Did The New Zealand Government Panic?

Monday 16 September 2020

I read an article today that catches my imagination. It’s entitled: Political Fraud, Political Capital by Craig Hutchinson. Written nearly a month ago on 21 August 2020. He describes the New Zealand Government’s response to Covid as ‘panicked, but ‘able to present a cohesive narrative’. He talks about the media presenting ‘deathporn’ around the events aboard some cruise ships and in Wuhan and Italy. He says that these things led to the population being terrified into extreme compliance with lockdown. He then says:

On 23 March, two days before New Zealand is placed into lockdown, The Journal of the American Medical Association publishes Case-Fatality Rate and Characteristics of Patients Dying in Relation to COVID-19 in Italy. It is the first real data from Italy’s outbreak that is still enthralling the world’s media, politicians, and citizens. The authors are from the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, the leading technical-scientific body of the Italian National Health Service. This paper shows clearly that Italian fatality data are strongly indicating Covid-19 is not dangerous to most of the population. … the authors propose the higher death rate is linked to: 1. Population age; 2. The definition of Covid-19 deaths (which differed from other countries); 3. The ‘differing strategies used for SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR testing’.

They correctly identify all the key issues.

The authors conclude ‘the current data illustrate that Italy has a high proportion of older patients with confirmed COVID-19 infection and that the older population in Italy may partly explain differences in cases and case-fatality rates among countries … deaths are mainly observed among older, male patients who also have multiple comorbidities.’

So it is clear in late March.

• Protect the elderly and other vulnerable people? – Yes.
• Encourage physical distancing? – In March when there was less certainty, yes. In August when all the relevant information is in – no.
• Lockdown our entire society? – No way. Not in late March. Not now.

It is impossible to believe this paper is not available to New Zealand’s Ministry of Health (MoH). This is one of the world’s most important English language medical publications, and MoH staff would be scanning it daily for Covid-19 research data. There can be no doubt about this. It is also safe to assume this information is passed up the chain of command and made available to the Minister of Health, and therefore to the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Civil servants withhold critical information from the Minister at their own peril, and no senior civil servant is going to risk their long-striven-for and well-paid career by withholding material like this. So we can accept the MOH passed the information to the Minister.

What do the Government do with this information? Nothing. They ignore it and commence the greatest fraud perpetuated on the New Zealand people in recent times.

This information should have given decision-makers pause; decision-makers who were considering the most extreme authoritarian and disruptive actions in modern New Zealand history; actions being considered in the name of individual ‘healthcare’; actions with far reaching negative consequences. That is, it would have given pause to calm, rational decision-makers. Unfortunately we don’t have decision-makers with these qualities in New Zealand. Instead they proceeded to lay down on New Zealand citizens the most draconian measures possible and created a proto-police-state.

This is in March remember. We’re now in August, and the Government is still perpetuating this fraud; myths of Covid-danger, Covid-fear, Covid-elimination, Covid-suppression, Covid-lockdown etc. spill from their mouths on a daily basis. They are still doing this despite the overwhelming quantity of quality, peer-reviewed research and data which clearly shows:

1. Covid-19 is not dangerous for most people and we have some natural immunity because of our T-cells, antibodies, and from exposure to the corona viruses that already.
2. The fatality profile and death-rate is similar to seasonal influenza.
3. Suppression and elimination are neither possible nor necessary.
4. Lockdowns don’t achieve anything except cause enormous harm.
5. There is no statistically useful safety gain in wearing a mask and evidence of harm (here and here).

Why is the Government sticking to their story? The New Zealand Prime Minister has all her credibility resting on New Zealanders believing that the Government’s actions have not been a major cock-up; are not the worst policy actions ever taken for all New Zealanders; are not policy actions that have harmed more people than ever before, worse even than their neoliberal disaster of the 1980s. So they can’t change their narrative. It would be electorally fatal.

This is why the Government refuses to test for Covid-19 prevalence; because then New Zealanders will likely discover what the rest of the world who is doing this testing is discovering. That the Covid-19 virus has already passed through the population and most people didn’t even know they had it. …. It’s just a matter of time. Labour must retain control of this narrative at least until after the election; they know they’ll be unelectable once the inevitable happens and they lose control of the story. Their only option is to double-down on the message. Hence the new Auckland lockdown.

I find this article very interesting. More information that indicates a secretive and incompetent Government.

Sunday 20 September 2020

Ardern, the one who has put in place all these awful rules on physical distancing, going against all that makes us human, is hypocritical. Today we see a photo of Ardern holding up a phone for a selfie with crowds around her. When she is questioned, she blames the people – it’s hard to control the public. Disgusting!

We hear that a guy comes in on a flight from India, goes into Managed Isolation, has two Covid tests both negative, is released from MI, flies on a charter flight from Christchurch to Auckland, and several days later has symptoms and tests positive for Covid. Way past the 14-day incubation time. So how is that explained?

Monday 21 September 2020

31 million cases worldwide, 965 deaths connected with Covid.

A week of electioneering, with much focus on the campaign. There is talk of a vaccine coming in a few months.

There is a big focus on cases rather than hospital admissions or deaths. There is no indication on how sick those ‘cases’ are. It appears that the more testing that happens the more cases turn up. But deaths are falling. What does this tell us?

The daily 1 pm press conference continues on most days. Ardern is there sometimes, but not every time. She uses these press conferences to brag about how good she is and how well she is handling things. She glides smoothly from information about Covid into electioneering. A very wrong use of her position of power and control at the press conferences. At the same time, she has put a restriction of size of meetings in Auckland, only ten allowed in a meeting. This means that it is very difficult for election campaigning to take place in Auckland. This surely restricts things and prevents us from having a free and fair election.

We have no Covid data available in New Zealand apart from what is given out at the daily 1 pm press conference. But we can look at data from other countries like Sweden (very open with information), Iceland, UK and Europe. In UK and Europe the cases are rising and there is talk of more lockdowns. However we know that in August in UK, Covid is number 24 in the list of death causes, so 23 things cause more deaths than Covid.

