No “lockdown” in Sweden
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52076293
Uh-oh…
“The scientist whose calculations about the potentially devastating impact of the coronavirus directly led to the countrywide lockdown has been criticised in the past for flawed research.”
“Professor Neil Ferguson, of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College in London, produced a paper predicting that Britain was on course to lose 250,000 people during the coronavirus epidemic unless stringent measures were taken. His research is said to have convinced Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his advisors to introduce the lockdown.”
“However, it has now emerged that Ferguson has been criticised in the past for making predictions based on allegedly faulty assumptions which nevertheless shaped government strategies and impacted the UK economy…”
[Daily Telegraph]
Swedish scientists are sceptical about the Imperial College research that predicted 250,000 deaths in the UK:
HS2 disaster steams on
I have no idea why Chris Packham used to block me when I had a Twitter account (maybe afraid of the Jew lobby that eventually had me expelled), but I wish him well in blocking this disgusting and pointless HS2 project, which is just corporate vandalism.
As in respect of so many things in the UK, I have to say that British people are very patient, almost superhumanly so. Little sabotage, no violence, no “action directe”…
Meanwhile, more from Derbyshire’s poundland KGB plods…
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/coronavirus-police-ruin-uk-blue-21773701
If only Derbyshire Police were as efficient in dealing with actual real crime as they are in stopping the harmless pleasure of the local people who pay for their jobs, or in acting like a poundland KGB (as with the way in which they have repeatedly treated the satirical singer-singwriter Alison Chabloz).
“Local resident Alex John Desmond wrote on Facebook: “This is a joke, the way this force is acting is not representative of policing by consent which is the way the UK is meant to be governed. You should be ashamed of yourselves. You have taken something beautiful and damaged it.” [Daily Mirror]
https://twitter.com/KTHopkins/status/1243815735647973377?s=20
UK unready for Coronavirus
“Hate to point out the obvious, but UK has not embarked on the testing campaign because it would rapidly become apparent that we do not have the capacity. That would then lead to awkward questions about the wisdom of running down a country’s health service.
Far better to divert with Dunkirk, mass volunteer campaigns and hand clapping nonsense. Meanwhile our loved ones that work in the NHS are being sent like lambs to the slaughter without protective gear.” [Guardian reader’s comment]
Scotland: SNP rides high(er)
Note how the Conservative Party vote in Scotland is unchanged in both parts of the poll. The SNP’s yet-again increased and unchallenged supremacy is by default: the Conservatives cannot increase their Scottish vote at a time when their decade-long neglect of the NHS has been highlighted by Coronavirus; at the same time, the terminal decline of Labour and the LibDems continues, as it does South of Hadrian’s Wall.
I refuse to believe that (as I privately predicted would happen) the recent acquittal of Alex Salmond on sex crime charges was not a purely political act of loyalty by SNP partisans.
Tweets about over-zealous police
https://twitter.com/damianwarburton/status/1244324146814820355?s=20
“Boris Johnson did nothing”
Seems that the lady in Iran was not the only one let down by Boris-idiot when he was (disastrously) Foreign Secretary:
Coronavirus deaths decline
Yesterday, UK “COVID-19” deaths were fewer than in the day before, 20% fewer. I notice that BBC TV News had that as “deaths increase by 209 from the day before”, which is true as regards the total but gives a completely false impression.
In Italy too, the daily total is falling, in their case for the second consecutive day.
It looks as though the virus situation is plateauing across Europe, including the UK. We shall have to see what happens in the next week, but there again, as has been remarked upon, someone who dies with Coronavirus (and may have other serious conditions) is being marked down as having died from Coronavirus. The fact is that rather few people die from this virus alone.
“In the next few days and weeks, we must continue to look critically and dispassionately at the Covid-19 evidence as it comes in. Above all else, we must keep an open mind — and look for what is, not for what we fear might be.” [John Lee, former NHS consultant in pathology, and professor in pathology, in the Spectator]
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/The-evidence-on-Covid-19-is-not-as-clear-as-we-think
The fact is that, arguably for the best of reasons, the people of the UK have been put into house arrest for an indefinite period. I do not think that it can last for very long. It will last so long as people feel both afraid of the virus and willing to do what they are told is “the right thing”. The police cannot enforce these dictatorial restrictions by their own power, but only so long as people, or the people, tolerate them.
Late night music
“You see, my son, here time turns into space!”
Ian Robert Millard 