As you know I live in the UK, so my vantage point about coronavirus comes partially from my ringside seat where I live. And it has now finally emerged and been confirmed by the UK Office of Statistics Regulation that the British government imposed a second lockdown this week on the basis of incorrect information.
For the benefit of those of you outside the UK, last Saturday, Professor Chris Whitty and Dr Patrick Vallance, the major medical and scientific advisors respectively, who have steered the UK government’s course on Covid, held a press conference making the case for a second full UK lockdown.
They produced rather sketchily labeled graphs indicating that the UK would suffer up to 1500 deaths a day and 9000 daily hospital admissions by early December – a level that would overtake the death toll seen at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic – if we did nothing but continued on our ‘tier-system’ course of local restrictions in highly Covid-infected areas.
In fact, their ‘worst-case scenario deaths’ would rise to 4000 a day by the end of December.
Vallance went on to say that the figures over the next six weeks presented a ‘very grim picture.’ He also claimed that these figures offered ‘greater certainty’ than the long-term modeling had previously provided.
This Show and Tell prefigured the government’s decision to lock down the country for a month, once again to prevent the National Health Service from being overwhelmed by Covid hospital cases.
It soon emerged that the stats used were ‘riddled with errors,’ according to Professor Carl Heneghan of Oxford University, based on outdated figures that were initially wrong anyway and were scenarios simply ‘based on assumptions.’
Within the week, the government was forced to admit the errors and revise down the predictions, not least because the Office of Statistics Regulation rapped it on the knuckles for publicizing misleading data, saying that the data has not been supported by transparent information provided in a timely manner.
As Heneghan noted, the assumptions the chief scientists used are ‘inscrutable and decisions taken on their basis are unaccountable.’
He added: ‘The growing number of errors seem to occur in only one direction – the worst-case scenario.’
To bolster their position arguing in favor of lockdown, the government pointed to 10 hospitals crowded with patients above their highest levels last spring. In the event they ignored 472 other hospitals, most of which have capacity at normal levels for autumn and winter months.
Yesterday, Shelley Tasker, 43 – a healthcare assistant at Treliske hospital, which is part of the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust – grabbed a bullhorn, took to the streets and, standing in front of Truro Cathedral, announced to the crowd that she was leaving the job she loved rather than living a lie any longer.
At the height of the pandemic, she said, ‘I had no work for three weeks because there were no patients. We have a particular Covid ward. None of the wards were overflowing with Covid patients and they're not now.'
She went on to claim that the flu and Covid cases are now recorded as 'the same thing' on death certificates.
She also said that in three hospitals over seven months, the entire death toll was 76 people. Official figures back her up – just 67 people died at her hospital at Treliske between March and September and just four people with the virus were receiving care from Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust on October 29.
The information is clear: the government didn’t tell the truth. The big question is why. And the likely answer is to justify the decisions they’ve previously made about Covid.
To shift the blame for their own inept handling of the virus to the public: we’re locking you down because you can’t be trusted to follow the rules.
When debating whether to lock down or not in Parliament, even the ordinarily timid former Prime Minister Theresa May stood up to her own Conservative Party’s government and forcefully scolded: ‘For many people, it looks as if the figures are chosen to support the policy rather than the policy being based on the figures.’
But the bigger question is: why are we standing for this?
One reason is that governments have persuaded the public that a pandemic is analogous to a war, exhorting us to adopt a type of wartime mentality that maintains it is treasonous to question what the government or any authority is doing.
Journalists who do so risk being attacked as being part of the alt-right or proponents of the ‘plandemic’ created as a conspiracy by dark forces.
And that is perhaps the biggest problem of this pandemic: a politicization of the truth.
Reactions to the virus and its treatment are not being judged by evidence (that is, true evidence and not manufactured ‘scientific’ modeling), but by politics.
Even the press has been remiss in parroting the government line and not doing its job.
Those members of the public who agree with calls for restrictions like lockdown, as opposed to those who favor herd immunity, tend to fall into two political camps.
I’m an investigative reporter by background (and by temperament), so my inclination is always to unearth the truth and facts, without fear or favor. Whether it goes against the government, the medical establishment – or even my own beliefs.