Some lockdown-sceptic articles are starting to appear in MSM in UK – very slowly, but it’s good to see it happening. It is in contrast to the alarmist, catastrophising media’s articles focusing on case numbers and the rare case of a young person being very sick or dying with Covid.

Tuesday 22 September 2020

New Zealand is allowed to move to Level One today. Auckland must stay in Level Two for another fortnight, but with an increase in numbers allowed at a meeting.

Ardern says on live television (AM Show, to Duncan Garner) that not only will there be no forced vaccinations, but those who choose to opt-out won’t face any penalties at all. She is asked if there might be tax penalties or other sanctions for refusing a COVID-19 vaccine. Her response is ‘No, and we haven’t for any vaccination in New Zealand applied penalties in that way, but I would say for anyone who doesn’t take up an effective and tested and safe vaccine when it’s available, that will come at a risk to them.’

What’s Happening in the UK

Thursday 24 September 2020

The UK Government is gearing up for another lockdown. Christmas is all but cancelled. All sorts of restrictions in place, like no groups larger than six people to meet, pubs close at 10pm, large fines for people breaking any rules.

It is looking like Boris Johnson has lost the plot. He caught the virus earlier this year and got very sick, I think it has scared him. He is also looking very distracted by his girlfriend and their new baby. And then there are the Brexit talks which need to be completed very quickly in the next few weeks.

But if he sits down and takes a breath, and looks closely at the science and the research on the effects of lockdown, he will see that the cost benefit analysis on repeated extended lockdowns shows that it is a dangerously uneconomic exercise, causing deep pain to a large part of the population and increased death from other diseases that are not being treated. At the same time, deaths from Covid are not so great that we need the foolish worldwide response we have got.

It’s more important to look at the number of deaths (not cases) from Covid (not with Covid, but from Covid). Looking at the cases is a scaremongering tactic that some news media are focusing on to sensationalise events and get people to click on their articles.

Looking at the deaths in the UK, they are not that high. In the UK an average of about 1400 – 1600 people die every single day. (600,000 per year). People die of all sorts of things – car accidents, fights, murders, manslaughter, bee stings, drownings, illnesses…

So when we hear that 37 or 40 people died with Covid (not necessarily from Covid) in the UK yesterday, there is no need to be afraid at all; it’s not the extremely high number it is made out to be. And also, the age of death from Covid follows the normal distribution of the age of death. I hope Boris comes to his senses and makes some wise decisions and pulls together his team and the country. The UK needs a strong, focused leader, leading the country and showing the world how it’s done.

We need to question the dramatic NZ Government response of ruining businesses, careers and education, terrifying people into crazy behaviour, wrecking family gatherings, weddings, funerals, leaving people to give birth all alone, or die alone crying out for loved ones. It is inhumane, cruel and foolish. The world is being led by a bunch of fools!

New Zealand is the same as UK but on a much smaller scale with less than five million population. We have the same sort of nonsense going on here. Our charismatic PM has wrecked the economy, terrified the people, introduced awful laws, bungled the Covid response, focused on how she looks on the world stage, tried to stop the opposition from campaigning just a few weeks out from a General Election, behaved hypocritically, and lied continuously. She has no policies and relies on her charm when out campaigning. Quite honestly, I am more afraid of any government she would lead than I am of the Covid virus.

The situation worldwide is chaotic. I read that there is actually a worldwide pandemic response plan that countries had all agreed to and had in in place before this pandemic started. And then when the pandemic came they all ignored it and panicked and made silly decisions.

Saturday 26 September 2020

We continue to get a small number of new confirmed and probable cases daily – from the returnees and from people in the community. There are over 32 million reported cases worldwide. 993 thousand deaths. The WHO says that there might be two million deaths before a vaccine is developed. Over 56 million people per year die, worldwide. That’s over a million a week. Just saying.

I suspect that we are going to get a wave of Covid in New Zealand. Will it sweep through New Zealand like it has in other countries? Or will we manage to somehow stay lucky and keep the virus numbers in the community extremely low? If we get more community cases reported will we go back into lockdown for a third or fourth time? We just don’t know what the future holds, and that can be very unsettling. I am thinking that we need to be up to date with health things like eye tests and new specs just in case it becomes very hard to do things like get an eye test and some new glasses. I must make appointments for eye tests which are due anyway.

Monday 28 September 2020

Watching the Covid Plan B weekly webinar tonight, a guy says that there has been a big change this year in New Zealand; we were once a cohesive nation, with a high level of trust in the Government. But now we are divided like never before. I agree. The Government has web pages and phone numbers for dobbing people in for breaking lockdown rules, there is a split across the country when returnees isolating in Auckland pass the virus into the community and the rest of the country says ‘keep away’ to Aucklanders, the adulation of Ardern by her diehard fans (fans, rather than voters), the rejection and attack on anyone who questions the Government, the way anyone who queries what is going on is treated as a traitor. All these things are aided and encouraged by a sycophantic media.

Ardern isn’t really revealing policies in the election campaign. She says this is a Covid election. That’s right. That’s what she wants – she looks good in a crisis, but she has no substance when you scratch the surface. It’s deeply concerning.

Friday 2 October 2020

We get eleven new cases in one day from a flight that arrives from India on 26 September. This is the second time we have several cases come in on one plane; in the first case a flight arriving on 23 August from India brings 17 cases into the country.

In the UK, a Scottish MP feels a bit sick last Saturday and gets a Covid test. On Monday she is feeling a bit better but is still waiting for her test result to be returned. She gets the train and travels 640 km on public transport to Westminster. She speaks in the House. Her result comes back as positive, so she travels back to Scotland on public transport, knowing that she has the virus. Astonishing irresponsibility, considering that much of the UK is being put back into lockdown and are paying an eye-wateringly high price. The MP apologises. That doesn’t make it all okay.

Countries across Europe are easing their restrictions, even though their case numbers are rising.

Sweden’s numbers are rising slightly this week, but death numbers are not rising at all. There are no deaths from Covid reported in Sweden yesterday.

I believe we need to be looking at mortality numbers, rather than case numbers.

In New Zealand, with the election just over a fortnight away, we have another leaders’ debate. Ardern is a bit more forthright than at the last leaders’ debate, but again, she has no policies, she never answers a question directly, and she is politicising Covid for her own ends.

