated with the Oxford/AZ ‘vaccine’ and invoked the Precautionary Principle to put a hold on it. That risk was a rare form of blood clotting in mainly women aged 20-55.
“It is a very serious disease that is also difficult to treat. Of the seven affected individuals, three individuals had died.
The affected individuals had ages ranging from about 20 to 50 years.
Six of the affected persons had a particular form of cerebral venous thrombosis, called sinus vein thrombosis. All six individuals were younger to middle-aged women (see above). Another case with cerebral hemorrhage in platelet deficiency and thrombosis was medically very comparable. All cases occurred between four and 16 days after vaccination with COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca. This presented as a comparable pattern.
The number of these cases after vaccination with COVID-19 AstraZeneca is statistically significantly higher than the number of cerebral venous thromboses that normally occur in the unvaccinated population. For this purpose, an observed-versus-expected analysis was performed, comparing the number of cases expected without vaccination in a 14-day time window with the number of cases reported after approximately 1.6 million AstraZeneca vaccinations in Germany. About one case would have been expected, and seven cases had been reported.”
https://www.pei.de/SharedDocs/FAQs/EN/coronavirus/suspension-astrazeneca/1-coronavirus-astrazeneca-why-vaccination-suspended.html
So, that’s a 600% increase in instances of this very rare form of blood clotting in vaccinees compared to the general population. ‘So what?’ you say. ‘It’s only 6 women out of millions who, by taking the vaccine, greatly reduced their chances of suffering similar nasty complications due to infection by the virus itself’. But that’s not true is it. Healthy women in that age group are at miniscule risk of developing serious Covid symptoms, even less than men, and their natural immune systems are almost certainly a better and safer way of avoiding problems than taking an experimental gene ‘therapy’. So giving the ‘vackseen’ to these individuals is itself a gross perversion of the Precautionary Principle. They don’t need it and the risks of taking it almost certainly outweigh the benefits for that particular demographic.
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Jaime,
One can, of course, break down a risk assessment according to a particular group or in respect of particular causes, and it may be the case that the risk of SVT in the group you mention may be greater than the equivalent risk for the equivalent group without vaccination. But instead of investigating this further to see whether or not such suspicions are correct, I am rather inclined to suggest that they are irrelevant to the point I had been making. Whenever an intervention is made to reduce a particular risk, the resultant net risk should be Globally At Least Equivalent (GALE), i.e. equivalent or lower than the original. In this case, the intervention was to halt vaccination to ALL adults (irrespective of the demography) in order to reduce a posited risk that appears to be limited in its scale and applicability. The result was anything other than GALE at the population level. Whether or not the result was GALE with respect to a particular group cannot therefore be used to justify the action taken. Had they halted vaccination only with respect to the group you mention, we might now be having a different conversation.
When it comes to deciding whether or not to accept the vaccination, it is only natural that one will take into account one’s own circumstances and one’s perception of personal risk – it’s not all just about how much one trusts the science. I’m happy with my decision and I know you are happy regarding your own. The main difference is that I don’t have to worry about plans to introduce vaccine passports, though I hasten to add that this did not influence my decision.
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John,
You’re happy with your decision, I’m happy with my decision. Presumably your GP is happy with your decision. That should be the end of it, but it isn’t. My GP is not happy. They keep hassling me incessantly to get ‘vaccinated’. That makes me very, very unhappy – and angry. I have refused to communicate with them. They do not respect my silence, my right not to engage with their creepy coercive tactics. Same with millions of other ‘hesitants’. This is not normal.
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GPs get paid extra for vaccinating people against Covid. I make no specific allegations against any particular GP. I do, however, notice that my own GPs’ surgery’s website has gone from issuing firm injunctions to patients not to telephone them, to almost begging them to ring up to make vaccinations appointments, even to the extent of putting up an extra telephone number patients can ring. The cynic (as opposed to sceptic) in me has noticed that the willingness of our GPs to have patients telephone them to arrange appointments seems to be in direct proportion to the increasing numbers of other vaccination centres opening up locally. I am careful not to draw any conclusions or make any accusations regarding these observations, however….
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Mark
Maybe you should ask your surgery how many of their GP have been vaccinated?
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Bill, I assume all of them, though I don’t know for sure. I wasn’t vaccinated at my local surgery, and haven’t been there for years. I haven’t a clue who my GP is, but I do know that none of them at my local surgery work a 5 day week.
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Jaime,
Actually, I don’t think my GPs give a toss. When it came to my cohort, they decided to just skip it and move on to the next age group. The reasons for this were never explained. Nor did they bother to inform anyone of their decision. I was left holding a letter from the NHS saying “you’re next, so wait to be contacted” and yet the GP had no Iintention of doing so. It took a fortnight of unnecessary waiting before I found out what was going on and so booked an appointment at a mass vaccination centre miles away.
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There seem to be intriguing differences in the processes used for this programme. I got a letter from the NHS asking me to log onto a website and book appointments. Which I did. One week later, my GP surgery phoned me to make an appointment. I suppose it is difficult to coordinate a process for millions of people in different areas with different IT architecture. It would be nice to think that there is a proper and complete record of my interactions with the NHS that both the NHS and I could use in confidence of its completeness and accuracy
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Miab,
It is my understanding that your GP cannot see whether or not you have already booked at a mass vaccination centre. The only record they get to see is the one that is updated on the day you actually receive the vaccine. Only after that point would they know not to bother contacting you. In my case, for reasons I explained earlier, it was nearly a month between my receipt of the NHS letter and the actual date of vaccination. Within that time my GP practice had not attempted to call me up. But there again, it never intended to until after it had plundered the rich vein of revenue to be had from the next cohort. I guess that they gambled that we old farts would wait around indefinitely whilst they made a pre-emptive grab for the youngsters.
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Well, I had my Covid jab 6 days ago at a mass vaccination centre locally. After booking it, but before I had it, my GPs surgery telephoned to offer me my jab. I declined, as I had already booked one, and importantly, had been able to book the second one at the same time, so I had the comfort and certainty of knowing when that date was and being able to plan around it – who knows, maybe I can actually have a holiday after more than a year of not going anywhere?
I have no problem with the surgery ringing me up before I’d had the jab, especially if they’re notified only when the jab has actually been administered. However, having spoken to me about it, and having (presumably) been notified that I’ve now had it, I don’t understand why they texted me today urging me to get in touch to arrange it.