Sometimes those facts are inconvenient, such as the fact that the Covid tests are highly inaccurate or even, like today, that the UK government is lying to us about the size of the epidemic in order to save face and shift the blame.
This does not mean there isn’t a pandemic and that people aren’t dying from a nasty virus.
But when truth becomes politicized – when it’s not all about the weight of evidence, but what is going to bolster someone’s politics – when it cannot be debated openly or new facts be presented without being demonized, all of us lose.
Happily, some organizations are fighting against Covid policy by decree. See https://timeforrecovery.org/ which is calling for reasonable open public debate.
Let’s hope that all of us can put aside politics for just one moment and look at this virus and its eradication openly and dispassionately.
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Thanks for this Lynne - I have just emailed my MP with an urgent request that he read the following article by Dr Mike Yeadon
https://lockdownsceptics.org/lies-damned-lies-and-health-statistics-the-deadly-danger-of-false-positives/
It is a very long article - but vital to read - and for those of us (especially me) who have forgotten most of their statistics knowledge at school, some parts may have to be read twice - but my goodness it is worth it!
Dr Mike Yeadon demolishes the governments alleged statistics - they are a load of smoke and mirrors to put the best case on it. Why aren't MPs given a course whereby they have to learn about statistics before they take their seat in the Commons, so they would know when they are having the wool pulled over their eyes?!
One then has to ask - do some of the MPs know the truth - they really have a choice of being found incompetent or disgusting liars at the present rate!!
Think of all the small businesses ruined; all the victims trapped in an utter H*ll of abuse locked down with their abusers - the rates of suicide in some parts of the world have apparently skyrocketed; all the poor victims of this virus who have died alone, unable to have a hand held or say goodbye to loved ones while authority figures treated it as if it was the Black Death.... and that is by no means all the damage this lockdown has done - for this virus that is almost the same lethality as a normal influenza outbreak. (My aunt died of pneumonia after an influenza outbreak. I have since found out that there are approximately 500,000 - 600,000 deaths in the UK in any one year, so 43,000 deaths for anyone with Covid on the death certificate is not unusual). And that doesn't even mention the 'tests' which appear to be a complete waste of money - and of course the number of apparent cases is rising - if you test say 100,000 healthy people with a test that says positive if you've got a bit of old RNA from a virus you had six months ago, then of course the number of people allegedly ill will rise.
I know that this paragraph isn't scientific, just hearsay, but I haven't heard that anyone round here has died of it either. Makes you think....
Sweden on the other hand has had no lockdown and their country has had lower mortality per million than us and they meet in cafes and go to school and work and enjoy life and don't live in fear - God bless them all!
Lynne, I really appreciate so much your grounded approach to presenting the gross errors in the mainstream COVID narrative. You've had a few articles recently that really helped strengthen my voice in saying that there is something very wrong with what we are being told to believe and commanded to do.
Thanks yet again, Lynne. Talk about herd immunity... most of are behaving like sheep in particular and following the leader unquestioningly. Britain could benefit from a clear Intention...would that be possible? Lies are as destructive as any wildfire , hurricane or earthquake...
I really don’t understand why we are still complying and why the media are not demanding Boris Johnson’s resignation
Covid19 needs to be looked at as a vital tool of the universe to bring us into a new way of thinking. The natural world has had enough and if we do not listen it will come back way harder than any virus. Sit back and think how you can help Mother Earth and thank her for all she has given you. Thank the virus, open your heart.
It is so hard to know what "truth" is these days.
I've admired your work Lynne since I first read The Field years ago. I took part in your early intention experiments across the world. I did your 2018 Master Class. But this sentence from your piece is disturbing to me "Those members of the public who agree with calls for restrictions like lockdown, as opposed to those who favor herd immunity, tend to fall into two political camps." Yes they do but it makes it sounds as if they are two valid positions and I just can't see how, at least at this point, the concept of herd immunity is anything but dangerous.
Here in the US we have essentially been left, by default, with that position at the national level and we have numbers off the charts compared to other countries. There are issues with whether or to what degree herd immunity is possible with this virus, we just don't know, and what I've seen so far implies that the death rate would be sky high.