USA, Taiwan and Covid

Saturday 3 October 2020

President Trump has Covid. He tweets the news: ‘@FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!’

Then no more tweets.

Next news is that President Trump is feeling fatigued and is receiving a single 8-gram dose of Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody cocktail. This is an experimental, synthetic, antibody treatment which is in late-stage trials.

An hour later we hear that he is being taken to Walter Reed Medical Centre in Bethesda, Maryland, with low-grade fever, nasal congestion, cough and chills. This is being done ‘out of an abundance of caution’. Mr Trump himself posts a little video saying that he is grateful for all the messages of support he has received and he is on his way to Walter Reed where he has a little suite of rooms to continue working there. He is upbeat and positive.

Several White House staff are now being reported as having the virus.

President Trump has two big things against him in his fight against Covid – he is 74 years old, and he is overweight. The two top risks of death are age and obesity. There have been a lot of horrible comments on social media implying that Trump deserved to get sick. I find that distasteful and mean. Fancy saying that he didn’t wear a mask and take distancing precautions, so he deserved to get the virus. In other circumstances and with other situations this is called ‘victim shaming’.

He often behaves in an unpleasant way but no-one ‘deserves’ to get Covid. Most American celebrities are left-leaning Democrats and they post a lot of negative comments against Trump. There are also lots of social media messages wishing him ill and even expressing hope that he will die. Absolutely abhorrent. Even if the left-wing online bullies don’t like him, it’s important to remember that he is also very popular with millions of everyday Americans, which is why they voted for him and why he is President. Apart from anything else, if he gets very sick or dies it will cause tremendous unrest in the world. And he is a human being.

The USA has now reported that it has had 7,300,000 cases of Covid and 208,000 Covid-related deaths. That is 625 per million people, the eleventh highest rate globally, and ninth highest if European microstates are excluded.

Taiwan (population 23,800,000) on the other hand has the lowest death rate from Covid in the world. The rate is 0.3 people per million dying from/with Covid in Taiwan. Maybe this is something that needs to be looked at very carefully by other countries. How does Taiwan deal with it? David Seymour says that they haven’t had any lockdowns in Taiwan. Now he’s got my attention! He says they do it ‘by having really smart rules… by having an epidemic command centre that’s multidisciplinary and public and private sector, by using better technology and weighting their approach to risk.’ This is something we most certainly don’t have in New Zealand – multidisciplinary, public and private sector.

One of the first things they did in Taiwan is to move fast to close their borders. They were monitoring arrivals before their first reported case. Ardern says on 15 March that she will be following Taiwan’s approach for New Zealand. They have not had any lockdowns, but they do make a good job of protecting their borders. They also focus on quarantining and physical distancing. These things might be a nuisance but nothing like the drastic, cruel, destructive lockdowns experienced in many countries around the world.

Dr John Gibson, a Professor of Economics at Waikato University, says that there is serious incompetence in the New Zealand Government’s pandemic response. He points out that the deadly impact of Covid is obvious long before our first case in New Zealand in late February. And while other countries like Taiwan were proactively introducing border controls, establishing testing and tracking protocols, and setting up isolation facilities, Ardern and her crowd did nothing. In fact, John Gibson says they ‘botched’ the preparation for the arrival of the virus: ‘I say ‘botched’ advisedly … consider the following four facts:

1. Taiwan recorded their first case of Covid-19 on 21 January, a full month before New Zealand’s first case.
2. Taiwan usually has about three million visitors a year from China, while New Zealand gets about 400,000. The gap is even bigger in terms of visitors to China (who posed a risk of spreading the disease upon their return).
3. Taiwan has not had a lock-down.
4. Yet despite earlier exposure and much greater risk due to more travel to and from China, Taiwan has just 22 cases per million of Covid-19 while the rate in New Zealand is currently 17 times higher.

‘Similar comparisons could be made with respect to Hong Kong or South Korea, who also provided lessons on management of this new risk. The complacency by politicians and bureaucrats in New Zealand, who had the advantage of an extra month for preparation and much greater distance from China, is staggering. Obviously that chance to respond to the risk in a low-cost manner is missed and so a very costly lockdown has resulted.’

Our borders were not closed properly until 9 April, although Ardern says she closed the borders on 19 March. The borders weren’t closed then – they were closed to all but New Zealand citizens and residents who could come and go and were expected to choose to self-isolate when they arrived back in New Zealand.

John Gibson says that the dramatically high Covid fatality predictions that the Government listened to came from an ‘off-the-shelf European model’ that had ‘no empirical data from New Zealand on key parameters’. (That’s Shaun Hendy using the frightening figures from Neil Ferguson at Imperial College London.) In New Zealand we don’t have the high-density public transport, and an older Northern Hemisphere population with poor respiratory health that they have in London. John Gibson says that Ardern’s ‘claims that ‘tens of thousands will die’ are vague at best and alarmist at worst.’

John Gibson describes our Level Four Lockdown as ‘the most stringent in the world’. I agree. It is clear beforehand that Shaun Hendy’s projections looked remarkably inflated, and it took only a couple of weeks of lockdown to see that this is certainly the case and that the projections were faulty, but Ardern didn’t adjust her approach accordingly. Why not?

John Gibson says that Covid deaths are a more accurate measure of infection rates than reported case numbers because if you have limited community testing and virtually no testing at all of asymptomatic cases even though they are thought to comprise the majority of Covid infections, then your official case numbers are much lower than the actual virus infection rate. This also means that the mortality rate looks higher than it is. So, we obviously never did ‘Go hard and go early’ as Ardern frequently says. Another lie to add to the multitude of lies being fed to the New Zealand public by an incompetent PM and Government.

The message of ‘we went hard and we went early’ is pushed by the Government and in fact, they spend $16 million on pushing this message.

Interestingly, we don’t hear about John Gibson and his opinion in MSM.