I think that a lot of people here have sidestepped them (the GPs) and gone to a mass vaccination centre instead, leaving them with jabs on their hands. I know for a fact that they’re vaccinating 40 – 45 year olds here next week.
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BillBedford:
Thanks for the links to the Kendrick articles. Refreshing – I’ve even ordered one of his books.
“. . . I’ll be sceptical as long as governments provide vaccine manufacturers indemnity from liability for wrongdoing.”
In defence of the pharmcos (did I really say that?), is it not reasonable to argue that, as they were pressed to develop vaccines in perhaps dangerously order and certainly much more quickly than the norm, were they not within their rights to protect themselves from risks not of their making?
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Oh b*****, dangerously short order . . .
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My understanding is that the vaccine indemnities pre-date Covid-19
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Thanks – mine is pretty much as described here:
https://www.leighday.co.uk/latest-updates/blog/2020-blogs/vaccine-producers-given-immunity-from-civil-liability/
though that isn’t necessarily, as they say, the whole story, i.e. that there are few or no precedents.
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If anyone ‘vaccinated’ out there has private medical insurance or life insurance and you suffer vaccine-related injury or death, they will not pay out. You enrolled yourself voluntarily in a cinical trial, to receive a medical intervention which you don’t need, where the developers, manufacturers and distributors of the administered medical product have no civil liability.
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Jaime, your tireless efforts to demonstrate the dangers of the vaccines are gratefully received. However, in view of the vaccination statistics, you are blowing in the wind and should consider a more productive opposition. My beef would be that, despite taking the vaccine, my life and the restrictions thereon have not changed. Perhaps that is why there is talk of vaccine passports for pubs, simply to reward the vaccinated rather than for any meaningful reason. After all, foreign holidays are now buried in the long grass. More fool me. I fell for it.
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MIAB,
My opposition to mass vaccination is not entirely based on the potential harms. It’s a mutli-pronged attack based on risks vs. potential benefits. The crux of the issue is that these ‘vaccines’, licensed for emergency use only, are not needed by the vast majority of people, they are not proven to be effective in preventing transmission (thus completely negating the argument for vaccine passports) and their potential harms probably outweigh their benefits, especially in younger people. God forbid, Pfizer are even testing them on babies now! The whole mass vaccination campaign is palpably insane and stinks like a kettle of fish. My latest letter from the NHS actually TELLS me to book an appointment and says I should only ignore the letter if I’ve already had the first jab or booked – NOT that I should ignore it if I decide that I don’t WANT to enrol myself in a mass clinical trial. That’s pretty sinister. Even more sinister is the fact that GPs are now forcing the jab on vulnerable young adults in care homes, despite strident opposition from parents. That’s Nazi Mengele type sinister.
Even Steve McIntyre has fallen for the jab con-trick – the original and best climate change sceptic. How could he?
Even worse, he goes on to excuse vaccine passports by bringing up the now tired, over-used and thoroughly dog-eared comparison of the introduction of Yellow Fever vaccination cards 50 years ago!
What the hell happpened to Steve the Climate Fraud Slayer?
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I too had a yellow fever vaccination back in the day when I went to Malaysia. Even then, my GP said the vaccine was of doubtful value. I think that was around 1990. But at least it allowed me to travel. The covid thing is less than useful in that respect
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Jaime you nailed it when you wrote:
Many opinions on the experimental vaccines* are blinkered by perception of risk. I can understand why those in the at risk categories of age/comorbidities will get the jab, however outside of those groups the risk from the CCP virus is minimal. Consider a 21 y/o female in West London of average height, at the top end of average weight with asthma has a 99.9997% chance of survival and only a 0.0256% chance of hospitalisation (OU figures based on 1st wave but not much changed by round two) – why bother with a vaccine which has unknown long term consequences (which you will live with for several decades) and *could* affect fertility and/or cause birth defects? For them the precautionary principle should be going off like the buzzer on Family Fortunes.
If I was older and had health issues I may well come to a different conclusion, but take a vaccine for a disease which I have a 99.996% chance of survival?. No thanks big pharma. It’s highly disturbing that the government are pushing vaxing everyone and their cat – with no push back anywhere on the supine benches of Parliament. It’s not a precautionary principle on display but a psychotic one. Regardless of any conspiracy ideation, of course Big Pharma want *everyone* to have their product when the public purse is footing the bill! The basic economic model of mass vaccination doesn’t require Lew Paper to figure out.
Precautions don’t involve shoving people with covid into care homes, but like those pharma friends who surround certain govorners in NYC it is always interesting to ask qui bono? I know people in the NHS field and they were perplexed to put it mildly as to why that was allowed to happen (not isolated to UK/US it would seem). Precautions also don’t involve shutting down critical care for all and papering over the cracks in the economy with fiat. Even the average Joe and Joan can figure that’s iffy.
I will put it out that I personally know people who have died as well as young people completely walloped by COVID19, however, those who died had been also nearly died of pneumatic viral complications in the past few years whilst the young people have weak immune systems so have been completely floored by the same virus that made me feel a bit iffy for a day or so (they gave it to me). I’ve also seen viruses nearly kill people (never easy to see tubes in those you love), age them decades overnight and take months for them to fully recover from.
Risk is always a balance. The c. 1600 who died post 9/11 by taking the car rather than plane didn’t know the risk was greater. We don’t know the risk for the jab either and it won’t be clear for years.
To draw this on topic of the post, the big give away in all this is the Philandering Professor of Peril’s behaviour in response to his hockey stick projections. It was a bit like buying a beach front property and telling everyone not to go on holiday whilst you either fly to work or jet off to accept an environmental award…only the PPP went down the smuttier route.
* record turnaround, minimal testing/steps skipped before launch, novel type of gene therapy, no long term studies on side effects, govts. and pharmaceutical companies having no liabilities, mass not targeted roll out – even if it does ‘work’ and there’s hardly reassure there considering it’s not going to change much. We only have to look at the last time they tried this with the Swine Flu vaccine and see why they removed their liabilities this time around. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/feb/09/ministers-lose-fight-to-stop-payouts-in-swine-flu-jab-narcolepsy-cases
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Utter selfishness. Taking a vaccine when you have an extremely low probability of developing a severe version of COVID-19 is not for you. It’s to prevent you becoming infected and then passing it on, even to your loved ones and friends or perhaps people who, for various genuine reasons, cannot take the vaccine. Remember herd immunity? Is altruism truly dead?