From what you've written it does sound like your government's numbers are fishy. But if indeed the numbers are that low, if there is plenty of capacity in the hospital ICU system, why would they do a lockdown? I just can't subscribe to the theory that it's simply to get people used to being controlled and then subjected to even worse things.
At 9 months in there is still a lot to learn but more is becoming known about the simple steps of masks, distancing, hand washing and the judicious use of graduated lockdowns. There is a study out of the State of Kansas showing how mask wearing slows the rate of spread. It is interesting because some counties mandated mask wearing and some did not and the data show that those that did not are having a spike while those that did are flattening their rate. https://ipsr.ku.edu/covid19/images/MaskMandateUpdate.pdf
Yet here in the US there are millions of people convinced that mask wearing is dangerous to people's health and a step toward government control and loss of civil liberty. That's just crazy to me, I mean the government mandate to seat belt your children in helps to protect their lives and is not a loss of liberty.
I find the theories floating around about the dangers of simple infection control steps, and the dangers of government control much more alarming than the honest mistakes made during a very confusing introduction to new lethal virus.
Having said all that, I do believe that we are all energy, vibration and light and that Western medicine is erroneously focused on strictly the physical. But that is the belief system most people are in when they make themselves ill so I think there is still value in using the physical approach of the infection control protocols.
Amen!
Thank you. Exceptionally level-headed, will follow the link for much needed public debate.
Thank you so much for this information, and for it being true - in all respects, not just to save face. Carry on with what you do. Please.
Thank you Lynne for what you have said. So many of us have been asking those questions. You are always so eloquent. Thank you.
Hello Lynne,
Thank you for this piece!
I do wonder, can we be sure about this when we do not know exactly were the virus comes from? If it is an accident (a mistake by a biowarfare lab) , then it might contain a gain of function element, which in this case could make this virus more dangerous then we would like to think? As long as we don't know its origines, maybe that much we don't know everything and its consequences.
Thank's for sharing this post
Same method here in France.
Let's lock our bonds and not lock our doors
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Hi Lynne,
I love your work in the Power of 8 and have been running a group for more than 2 years now. When I read this blog I wonder about the focus of this around the pandemic in particular. Surely there is a broader issue at play here - that is "who is holding the politicians, political parties and special interests accountable for the misinformation that is perpetrated?" I have to say that it is uncomfortable reading this blog as you have decided to focus this important work on the pandemic instead of upon accountability and reliability of information. You are a citizen of the US which you know has been broadly responsible for the adoption of lies and innuendo as "news" for quite some time now. I live in Canada and can attest to the fact that the Provinces that are doing the worst are the ones that take a "best case scenario" approach and are led by "conservatives" although I feel it is an actual injustice to call this particular party "conservative" at this point in history. I question policies and strongly protest against politics that makes man-camps and resource extraction projects on un-ceded Indigenous Territories essential, while legions of unpaid women continue to hold our communities together with a model of care-first that is under-funded at best and entirely unrecognized. It is note-worthy that those Provinces and Territories that have taken the most protective stance are faring the best in terms of numbers. Here on the west coast in so-called British Columbia our numbers continue to surge due to a small and virulent anti-masker sector and an ever-emboldened fear mongering regarding our supposed "freedoms" when all that is being put forth is that we not gather in large groups for parties - at indoor contact situations - we keep our travel to the minimum and that we wear a mask when we are in public, indoors and within 2 m proximity to one-another. There are those of us who favour major amounts of caution, and all of us would not like to have anything forced on us - like vaccines once they become available. There are many reasons to be watchful and careful regarding the invasions on privacy that flow from large public emergencies and what we most need to be demanding of is not just returning to normal but abandoning the fallacy that normal is anything worth keeping. We need a just recovery not just an economic recovery. We need to be looking at how we can build economies that restore the planet which is the ONLY essential work that is so incredibly ignored on a constant basis. Thanks for your work and I hope at some time we can meet and discuss these and other ground-breaking ideas as we move forward towards a more socially just and ecologically sane world. M
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