Tuesday 6 October 2020

Watching the weekly Covid Plan B webinar, I hear that in New York they were sending infectious patients back to rest homes and that caused issues and large outbreaks and deaths in old people in New York State in the US. The directive to do this comes from the Governor Andrew Cuomo. Also, New York has hospitals built that haven’t seen a Covid patient, while nursing homes are receiving infected patients. No wonder they have such high numbers of cases and deaths.

Simon tells us that in Sweden the media is behind the no-lockdown approach. But there is a group of doctors in Sweden who disagree with the Swedish Government’s approach and are banding together and swimming against the tide there. It’s a reverse of New Zealand.

Less mask-wearing in the supermarket today. We are still not allowed to take our bags into the supermarket to pack our shopping. We must pack shopping at the car. This will somehow prevent Covid infection – I know this because the sign at the supermarket tells me so.

Thursday 8 October 2020

Finally, Auckland Region joins the rest of the country at Alert Level 1.

Friday 9 October 2020

37 million reported cases worldwide and 1,072,000 reported deaths with Covid. Over 110,000 news cases in one day in Europe, with about 1000 reported deaths. So reported case numbers are rising across Europe, but the reported morbidity rate is less than 1%.

The UK appears to be in disarray. Boris Johnson, PM, doesn’t look like a leader who knows what he is doing. From hero to zero in less than ten months. Every day when I read the news there are articles telling of back bench revolts, on-again/off-again lockdowns and restrictions. I really don’t know what the restrictions actually are at any one time in any one place. And it’s possible that people living in the UK don’t know either.

Allison Pearson, a UK Daily Telegraph journalist asks, ‘what is the point of saving lives if you lose all vestiges of humanity?’ Good question. The stories of suffering caused by lockdowns and restrictions are heart-rending. Couples in their eighties who have been sweethearts for sixty-plus years are kept apart when one is in a nursing home and the other is not allowed in to visit them. Why extend the life of an old person by a few weeks or months if that extended life is miserable and lonely, spent away from precious loved ones?

All over the world, people are being systematically deprived of essential freedoms by panicking, rudderless, governments. Women are expected to give birth alone without their husband or mother, old people die alone, calling out for loved ones, people are dying of loneliness. Children are being terrified of having friends and not allowed to have birthday parties. What is going on?

And still people behave compliantly and irrationally, being afraid of the virus, not thinking clearly, doing things without understanding, using antibacterial hand sanitiser at regular intervals to protect themselves against a virus, wearing a mask that they touch and adjust regularly, without understanding that a mask doesn’t protect against a virus, especially if you handle the mask frequently.

Saturday 10 October 2020

Last night C and I are at a concert in the Auckland Town Hall. This is the first performance this year that we book for and it doesn’t get cancelled. We want to have dinner first, so at lunch time we start to look online for a place to eat within easy walking distance of the Town Hall. There is very little to choose from. We consider going to a restaurant away from the City Centre and then driving in for the concert. This adds a complication to the trip that we prefer not to have. We spend two hours sitting together looking online for a nice sounding restaurant which is open. We cannot find one.

In the end, out of desperation, we settle on Box, which is a café in the Aotea Centre. It has a very limited menu but we are worn out from looking and we are past caring. We arrive at Box at 5.55 pm. Happy Hour is from 4 pm to 6 pm, so we are just in time.

We go up to the bar and are greeted by an unfriendly masked server who tells us that the menu this evening is limited to a short list of items, mainly pizza. We ask if the pizzas are nice and he tells us that he doesn’t know because he hasn’t tasted them. This is suspicious, is it that the pizzas are probably not very good then? Never mind, we will order a glass of bubbles. Sorry, the bubbles are not on the list of special price for Happy Hour. We settle for a glass of white wine each and some bread and dips from the short menu. Sorry no bread and dips, just a choice of pizza or pizza. We leave.

We see a restaurant on Aotea Square. It is closed. The City Centre is looking scruffy and sad. Places closed, hoardings everywhere, scaffolding and repairs. Unfriendly and sad.

We walk into Queen Street to another restaurant. That is closed also. There is a very nice sounding restaurant a few minutes’ walk away. It, too, is closed, because the luxury hotel it is attached to is seconded to the Government to house returnees in Managed Isolation. We walk further up Queen Street and see a restaurant open. It’s a Japanese restaurant and there is a queue out of the door. We queue and get offered the only seating available which is upstairs in the private function room, sitting on the floor, Japanese style, with crowds of other diners. We accept this. The food is very expensive, so that the meal costs us $99, when normally it would cost us $60 or so. The room is very cold, because the server, wrapped up warmly and moving about doesn’t want to be too warm, so he turns down the temperature on the aircon unit. Other diners are shivering, wearing their coats and leaving as soon as they have finished eating.

It is wonderful to be in the Town Hall at a live concert. The concert is wonderful and the performers are thrilled to be performing live in front of a large audience in the Town Hall. I see three masks in the audience in total. Otherwise, everything feels wonderfully normal in here.

The Case Against Lockdowns

Sunday 11 October 2020

A news item from the UK today quotes Britain’s envoy to the World Health Organisation, Dr David Nabarro, saying lockdowns are only justified to ‘buy you time to reorganise regroup, rebalance your resources and protect your health workers who are exhausted. … Lock downs are making poor people an awful lot poorer. … I want to say it again: We in the World Health Organisation do not advocate lockdowns as a primary means of controlling this virus. Look what’s happening to poverty levels — it seems we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition because children are not getting meals at school and their parents, in poor families, are not able to afford it. … we really do appeal to all world leaders: stop using lockdown as your primary control method. Develop better systems for doing it. … In recent weeks I have become more and more convinced of the need to do everything possible to avoid widespread lockdowns and only use them as a last resort. This is because of the way they impact on people’s livelihoods, mental health, non-Covid illnesses, access to education and more.’

Today I hear about something called the Great Barrington Declaration. This is an open letter from Oxford epidemiologist Dr Sunetra Gupta, Harvard University’s Dr Martin Kulldorff and Stanford’s Dr Jay Bhattacharya calling for an end to compelled lockdown. It is named after the town in Massachusetts where it is written. It is published on 4 October 2020 – in just the eight days since it was published we can see it has 23,259 medical practitioners and scientists and 231,865 members of the public signing it. Here it is in full:

The Great Barrington Declaration – As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.

Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.

Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.

Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.

As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.

The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.

Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.

Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practised by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.

The National Health Service in the UK is facing lawsuits from cancer patients over delays in their treatment due to lockdowns.

Children in some schools in the UK are banned from singing ‘Happy Birthday’ in classrooms in case it spreads Covid. They have to listen to it on YouTube or hum the tune rather than sing it. So on your one special day a year, when it’s your turn to hear your friends sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to you, they are not allowed to sing. (People are also banned from singing in pubs and in churches.) Poor children! They have suffered so much this year, and now this extra senseless, silly rule.

I seem to be writing regularly about overseas experiences, research and data. This is because there is little to report in New Zealand. Partly because the Government is revealing very little information and partly because MSM continue to avoid digging deep on questioning and continues to report only positively about the Government response. I am thankful for the weekly webinar of Covid Plan B and look forward to it each Monday evening.

Monday 12 October 2020

The Covid Plan B today has Prof John Gibson as a guest. He has a slide show and he powers through information giving references and peer-reviewed reports showing that lockdowns are not only ineffective but also extremely damaging.

Thinking about the problems being caused by lockdowns is scary. There is talk of the millions of people in one single country – Indonesia, who will move into poverty over the next year because of lockdowns. There will be a drop in GDP in rich countries too, and that will reduce life expectancy in those countries. All in all, the worldwide lockdowns are going to seriously affect the health and wealth of the world negatively.

John Gibson says that until the New Zealand Government made a Covid response in late March, New Zealand is generally lagging behind other countries in its response to Covid, especially when compared to Taiwan, Japan and Australia. Early is more important than hard. New Zealand went late and hard. Too late and too hard.

John Gibson explains how the peak of infections is calculated, and then shows us that the first lockdown in New Zealand on 23 March came ten days after the probable peak in new infections. But even if lockdowns come at the appropriate time they are largely ineffective. He talks about the prediction for deaths in New Zealand if our policy had been as Sweden, where we would do social distancing but no lockdown. He says the death rate prediction is not 80,000 but 330 extra Covid related deaths. That’s 330 extra deaths of old or sick people. That’s not nice at all, but also, it is not devastating and dreadful. It’s less than seasonal flu which is 500 per year in New Zealand.

On the other hand, the economic shock of lockdowns will flow through in many ways for many years and is expected to have a negative effect which will be twelve times bigger than the effect of having no lockdown. John Gibson is an empiric economist; this means that he looks only at facts and doesn’t do modelling. He says that calculating on the actual figures of the data available today, not having a lockdown would decrease life expectancy at birth by 26 days. Having the lockdown has decreased life expectancy at birth by a year – twelve times bigger than no lockdown.

John Gibson says that evidence that lockdowns don’t reduce Covid deaths is available from overseas at the time that key decisions were made in New Zealand.

From what I hear today on the webinar, I believe that Ardern focused on other things like posturing with the Australian PM about policies and then preparing for a grand performance at an international day of remembrance in Christchurch, instead of preparing for the inevitable arrival of the virus in New Zealand. She then got truly scared of being seen to not be doing anything as other world leaders moved their countries into lockdown, so she moved to an ultra-strict lockdown. I think she acted out of fear of how she would look on the world stage, rather than out of a concern to do a good job and make the wisest choice, even if that is not popular, as is the case with Sweden. What incompetence! What a waste of personality and charm in one who is so foolish and cowardly.

It looks to me that once she takes the lockdown stance, even when it was proving to be unnecessary and overly damaging to economy and personal lifestyle, she has to save face by sticking with it. News today is the Government is putting up big money to get vaccines in 2021. I suppose that if they have gone all out on elimination until a vaccine, they are spending whatever they need to in order to get to the front of all the vaccine queues even though the cost benefit ratio is likely to be poor.

Tuesday 13 October 2020

Chris Finlayson, ex-MP, former Attorney General gives a speech at The Archibald Baxter Memorial Trust Annual Peace Lecture 2020, at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago. He says that we in New Zealand are not a nation of dissenters. I find his speech interesting because he indicates that some of the things that bother him about the New Zealand Covid response bother me too. The Government is heavy handed and authoritarian, but the media and the public are compliant and unquestioning to a level that concerns and disturbs me. This is some of what he says in his speech:

We are in the midst of the most awful pandemic …. I am not going to comment on the approach taken … Only time will tell whether or not the largely authoritarian response … is the right policy … But whether it was due to blind panic, an inclination to submit to the … illegal instructions of a charismatic leader, or some other aspect of our national psyche, a disturbing conformist trend emerged among the New Zealand public as a whole this year.

This first became apparent through the behaviour of the thousands of New Zealanders who reported neighbours to the authorities for perceived breaches of regulations. … the police website crashed several times due to the volume of people filing reports about people whose conduct they did not believe met the various coronavirus rules floating around at the time … many were for very minor breaches or were completely incorrect. … The sheer volume of calls went beyond what I would have thought was warranted.

But this tattle-tale trend was really just part of a much more disturbing whole: in 2020, no one is really permitted to dissent from the majoritarian view on the Government’s response to the pandemic. Anyone who voices a contrary opinion is subject to withering attacks in various forms of social media and from a concerning new class of public figures: the politically-aligned scientist or medical expert.

As for the media, with a few exceptions, everyone has basically fallen into line and uncritically repeats the Government’s message. … Andrew Borrowdale … thinks that the lockdown is illegal and brings a case in the High Court. He is successful in obtaining a declaration about the first nine days … [but] … I am amazed at the number of commentators who think that Borrowdale is nothing more than a legal pedant who is making unmeritorious points. Where are the commentators who should be speaking on these subjects? They are nowhere to be found.

The current attorney-general [David Parker] does a live-streamed one-hour monologue on Facebook when questions about the legality of the first nine days are raised and says he is satisfied as to the legality of the lockdown. He is wrong. We know that the lockdown is illegal for the first nine days. People don’t seem to mind that the police commissioner is telling his fellow New Zealanders that they would be invited down to the police station for a little chat if they don’t conform. I hear of a number of instances where police stop young people and demand to know what is in their bags. That is occurring in the first nine days of lockdown. That kind of behaviour is oppressive and has no precedent outside wartime in this country, and even in wartime it was actually authorised by law. Here, it isn’t. It should not be tolerated. But who dissents? Very few. People largely just fall into line.