I have had COVID-19 so, in all probability, have antibodies and T-cell immunity, yet I took the much maligned AZ vaccine without a murmur. I expected a strong reaction, which I got – both reassuring and cursed. But I would do it again without protest, which I will do next month if the EU don’t play silly buggers with supplies.
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Thanks for the detailed response Craig. You appreciate the subtleties of the argument, obviously. Whichever way you look at it, mass vaccination with these particular ‘vaccines’ is nuts. I’m going to be very ‘selfish’ and refuse to be experimented upon ‘for the greater good’ in the knowledge that doing so will almost certainly not be for the greater good, because these ‘vaccines’ are non-sterilising (do not prevent ongoing transmission) and indeed reliance upon natural immunity is a more effective and safer method of protecting oneself and others (achieving herd immunity) in the case of this particular virus. There’s also the not insignificant possibility that by getting jabbed and walking around partially immunised for months afterwards (contravening the recommendations of the vaccine developers themselves), you are actually contributing to the emergence of more aggressive variants because of selective pressure, so yeah I’m going to be ‘utterly selfish’ and remain healthy and unmedicated – even in the face of extreme coercive pressure from our ‘wonderful’ NHS which is so fond of issuing blanket illegal DNR orders on the elderly and mentally disabled.
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Of course, it is entirely rational to refuse to be vaccinated under a couple of circumstances.
The first is that enough other people take the vaccine so that the chance of actually catching WuFlu becomes low to zero. That has been the case in recent years with measles. Avoiding the tiny risk to your child of getting the jab is rational as long as your child’s classmates all get theirs. However when enough parents join the anti-vax crowd, the risk of actually catching measles rises until eventually refusing the vaccine looks like an irrational move. By definition this strategy depends on the behaviour of others to be successful.
The second circumstance is where catching the disease is not an order of magnitude worse than the discomfort of the vaccine. That does not seem to be the case for WuFlu. Although the ONS website is awash with data, finding the actual data you are looking for is not easy. The best data on comorbidities and WuFlu I can find is that in 2020, 20% of WuFlu deaths in the under 65s in England and Wales were of people with no previous underlying conditions. It’s a pity this data is not available broken down into narrower age ranges, or at least if it is, I can’t find it*. But the evidence is that given the choice of WuFlu or vaccine, it would be irrational to pick WuFlu.
*Breakdowns by age group are available, but do not stratify by comorbidity.
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JIT, perhaps you would like to share your ‘evidence’ of the relative risk of dying or getting seriously ill from Wu Flu in those healthy people under 65 vs. the risk of taking an experimental ‘vaccine’ with demonstrable harmful side effects (including death), because it does not agree with any evidence I have ever seen.
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Jaime, the ONS data I referred to came from this page: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/preexistingconditionsofpeoplewhodiedduetocovid19englandandwales
I have not seen data on the number of deaths caused by vaccination, which perhaps naively I have put down to there not being any. (You mentioned the blood clots above; my understanding, again without looking into the detail, is that the numbers are no more than chance variation.
Looking at it now, the .gov site reports that 3-6 yellow cards were notified per thousand vaccinations:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions/coronavirus-vaccine-summary-of-yellow-card-reporting
Of course the yellow cards are people self-reporting, so probably there are plenty of other folk who moaned about feeling ill for a day or two but did not report it. So there’s that. But, if you trust the government site, there does not seem to be an increased risk of death.
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JIT,
The fact that the yellow card system is self-reporting is a huge problem when trying to draw conclusions from the data. The high numbers reported for covid are as much a reflection of the heightened motivation to report as they are any increased incidence of side effects. Or are they? That’s the problem. Self-selection biases are fiendishly difficult to factor out.
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The Yellow Card system is not just self reporting; it’s used by medics treating patients as well:
Last time I looked at the government Yellow Card website there were 500 suspected fatal reactions and thousands of serious adverse reactions which would have been reported by doctors treating them. So not just minor reactions self-reported by vaccinees. If anything, it’s quite likely that the number of adverse reactions is under-reported because many people can’t be bothered to fill out a yellow card if they feel unwell, even if they are quite seriously unwell.
I would say that a disease which is less dangerous than ‘flu to those under 65 would only merit being vaccinated against if the risks of vaccination are comparable or even less than getting the ‘flu jab. But oh dear, it would appear from the American VAERS reporting system that the chance of dying from the Covid mRNA jab is 500 times greater than dying from the ‘flu jab!
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“As you also know it appears that the ACE-2 receptor on endothelium is the portal for viral entry into endothelial cells — and it seems that endothelial injury from the virus or from the inflammatory reaction it incites, is the reason why many COVID-19 patients experience thromboembolic complications.
So it is a matter of certainty that viral antigens are present in the endothelial lining of blood vessels in all persons with active or recent SARS-CoV-2 infection — irrespective of whether they are symptomatic or convalescent.
I am writing to warn that it is an almost certain immunological prognotication that if viral antigens are present in the tissues, any tissues, of subjects who undergo vaccination, the antigen specific immune response triggered by the vaccine will target those tissues and cause inflammation and damage beyond the local anatomic site of vaccine placement.
Most pertinently, when viral antigens are present in the vascular endothelium or other layers of the blood vessel, and especially in elderly and frail with cardiovascular disease, the antigen specific immune response incited by the vaccine is almost certain to do damage to the vascular endothelium. Such vaccine directed endothelial damage is certain to cause blood clot formation with the potential for major thromboembolic complications, at least in a subset of such patients. If a majority of younger more robust patients might tolerate such vascular injury from a vaccine immune response, many elderly and frail patients with cardiovascular disease almost certainly will not.”
https://noorchashm.medium.com/a-letter-of-warning-to-fda-and-pfizer-on-the-immunological-danger-of-covid-19-vaccination-in-the-7d17d037982d
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Jaime,
You are indeed right to point out that the yellow card system is not entirely based upon self-reporting but I believe that my point still stands due to the substantial extent to which self-reporting is a feature of the system. Also, the under-reporting for covid is not the issue here so much as the extent to which it is under-reported when compared to the flu vaccination’s under-reporting. I believe that the fact that government ministers and experts are going on the television to exhort people to use the yellow card system for the covid vaccines is bound to skew the data when compared to a disease that never ‘enjoyed’ the publicity that covid is receiving. As stated on the MHRA website:
“It is important to note that Yellow Card data cannot be used to derive side effect rates or compare the safety profile of COVID-19 vaccinations as many factors can influence ADR reporting.”
I’m afraid you are going to have to point me more directly to the section on the MHRA website where it identifies 500 ‘suspected fatal reactions’ to the vaccine. When I went to take a look, all I could find was the following:
“The MHRA has received 259 UK reports of suspected ADRs to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in which the patient died shortly after vaccination, 326 reports for the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine and 9 where the brand of vaccine was unspecified. The majority of these reports were in elderly people or people with underlying illness. Usage of the AstraZeneca has increased rapidly and as such, so has reporting of fatal events with a temporal association with vaccination however, this does not indicate a link between vaccination and the fatalities reported. Review of individual reports and patterns of reporting does not suggest the vaccine played a role in the death.”
I suppose the point is that there is big difference between a suspicion and a confirmation, particularly when temporal association plays such a huge role.
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Jaime,
I should have added to the above that the contrast made between IFR comparisons (“The coronavirus: 3 to 6 times as deadly as the flu (based on worldwide IFR and death estimates)”) and vaccine mortality comparisons (“The coronavirus vaccine: 500 times as deadly as the flu vaccine (based on VAERS reports per fully vaccinated person)”) somewhat misses the point. The decision whether or not to go ahead with covid vaccination does not rest or fall on comparisons with flu vaccination. We should not be asking whether the covid vaccine is as safe and effective as the flu vaccine. The question is whether it is as safe as covid. As is pointed out by the letter you quoted (i.e. Dr Hooman Noorchashm’s letter), such a risk calculation will vary from group to group, and one should be prepared to make allowances for that. I think the key passage in the letter is:
“The aim of benefiting the majority of our public and saving the nation from this pandemic by quick and aggressive vaccination is an ethically sound one — but where we know of real or likely risks of harm and mortality, we ought to robustly mitigate the risks to those in potential harms [sic] way. So doing is the only reasonable, ethical, and likely legal option you can pursue as public health regulators — for in America, we no longer sacrifice the lives of minority subsets of people for the benefit of the majority. In America we specialize in ethically balancing majority good with the defense of the rights of individuals to life, liberty and property.”
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Anyone else subscribe to John’s rationale above, which is the official government narrative on ‘vaccine deaths’? It would be interesting to know before I reply. I’m so weary, I must admit.
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Andy,
I note that you have not commented on Cliscep for 18 days now. We know at least one other person who has had difficulty commenting due to Wordpres issues. Just to make sure you are okay, could you please respond to this comment. If for technical reasons you are unable to post a comment, please confirm by pressing the like button for this comment.
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John, my intention in citing Noorcashm was simply to illustrate his informed, expert opinion on vaccinating individuals who have already been exposed to Covid, especially those who have experienced moderate to severe symptomatic cases. He is a pro-vaccine fanatic whose ethical and philosophical musings in defence of mass vaccination are highly suspect in my opinion and do not relate directly to his medical knowledge. If Noorcashm is to be believed – and many medical professionals concur with him – then vaccinating individuals who have previously expressed antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 makes no sense and indeed may be harmful to the individuals concerned. This makes Johnson’s appearance on TV publicly advertising his vaccination with AZ (encouraging others to do the same) all the more damning – considering that he previously boasted how his body was “bursting with antibodies”. That was my point. I’m really not interested in Noorcashm’s weird views on how America previously ‘sacrificed the minority’ for the majority benefit, but now doesn’t, apparently. That’s just crazy-speak.
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Seems we have some pro-vaccine hesitancy here. Tell me that this does not prove Jonhson and/or his scientific advisors to be either complete idiots or, worse malicious pro-vax political agenda pushers who don’t give a shit about any harms which might befall people as a direct result of their illegally coerced ‘one size fits all’ mass vaccination campaign which is fast mutating into a vax passport scheme advocated by none other than war criminal Blair. The manner in which the NHS have acted to relentlessly harrass people into being indiscriminately vaccinated is, in my opinion, nothing short of criminal and I hope that they will be prosecuted for their crimes in an international criminal court. Likewise Johnson and his evil sidekick Hancock.
If, as Noorchashm explains, millions of people who have been recently exposed, either symptomatically or asymptomatically to SARS-CoV-2 are being indiscriminately vaccinated, then this might indeed explain the adverse reaction rates we are seeing and it also might explain the very puzzling observation that people are testing positive soon after receiving the vaccine and even dying in ‘outbreaks’ associated with the vaccination.
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When not even your own mum and dad will heed your warnings – because they have been brainwashed by government and media propaganda. How many more ‘coincidences’ like this are we going to tolerate before declaring a public health crisis? Or is this all just a conspiracy by anti-vaxxers to traduce the “safe and effective” Covid vaccines?
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Callie Flower’s anecdote is not relevant to a determination of vaccine safety. Statistics are relevant.
Let’s say there are 56,000,000 people in England.
Of these 9000 die every week.
Last week 3,000,000 were vaccinated.
We therefore expect 9000 * (3/56) people to die within a week of getting their vaccination, in the absence of any effects of the vaccine – about 480.
Of course the number of people falling ill every week is higher than the number dying. So Callie Flower’s anecdote about a parent falling ill after being vaccinated proves nothing. I’m sorry! This one is called post hoc ergo propter hoc. (The illness may well have been caused by the vaccination, but proving the link is another matter altogether.)
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JIT, I did not claim that Callie Flower’s anecdotal tale proved anything. On its own, it proves nothing. However, there are many more such anecdotal tales of specific illness occurring very soon after vaccination, often in people who have no previous medical history of heart disease, stroke, blood clotting, haemhorrage etc. Are you going to tell me that all these are ‘coincidental’ and not worthy of investigation and should just be dismissed as not causally related to vaccination? I think that would be reckless and negligent. Hancock, when asked about vaccine deaths in the Commons yesterday, stuttered and stumbled and lied that there was a study, which has not yet even been set up. In their haste to mass vaccinate the populace, the government has not bothered to keep tabs on the safety of the vaccines, other than recording adverse reactions via the Yellow Card database. No proper, in depth analysis of risk has been carried out, despite warnings from several medics and scientists.