We are not a nation of dissenters; we are a nation of conformists. … Even motorway road-signs ordering us to be kind don’t seem to arouse any concerns among the trusting, dependent New Zealand public. I come to realise that those of us in whom those signs arouse Orwellian visions of the future are a very small minority indeed.

Some people doubtless say that … we are far more liberal and questioning than we are but that all depends … Take climate change for example. Can anyone seriously suggest that dissent on this particular topic is tolerated? The editor of the Dominion Post decrees that articles questioning the validity of the ever-changing scientific consensus on the causes of climate change will not be accepted. That is an odd proposition. Surely it is better to engage in the debate with the same ferocity as your opponents rather than try and shut them down. The history of this country shows that we can be oppressively conformist and, if you step out of line, you are crushed.

‘If you step out of line you are crushed’! What a pity that we can’t consider facts rather than listen only to partisan opinions treated as facts.

This is happening again today in MSM. On Monday a top WHO spokesperson on Covid says: We in the World Health Organisation do not advocate lockdowns as a primary means of controlling this virus. Today, on the Stuff website we get a headline: Kiwi Covid-19 expert ‘irate’ at WHO’s new line on lockdowns. This is Dr Michael Baker, who advises the Government on Covid and thinks we are not spending long enough in lockdown. He says that the WHO comments are ‘inappropriate’ and don’t apply to New Zealand ‘where lockdowns have worked’. This is presented by the media as fact, flatly contradicting the WHO; the journalists do no fact checking or research to support what Michael Baker says, they just print his words as though he is the only epidemiologist in NZ and the only Covid expert. On the other hand, when the WHO praises New Zealand or recommends measures that Ardern is putting in place, then the WHO is not ignored or contradicted, but it is lauded and approved of.

Thursday 15 October 2020

On Wedneday we have our monthly Women’s Institute dinner, we’ve only had three or four all year because of the lockdowns. Only one person is wearing a mask (home-made). She takes it off to talk and puts it back on again. She has it removed completely by the end of the evening. I suspect she enjoys the drama of the mask.

I chat with a friend. She says she has got herself all worked up about politics this year, and that’s unusual because she isn’t usually so interested or concerned. I know what she means. I think this is applying to many people. The level of interest in politics worldwide is high.

I see an article on the BBC website about Ardern and the New Zealand election. Normally the left-leaning BBC would be heaping praise on Ardern, but in this article there is some questioning of her complete lack of achievements over the past three years as PM.

I see an article about a report in the prestigious medical journal, the Lancet about the NZ response to Covid. The article says The speed and intensity of the national response to limit the epidemic is unprecedented internationally. This is seen as a good thing; the Government goes from ignoring the virus and the worldwide response on the morning of Saturday 21 March to an announcement of one of the most ferocious, harshest lockdowns in the world on Monday 23 March, which is implemented on Thursday 26 March. Five days. The article doesn’t say it’s a good thing, it says that the speed is unprecedented, and I fully agree. It is a speedy, harsh lockdown. However, I believe the experts who say this lockdown is too late, too hard, and unnecessary.

I see a third article in The Australian from Greg Sheriden. He says: ‘No international halo is so shabby or so fraudulent as that worn by New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. Politically she resembles Dan Andrews. They excel in woke gesture and progressive symbolism. Their achievements in real policy terms are thin or negative. … on Covid-19 the Ardern Government has done much less than it seems and at much greater cost than other countries have paid. There are other countries whose governments have even better records of eradicating Covid-19. And they are? Fiji with 32 cases, Solomon Islands with two cases and Vanuatu with none. Their leaders are not worldwide media sensations yet they got those numbers for the same reasons as New Zealand. They are isolated island nations. … Before Covid-19, Ardern was trailing in the polls. Her list of undelivered election promises is staggering: 100,000 affordable homes promised, 600 built; homelessness to be eradicated, it increased; zero carbon emissions by 2050, emissions went up; reduce child poverty, it went up; regional public service emphasis, more public servants based in Wellington than before; light rail from Auckland airport to CBD, abandoned. But then came the virus and she could do her high priestess of the woke religion stuff, day after day. Validated by a swooning international media, unchallenged by a tepid and under-resourced local media, she has sold the narrative that her Government has saved NZ.’

‘Nuf said!

No Questioning of Government Allowed!

Sunday 18 October 2020

Oh my goodness! The MSM in NZ has gone to town on attacking Greg Sheriden and The Australian. NZ journalists are furious with someone calling out Ardern and talking about her failure as a Prime Minister. They have unquestioning loyalty to Ardern and it bodes badly for NZ.

Yesterday’s election result gives a decisive Labour victory. Ardern is a brand which is founded on slogans – Let’s do this, Year of Delivery, Team of 5 Million, Let’s Keep Moving, We went Early and We went Hard, and so on.

In March this year, Labour is clearly failing at governing. They break all their election promises and are heading into a September election defeat. Then Covid comes along.

Going late and going too hard, Ardern takes to the podium on 23 March. She has a firm manner, confident appearance, and brags daily about how good she is. At the same time, it is clear that things are not being well handled. Each drama gets the response that she is not happy, she has been let down, someone else is to blame. Always someone else to blame.

Today we learn that there is a new case of Covid in the community. The Government knows the day before the election. But sees fit to reveal this to the public today and only because the NZ Herald confronts the Ministry of Health with a letter they receive from a member of the public telling them about the case.

Monday 19 October 2020

What has just happened in New Zealand this weekend? Under a system of proportional representation the New Zealand voting public votes for a party that has failed on every promise over the past three years.

At the beginning of this year we have Labour on 41% support and the largest party in parliament, National, on 46% approval. But at the election this weekend Labour gets 49% of the party vote and can govern alone without any coalitions. This despite Labour not achieving a single one of the goals it sets itself in 2017.