It is a shame, is it not, that your simple logic of expected deaths within a week of vaccination was not also applied to expected deaths within 28 days (4 weeks) of a positive PCR test because I feel that we would then have had very few deaths which were attributable to Covid and we would not have needed an emergency rollout of experimental ‘vaccines’ to prevent such deaths from happening!
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Jaime, I did look at that very thing a few days ago, hoping that the present death rates were mostly chance events. My numbers were as follows, for England: population 56,000,000. Deaths per week: 9,000. Deaths per day: 1286. Positive WuFlu tests per 28 days: 8,000 * 28 = 224,000. Deaths per day within 28 days of positive test = 1286 * (224/56,000) = 5 ish.
This was a somewhat disappointing number…
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Hi John, thanks for your concern. All is well, technically and otherwise. I’m just very busy and needing to keep sustained focus on something. So still glancing over comments and pushing the odd like here and there, but avoiding any depth for now. I’m easily distracted so need such policies 0:
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Andy,
That’s cool. I look forward to your future involvement whenever you are available.
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Andy, good to know you’re still here.
Meanwhile, Lockdown Sceptics this morning report on a piece in the Express, which sounds all to familiar to climate sceptics. There is definite overlap, IMO:
“A climate of fear is preventing experts from questioning the handling of the pandemic, with reputations smeared, jobs lost and even families threatened.
Much abuse has come from within academic or professional circles, with one professor saying debate was becoming impossible because “we are not talking to each other properly. We are being thrown into confrontational positions”. Many leading experts have withdrawn from the debate after having reputations smeared, jobs lost and even families threatened for raising questions about pandemic policy. This month alone has seen one leading medic, working to protect vulnerable children, forced to abandon a project to safeguard youngsters after their name was sullied when they questioned the Government approach.
Another expert has been sidelined from a vital role on a Government advisory group, while senior NHS staff have been threatened with disciplinary measures for questioning the Government approach online or in the media.
Senior academics say they have feared losing vital funding, warned not to speak out with the threat of disciplinary action or deemed “outliers” for their views on lockdown.
At least two scientists have been subjected to public abuse by scientific colleagues who disagreed with their academic view.
One critic posted a grotesque image superimposed on a professor after he disagreed with his view. Other posts by scientists have branded colleagues “charlatans” and “snake oil merchants”.
A prominent professor accused a fellow academic of “deliberately subverting public health” on a Twitter post after disagreeing with her views on managing the pandemic.
In another case a Government scientific advisor called a university boss to try to stop one of its professors from criticising Government policy.”
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Mark,
When you don’t have science or facts on your side, the only way to defend almost completely non-evidence-based and extremely harmful public policy interventions – lockdowns, restrictions and coerced mass vaccination with experimental pharmaceuticals – is to ruthlessly censor and threaten those who question the policies. We’ve been here before. It has indeed happened with climate change – though not so intensely, being spread out over years, rather than months. It never turns out well.
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We certainly do need the ‘citizen scientist’. Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts et al stepped up to the mark with climate, yet still the bandwagon rolled on because the public remained largely uninterested and un-engaged. It’s different this time. The public are directly under the sledgehammer of public policy – and hurting.
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Fauci says kids shouldn’t play together without masks until they have been ‘vaccinated’. Bhakdi says this. I won’t say who are you going to believe, because it’s not about belief, it’s about science and data. I’ll just say, who are you going to take more seriously? You decide. Like I said, I’m weary. 30 million people got this ‘vaccine’ – either to go on holiday, go to the pub or because they genuinely believed it would protect them and/or others. I think on the evidence presented thus far, most of those people made a serious mistake; politically, medically, socially [*say I, as yet another text comes in from the bastards trying to force me to take part in the biggest medical experiment ever conducted on the human race. I fear it’s not going to stop at irritating texts*]
https://thehighwire.com/videos/the-biggest-experiment-ever-done/
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Science and data doesn’t go away just because social media try to censor it.
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‘Selfish’ would be taking an emergency use authorised experimental vaccine that has had routine safeguarding steps skipped in the rush to market, and then expecting my nearest and dearest to pick up the pieces if I am one of the unlucky few debilitated in the near or long term when the virus itself is less dangerous than flu for me and my family.
‘Selfish’ would be subjecting my children to unknown consequences to protect them from a disease which is extremely unlikely to affect them whereas a vaccine could affect them for the rest of their lives. On average it took 8 months for narcolepsy symptoms to show up with the Swine Flu vaccine and although the rate was only 1 in 55,000 it was enough to have the vaccine withdrawn. That’s even after trials of course.
Selfish is passing on consequences to the unborn when we simply don’t know as we’ve not tested it because we only started a mass roll out barely 4 months ago. Until very recently pregnant and breastfeeding women were advised against taking it. If there is a link with learning difficulties we won’t know for many years to come e.g. for developmental co-ordination disorder (DCD) “it’s not usually possible to make a definite diagnosis before a child is aged 4 or 5.”
Selfish is expecting tax payers, not the pharmaceutical companies which have no liabilities for the cost to society, to pick up the tab for the complications down the line. I don’t see Bill Gates checkbook being on offer.
So who is being selfish? Those with a couple of decades left, rather than those with several *decades* left, who want to feel safe and better about themselves for working towards the so called greater good – which also just happens to be good for them. I respect the decision of those in the risk categories taking the vaccine, including those nearest and dearest to me, but I don’t respect moral pressure to take on unknown consequences for a novel, experimental, untried, unprecedented drug therapy that is being forced upon those who will have to live with the consequences – whatever the intent – and especially when all bodies are charging forward because no one is allowed to say “I’m not sure this is a good idea”. Yep RCP 8.5 says we are royally screwed therefore eco-dictatorship and authoritarian control is the only solution – there’s no debate, impliment now (h/t Lord Debden) you’re being selfish if you don’t.
Moral panic leads to many unintentional consequences, no matter the intent at the time.
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I’m glad you said that Craig. ‘Selfish’ is also Macron, Merkel and Johnson saying we need an international treaty to tackle future pandemics based on the premise that ‘nobody is safe until we are all safe’. Nobody will ever be safe again if these three megalomaniacs get their way. What we need is an international treaty to prohibit governments from ever again taking away the civil liberties, rights and freedoms of the healthy, supposedly on the pretext of keeping the vulnerable ‘safe’ – whilst they murder the vulnerable also on that same pretext.
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Oh well done. More of this and Cliscep will become listed as an anti-vaxxer site, if it hasn’t been already.
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More baseless spite and crass accusations of ‘anti-vaxxer’ from you Alan. Even now? When will you wake up to the fact that we have all been fooled? When will you wake up to the fact that your own health has been endangered by these Mengelian freaks intent upon enrolling us all into a mass clinical experiment. Don’t answer that. I know the answer. It is a matter of regret that you will not ever. It is also a matter of regret that you adopt the same smear tactics as people like Lewandowsky to broad brush people with whom you disagree as ‘anti-vaxxers’ without engaging in the substance of their argument or acknowledging the valid information they present in support of their argument.
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Alan there is a difference between an anti-vaxxer. and being concerned about these vaccines, that are still an experimental long term side effects unknown.. my daughter is having her HPV vaccine this week.. will I be taken any covid vacinne, before the trials have ended. No..
I’ve had Covid already, and of an age and health, that the risk of Covid, to me is tiny.. vs unknown (however, also tiny)
you can of course call people anti-vaxxer, with no nuance.. but most people here have been called climate deniers, with no nuance for years.
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Alan said:
There is nuance there that Jaime and Barry overlooked. This place may well be labelled as a climate denier website already (in fact, was it not coincidentally named “Denierland” after I had settled on the title for my little tome but before it had been finalised?). Some of us might be offended by that designation.
Someone driving past and reading some of the comments here might well form the opinion that Cliscep is an anti-vaxxer site. How else would you expect them to characterise those comments?
It is valid to argue against vaccination, it is valid to refuse it. I have to read a compelling argument for refusing it here or anywhere else. But if folks want to argue against the vaccines, good for them. I suspect this is what I call in Denierland “searching the wrong woods.” Nevertheless, if folks make such arguments, they should not be surprised if those external to Cliscep categorised them as “anti-vaxxer.”
And there is no world where an equivalence should be drawn between the present vaccination campaign and the work of Dr. Mengele. None.
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JIT,
“And there is no world where an equivalence should be drawn between the present vaccination campaign and the work of Dr. Mengele. None.”
You’re right. It’s much, much worse. But Whitty is still a latter day Nazi for suggesting that the healthy unvaccinated are ‘unclean’, ‘infected’ and infectious. That is directly comparable with how the Nazis marginalised the Jews.
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I’m done here. My admin privileges have been removed on this thread such that I can’t now edit my own comments. Obviously, there are people on this site who really object to being challenged.
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Please also remove me from the list of contributors. I genuinely want nothing more to do with Cliscep now. I have very little in common with the majority membership and no longer wish to be associated with the site. We have diverged irrevocably and I see no point in either commenting or contributing. I presented hard science and data, which was just ignored in preference for engaging in empty, spiteful rhetoric. That is not ‘scepticism’.
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JAIME
Apologies if you can’t edit your comments. This is an unforeseen result of adjustments which have to be made to protect the site and which are proving more complicated than was thought. Blame than on WordPress. There’s divergences between everyone on some subject or another. You frequently express yourself in an extreme fashion (Mengele) and get criticised for it. It’s not true that you have little in common with the majority membership, and even if you were in a minority – so what? It happens to all of us.
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Geoff, comparisons with Mengele are not extreme, they are moot. Coercing 30 million people – in the UK alone – to get injected with an experimental ‘vaccine’ after removing their civil liberties for a year by promising them that they can go to the pub again or go on holiday: THAT is extreme. Labelling the unvaccinated as potential spreaders of a deadly disease – THAT is extreme. I’m pretty damn moderate in my commentary, considering. I’m aghast at the number of people who have abandoned rationality, abandoned natural caution, abandoned science and ultimately abandoned their fellow human beings to accept being vaccinated with an experimental agent at the insistence of a government which has lied – consistently – for an entire year. I am aghast to find that I am apparently in a minority of one in resisting this amongst my fellow contributors on this site. Even the great climate sceptic Steve McIntyre has succumbed to this madness! If I learn that Judy Curry has been vaxxed, I think I may lose my mind. I presented the scientific arguments which suggest very strongly that mass vaccination with these particular vaccines, for this particular disease, is not sensible, indeed may do more harm than good, but none so far have engaged directly with those scientific arguments. All I’ve got – and Craig has got – is ‘you’re selfish’ or ‘your hyperbole is not valid’, not ‘your science is wrong – here’s why’. I cannot reconcile myself to this. Therefore I must depart.
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Jaime,
Please reconsider and stay. You are needed, now more than ever.
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The lesson from the shabby faux audit of the origins of the virus, and the shabby nonsensical policies of our leaders in (mis)managing the pandemic is that the administrative state is largely ineffective, self dealing and likely corrupt as hell.
From the reactionary opposition to common sense border closings and previously approved clinical treatments for corono virus, to the ridiculously broad quarantines to the religious totemization of masks, the administrative state flubs it up. A modest bet is that 25% of deaths are due to administrative state fear policies.
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JAIME
A blogger leaving her own bog because a commenter disagreed with her would be a first in the short history of blogging, and a shame and a disappointment to all of us. I don’t have the knowledge to agree or disagree with you on the danger of vaccines. You’ve already said you respect the right of others to make their own decisions. Alan’s mentioning anti-vaccers was I think a mistake, since it associates your science based views with those of a quite different group of people.
The question that interested me when I started this was: how do the views of Ferguson get treated with such respect when he’s spent his entire working life being wrong? How do we counter them? And of course, as always, why is the madness we’ve seen over climate apparently spreading into so many other areas of politics and politicised science?
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I can see why some are concerned about Jaime’s rhetoric… it seems over the top to some.. I’m sure Jaime is genuinely very very concerned and actually frightened… will we get Nazism in the UK/USA world, etc.. no… Thee future does not repeat itself.. we may however in time getting something as differently bad, or worse. We might get the CCP and social credit, and what China is doing in parts of the world, genocidal is real and happening now (and when Taiwan gets taken over,what then – Hong Kong has fallen) is as bad as many other historic atrocities…
We are potentially being coerced into having a vaccine (whether or not the vaccine is of low no risk or not is irrelevant) and once established, where will that end..
The annual booster, to be ‘allow’ to socialise in a pub..