• 100,000 KiwiBuild houses over ten years – but fewer than 600 are built in three years.
• House prices rise faster than the rate of inflation and income.
• Waiting list Priority A for housing goes from 4,054 in 2017 to 17,493 in 2020.
• Migration to be reduced from 50,000 to 30,000 per annum, but it goes up to 88,450 in 2020.
• Child poverty numbers increase.
• A billion trees to be planted over ten years, but after three years just 4% are planted.
• All Government vehicle fleet to be electric by 2026, but fewer than 1% of the fleet is electric in 2020.
• Unprecedented and unnecessary interference in the Ihumatao dispute which will cost the country millions of dollars.
• Umpteen egregious failures when dealing with Covid in the areas of PPE, testing, flu vaccines, two or three lockdown breaches by the Minister of Health.

Why are people saying Ardern is doing a good job then? It’s patently obvious that she is NOT doing a good job at all. The answer is that Covid gives Ardern the opportunity to do what she does best – emote. Daily. Giving the impression of genuinely caring for all. Telling people she is doing a great job. And she is believed.

Tuesday 20 October 2020

In NZ we have very little data available from the Government for us to see the true cost of lockdowns. However, in the UK, reported in The Spectator are several studies on the effects of lockdown. There is a study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on the effect of lockdown on other health treatments like cancer; many treatments are delayed or cancelled, and this causes thousands of deaths.

Another study from the University of Leeds estimates over 2000 deaths from heart disease and stroke as a result of people not accessing timely medical help.

A third study by the University Hospital of Northern Tees reveals investigative procedures fall to 12% of normal during lockdown.

The National Blood and Transplant Service finds that organ donations fall by 68% compared to a year earlier. The number of people dying while waiting for an organ transplant almost doubles during lockdown.

And finally, a report by the Office of National Statistics says that an extra 25,472 people have died at home than would otherwise be expected from the average past five years.

Lockdown is killing people as well as destroying businesses, livelihoods, mental health and family life.

Wednesday 21 October 2020

We learn that a couple of dozen seamen from Russia and Ukraine who fly into NZ and are in Managed Isolation in Christchurch are infected with Covid. One of the largest numbers of infections in a day in NZ.

Some questions –

Why are seamen being brought here by Sealord when so many New Zealanders are on the dole?

Why are orchardists begging the Government to allow overseas fruit pickers to come into NZ when there are so many New Zealanders looking for work?

Why is a famous American actress allowed to bring her children’s nanny into NZ and a superyacht is allowed to dock on Queens Wharf when a bereaved family on their little family yacht and three Germans with a small, damaged yacht are not allowed to enter NZ waters even though they have been at sea for weeks or months?

The injustice and bad management are spectacular.

Friday 23 October 2020

Almost 42 million reported cases of Covid worldwide. The number of cases reported daily is rising, but the number of reported deaths is steady. I wonder why.

I watch a 12-minute video by Professor Sunetra Gupta. She is Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford, and a Royal Society Wolfson Research Fellow. Her area of specialisation is evolutionary ecology of infectious disease systems. This means that her point of view is of great value in the fight against Covid. She is a world-leading epidemiologist.

She talks about T cells and antibodies, and ‘herd immunity’. She says young people should get the virus because then they would be immune and then they wouldn’t infect their grandparents. She gets vitriol from many sides for this point of view. She is disappointed that academics are attacking her rather than entering into academic discussion with her. She says that many academics believe she is a traitor to ‘the cause’. She struggles to get papers published.

She wants to protect the vulnerable rather than locking down. She says 1000 people a week in the UK die of flu and pneumonia in autumn, this is interesting as the Covid death figures are lower than this in the UK.

Here in NZ, with one or two community cases people are waiting to be told we are going into lockdown again. It horrifies me that so many people are so afraid that they are okay to take on another lockdown for one or two cases.

The media says that one of the new community cases catches the virus after spending just a few minutes with an infected person and when wearing ‘full PPE’. This sounds absolutely terrifying. However, I see people eating chippies while wearing rubber gloves, removing a mask to sneeze and then replacing it, fiddling with the mask constantly, removing and replacing the mask constantly, touching their faces all the time, wearing the mask over the mouth but not nose, wearing the mask under the chin, carrying the mask… I wonder if ‘wearing full PPE’ may even contribute to the danger of picking up the virus.

A Westpac worker who has contact with a positive testing port worker tests positive for Covid today. Government gurus say that he became infectious on Tuesday 20^th. The worker has not been into his office since last Friday 16 October, four days before he becomes infectious. Westpac says they are going to do a ‘deep clean’ of the office just in case. Just in case of what? Is this silliness? I think it might be.

A Second Wave of Covid Around the World?

Sunday 25 October 2020

My niece in the UK probably has the virus. She is feeling off for a few days so she stays at home to self-isolate. Others at her work have the virus. She starts to feel better, then her hubby and son feel sick. They get the test and the results are positive. She doesn’t get a test, but thinks it’s likely she brought it home.

Wales imposes a strict lockdown, including saying that supermarkets are not allowed to sell what they call ‘non-essential items’. Clothes are considered non-essential and supermarkets block off the clothes aisles with plastic. One guy goes on a rampage and rips off the plastic in his local Tesco. He is charged with criminal damage. Another guy strips down to his undies, shoes and face mask, he tries to enter the supermarket but is stopped because he is inappropriately dressed. Clothing is essential for entering the supermarket.

Monday 26 October 2020

In Australia the Premier of Victoria Daniel Andrews finally announces the relaxation of lockdown restrictions in Melbourne. This ends a remarkable 112-day lockdown period. From Wednesday repair shops, restaurants, cafes and bars will be allowed to open with a ten-person limit. Home visits will be allowed, outdoor gatherings including weddings will be limited to ten people, and funerals will be limited to 20 people. Travel is still restricted and gyms are still closed for now. They will be allowed to reopen in a couple of weeks and the patron limit at restaurants, cafes and bars will be raised. What a terrible time the people of Melbourne are having. How they have suffered.

Wednesday 28 October 2020

The community cases in NZ stop and we continue to get a couple of cases in Managed Isolation most days. No-one in hospital, no deaths.