Mission Creep- defactor National ID, other vaccines? temp checks, alcohol purchase only allowed, if the state monitors your app. What type of food you may buy, a state that gives you credit points for good behaviour, to allow you full access to the NHS. This at the behest of billionaire think tanks lobbyists with agendas.. Bill gates has his vaccine hammer, and to the hammer wielder every problem is a nail.. so we must coerce people into having a vaccine.. consequences of that be dammed, because pandemic panic.. Blair Institute given millions by Gates Foundation. Gove cosying up to gates, and reviewing vaccine passports.. wait. no parliamentary debate, no manifesto promise. no chance for the public to decide their own governance.. ‘Even’ the Guardian’ taking millions of dollars from Gates. to push global health reporting as part of Gates Foundation advocacy reporting..(just last September (and other media surprising’ going ‘green – Sun, Mirror, express, etc,etc)
we will experience prejudice form those that ‘follow the rules’ vs those that object.. and the scared majority abuse the ‘unvaccinated, the unclean, the rule breakers, because they are scared, or don’t want others to break the rules, when they are too scared to themselves. or just like being vindictive arses (look at the Stasi, East Germany, everyone monitoring each other for the state, and that was with just paper records, imagine big tech, the state and apps to control your vary lives, for the ‘greater good’ of course, totally ‘benign’)
the holocaust did not start with gas chambers, a surveillance state did not appear over night, countries descending into dictatorship, atrocity, and freedom lost do not appear in a day either.. they start somewhere…
this site should stick to climate scepticism. it’s purpose….
The NET ZERO agenda is far worse than Covid…
Climate Lockdown will be fun, permission to travel, because CO2, etc, what you eat, how you keep warm, etc,etc.
and the billionaire club have been pushing for that for years.. Jaime is genuinely scared for the future… I’m not sure we should not be too. (and no not NAZIs)
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Come on Geoff, please:
1. It’s not my own blog – I am merely one of a number of contributors and regular commenters.
2. I don’t have any more legitimacy to comment on the dangers of mass vaccinating with these particular ‘vaccines’ than you or anyone elese here. All I was asking is that people weigh up the pros and cons and look at the wide spectrum of expert opinion, at the hard data and the hard science and in particular compare and contrast the extreme views of someone like Fauci with the opinions of people like Professor Bhakdi who made a very good attempt at explaining in laymen’s terms why mass vaccination with Covid vaccines was probaby not a good idea. Is that such a big ask on a site which prides itself on looking at the evidence and balancing expert opinion, not just running with the crowd and accepting the official narrative and the supposed scientific ‘consensus’? All I was asking is that people question why a Prime Minister – who has lied to us consistently throughout the last year – would go on TV and actually encourage those naturally immune to SARS-CoV-2 via the expression of antibodies due to moderate or severe illness to nevertheless get jabbed with something they don’t need and which could actually put their health or even life at risk? Expert medical opinion from a range of different sources confirms that this is probably not a good idea and not a sensible approach to a public health vaccination campaign. But for having the audacity to point out such things, what do I get, and what does Craig get? You’re selfish, you’re an anti-vaxxer. Thanks to Barry for jumping in and criticising the latter accusation, but apart from Barry, nobody else here challenged these remarks.
3. It wasn’t because somebody disagreed with me. It is now apparent to me at least that a very fundamental divergence of outlook exists between myself and the majority of contributors at this blog. I respect absolutely the right of people to make their own informed decisions, but I find that I cannot respect the decisions of people who have been coerced and cajoled by an authoritarian and extremely deceptive government into making socially, politically and even medically naive and potentially very dangerous choices which will ultimately affect us all. It is patently obvious that the vast majority of those who have been vaccinated have done so under unfair pressure and without proper informed consent. I expected more informed resistance from my fellow sceptics and am sad to say that I am sorely disappointed and disillusioned, just as I was with the mask issue back in July. What happened there? ‘Just 10 minutes in Tesco’s’ turned into 8 hours a day for poor, suffering kids in the classroom. Soon those same kids will be forced to be vaccinated against a disease which does not represent any threat to them and which they do not have any really significant role in spreading. That’s where blind compliance leads.
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Barry, you basically said it. If you signal to the government that they can dictate to you even what you put inside your own body, then that is a very, very dangerous signal to send. There are no ethical or moral limits beyond which any government will not go in order to ensure its own survival and its control over the people it supposedly leads. None. History tells us this.
You don’t need to be a philosopher, a preacher, or even an exorcist to expose the presence of evil, you just need to be an honest scientist using ineluctable logic, science and rationality as your guide. We are in the presence of evil. It didn’t go away because we became ‘civilised’ and increasingly high tech. It’s not extremism to point this out; it’s not hyperbolic rhetoric.
“America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) spoke to former Pfizer Vice President and Chief Science Officer Dr. Mike Yeadon about his views on the COVID-19 vaccine, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, the regulatory authorities, and more.
At the outset, Dr. Yeadon said “I’m well aware of the global crimes against humanity being perpetrated against a large proportion of the worlds population.
“I feel great fear, but I’m not deterred from giving expert testimony to multiple groups of able lawyers like Rocco Galati in Canada and Reiner Fuellmich in Germany.
“I have absolutely no doubt that we are in the presence of evil (not a determination I’ve ever made before in a 40-year research career) and dangerous products.
“In the U.K., it’s abundantly clear that the authorities are bent on a course which will result in administering ‘vaccines’ to as many of the population as they can. This is madness, because even if these agents were legitimate, protection is needed only by those at notably elevated risk of death from the virus. In those people, there might even be an argument that the risks are worth bearing. And there definitely are risks which are what I call ‘mechanistic’: inbuilt in the way they work.
“But all the other people, those in good health and younger than 60 years, perhaps a little older, they don’t perish from the virus. In this large group, it’s wholly unethical to administer something novel and for which the potential for unwanted effects after a few months is completely uncharacterized.
“In no other era would it be wise to do what is stated as the intention.”
https://www.americasfrontlinedoctors.com/exclusive-former-pfizer-vp-to-aflds-entirely-possible-this-will-be-used-for-massive-scale-depopulation/
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Nothing to see here. Carry on. Mass vaxx = good. Anti-vaxxers = bad.
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BARRY, JAIME
I agree absolutely that there’s a common political danger behind reactions to the virus, climate hysteria, and a number of other weird happenings, including Woke culture, which is why I disagree with Barry about this blog sticking to climate change. If we can identify common features (as Barry and Jaime do) then we’re performing an original service, even if our efforts are not appreciated by many of our readers.
If Jaime and Craig have not received more support, it may be because many, like me, lack the expertise to be able to judge one way or the other. It’s vital that those like Jaime who can judge keep posting. Bringing in Mengele merely distracts and obscures the message. If those like Jaime who have a serious though unpopular message won’t deliver it, then the field is left to the crazies with their theories of G5 irradiation and nano-chips with everything.
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Speaking of ‘crazies with their theories of G5 irradiation and nano-chips’, did you know that ATTP’s longtime biggie Thom Hartmann bought his mail-order PhD in Homoeopathic Medicine from a radionics crank (Bruce Copen) who was then based at a country house in Sussex that exactly fifty years earlier had played a large part in a very weird divorce case in which ‘Tweet’ AKA ‘Miss App’ Sherlock and ‘Mr Fruity’ Sherlock countersued each other and when ‘Mr Fruity’ lost he moved to Canada, changed his nickname to ‘Monkey’ and became a record-breaking bush pilot until it all went horribly wrong when he flew two Catholic missionaries to a remote lakeside settlement in northern Alberta and killed at least two children with his plane when landing?
No, me neither. True, though.
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Sorry. Correction: ‘Mr Fruity’ Sherlock won the divorce case.
Mostly because his wife had been seen to engage in inappropriate undressing with the son of an ostrich feather magnate in a Martello tower in Dymchurch.
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VINNY
I hope you realise that, unlike Nature, the Lancet and a million Elsevier publications, our peer reviewers check the sources for assertions published on this blog.
Last word on vaccines, published 10 months ago here:
https://climatenuremberg.com/2020/05/26/keep-calm-and-stay-negative/
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If you haven’t got access to archives for The Times, see this:
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C8043435
Walter Nugent was ‘Mr Fruity’ (later ‘Monkey’) Sherlock; Meriel Louise Helen was ‘Tweet’, ‘Miss App’ and ‘Nell’ Sherlock.
That summary has ‘Peregrine Phillip Saliond Pratt’ as the co-respondent. His actual name was Peregrine Philip Saillard Pratt.
National Archives, what are you like?!
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Can we get Mike Yeadon to join the Cliscep membership? A fearless warrior in search of the truth. I hereby nominate him for honorary membership.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/xrw0V9VoMcmK/
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https://rumble.com/vf8fz5-dr-mike-yeadon.html
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Jaime wrote back at the end of March:
Apologies for a tardy reply, but having read the convo I thought I’d draw this back to climate in a circuitous way.
Don’t believe that the latest dry/cold/wet spell – and the rush released attribution study – is not proof of climate changed? -You’re a climate d3n13r and watch me throw 101 ad hominems at you whilst I don’t substantiate my argument.
To be honest it’s all so boring and trite that throw in a new variable and the same old, same old style of argument comes to the fore. If we can’t apply the same critical thinking to Wu Flu that we do climate where are we? The same machine people say something different and somehow we roll over because it’s not our limited field of “climate d3nial” ?
So let’s just tackle this head on and draw it back to climate, which I alluded to with my RCP/Debden throwaway.
So many in the climate sphere over the last few years have been tarnished as climate d3n13rs for daring to question any aspect of the narrative, Cliff Mass as just one example who when I questioned Simon Lee’s use of d3n13r by civilly quoting the Jewish Cliff Mass, got blocked. I’m not anti-vax because I question this one vaccine in that same way. Does it matter that I and my kids are fully vaxxed? Nah, I’m anti-vax apparently. Do you see the whacking great logic lacuna here? So it’s not an argument, it’s someone speaking from prejudice, fear and, dare I say, an ideological bent – which my first comment alluded to heavily in the fear factor of some (and I make no judgement because with age and comorbidities it changes perspectives). However, it still stands to reason do we overhaul society because of the fear of some regarding climate versus the impact upon others – I’m allergic to nuts cancel Xmas? Do we vax everyone just to make those affected (being generous 60+) feel safe when the risks are unknown to those under 60? Do we destroy society to save it? A finger infection – cut off all your limbs? Heck, capitalism must be destroyed to save the planet from xxxx. Now because I doubt one element I am fully against? It fails logically and morally to apply a one fits all fears based solution to all. Governments, NGOs and corporations may love it, excuse me if I don’t.
I’ve addressed selfish but I will reiterate for my children in forceful terms – over my dead body. I’d be a rotten parent if I acquiesced their future, including their potential children in the rush to save a fractional percentage of the population. Trialling this novel vaccine on children is barbaric. There’s a reason vaccine trials take years and my children are not lab rats. Nor are anyone else’s. Can I make this clearer? Do those proposing this understand the weight of responsibility and the traumatic levels of care, let alone the grief of losing the child you could have had if these vaccines cause life altering disability – all because you want to feel safe and forced someone that did not need to have this vaccine take it? Selfish? You need to reevaluate your humanity.
Vaccines are wonderful and have helped us improve beyond recognition the human condition, but we have never done what we are trying now. They have consequences but we can weigh the risk over time, something we have failed to comprehend nor been given the opportunity to as government and phama sales pressurise us into make a rash decisions of which the consequences are far reaching.
To bring this back to climate is the cure worse than the disease? Do we completely go all in now with no consideration for tomorrow because today seems so bleak – if, and only if, we take the narrative and narrow lens of today as truth?
Excuse my logical hesitation, because I’m not focused on the here and now but what those that will live in the there and then will face. I have skin in this game and yes I have had people die from this horrible disease also but I refuse to rush to buy.
I have often asked myself if this was like Spanish Flu, which affected the young, would the older population suddenly be “anti-vax”? Considering the human condition I’d wager yes, but I wouldn’t hold it against them. I never judged nor disrespected those who took the vax but it doesn’t seem to work in reverse because of the same moralising we see in climate (you hate the planet blah, blah, you don’t care about future generations blah de bloody blah) has risen to the fore only on steroids.
Calling anyone who has reservations anti-vax or selfish is Lew paper territory (and this place should have PHDs in that effluent) and it’s disappointing critical facilities are so lacking – my hairdresser had more hesitancy because she’d like children.
Why trust science? One good reason. Humans are pretty useless and bend to the wind on a good day when you ramp up fear. I see lots of fear. I don’t see thinking.
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