In Europe the case numbers are rising. Numbers of cases skyrocket, hospital admissions and deaths rise also, but not to the same degree as at the beginning of the pandemic.

Governments are putting in place restrictions again and there are reports of riots and protests in many European cities. At least a dozen cities in Italy are reported to have violent protests. Barcelona, Prague, Paris, Marseille, Berlin, all experience violence and anger from people who don’t want any more lockdown restrictions.

Looking sensibly and calmly at the situation, the world is being brought to its knees and everyone is suffering dreadfully from the social restrictions put in place by governments trying to protect people from a virus that after ten months gives 44 million reported cases out of a world population of 7.8 billion. This is 0.564% if the world population. Hardly a number to call a pandemic. The worst hit countries are not the ones that didn’t do lockdowns. For example, Belgium has the second worst death rate in the world and one of the harshest lockdowns. There doesn’t appear to be a connection between lockdown restrictions and cases and deaths. Sweden hasn’t had a lockdown and is around the middle of the scale compared with other European countries on case numbers and deaths.

Thursday 29 October 2020

President Macron of France announces a second national lockdown. He says without it 400,000 people will die from Covid. It will run from Friday 30 October until Tuesday 1 December. People have to stay at home unless they are an essential service worker, getting food, or going to school. Everything else will be closed and people have to carry documentation to show to police when they are out. Currently, France has over one million reported active cases in a population of about 65 million.

Angela Merkel of Germany announces a four-week lockdown that will close theatres, cinemas, leisure facilities, tourist hotels, but schools, shops and takeaway places will be open.

Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish PM is announcing a state of emergency which will allow him to put the country into a national lockdown at a moment’s notice. He also announces night-time curfews.

The Government in Belgium is planning more stringent measures to be announced on Friday.

Russia is resisting a second lockdown but is making masks mandatory in public.

The Czech Government closes shops, schools, restaurants, makes it mandatory to wear masks indoors and outdoors, bans sports fixtures, and imposes a curfew between 9 pm and 6 am.

Sweden is urging people to avoid shopping malls, shops and public transport.

Anti-lockdown protests continue across Europe.

The UK has ‘Tiers’ of lockdown and lockdowns are local rather than national. They are like ‘traffic lights’. Tier One is green, Tier Two is amber, and Tier Three is red. The strictest restrictions on a locality.

The big concern in the UK at the moment is Christmas, and if the ‘rule of six’ where only six people can meet together will apply to Christmas celebrations. The police chiefs say they will enter homes and break up any Christmas Day parties of more than six. There are a few protest marches but not very well-reported on. Maybe because people in the UK are not in such strict lockdowns as some European countries, they don’t have as much need to protest.

Some top scientists in the UK urge the PM, Boris Johnson, to take a ‘rational, balanced and cautious’ approach to Covid. They form a new group called ‘Recovery’ and say that the hysteria could end up being worse than the virus itself.

Israel is coming to the end of its second strict lockdown after a second wave of virus infections. The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra performs in front of the Knesset in Jerusalem, to protest their Government’s decision to keep concert halls under lockdown. The orchestra performers are wearing masks unless they are playing a wind instrument, in which case the mask is under their chin. Strange, and quite moving to see professional musicians playing their instruments, socially distanced and wearing masks.

From Africa there is no news about high case numbers or panic or lockdowns or protests.

India has a high number of cases. They have a stiff lockdown from early on when people are told to stay at home, so people leave the cities and go home to the small towns and countryside where their family homes are. This helps to spread the virus far and wide all over India.

The Americas are suffering high numbers of cases and deaths. USA has 1000 deaths in 24 hours yesterday. Brazil had over 500 deaths on the same day.

Here in NZ we have a handful of cases from people who have entered the country in the past few days and are in Managed Isolation. However, we have fruit growers saying they need pickers to be allowed into the country, vets saying we need hundreds more vets to be allowed into the country, the fishing industry saying we need overseas seamen because NZ seamen can’t or won’t do the job properly. At the same time we have large unemployment, including NZ seamen saying that they can’t get a job on a NZ working boat because the employers won’t even consider them. The Government is paying international hotel chains in NZ for 7200 beds being used for Managed Isolation, although 2600 of those beds are empty. Why is this? Why is the Government borrowing money to pay international corporates for thousands of beds that are not being used? It isn’t explained.

Any reporter or commentator from overseas who questions the NZ approach to the virus or Ardern’s leadership over the past three years is slated, laughed at, and called names by the NZ MSM. The NZ MSM also reports on any Kiwis making fun or mocking the overseas reporters on social media.

Friday 30 October 2020

Siouxie Wiles, a microbiologist, not an epidemiologist, is regularly rolled out by MSM to give her opinion about how to deal with Covid and for her to tell the NZ public how wonderful Ardern’s elimination strategy is. And today she is finally admitting that Ardern’s elimination approach means the country cannot go back to normal.

Not long ago she says she is ‘excited’ about vaccines for Covid, but today she says the early vaccines are unlikely to prevent death or transmission. She admits that this is particularly problematic for us in NZ because of the elimination strategy. With an elimination strategy the Government can’t have a partially effective vaccine, open the borders and go back to normal because if we do then Covid would re-enter the country and resume transmission.

The Covid Plan B predicts this way back in April. In fact it’s why they oppose the elimination and lockdown strategy. If elimination is the goal then we can’t have a situation where Covid is in transmission. Which means we have to wait until a 100% effective vaccine is available. When will this happen? How likely is it to happen? Other vaccines for other contagious diseases don’t give 100% immunity, so how can a vaccine for something as nebulous as a coronavirus give 100%?

Saturday 31 October 2020

Oxford epidemiologist Dr Sunetra Gupta says lockdowns only delay the inevitable spread of the virus. She describes lockdown as a blunt, indiscriminate policy that forces the poorest and most vulnerable people to bear the brunt of the fight against Covid. She believes there is a better way. She prefers to shield those most at risk and enable the rest of the population to resume their ordinary lives as much as possible. She says that since she co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration she has suffered an onslaught of insults, personal criticism, intimidation and threats.

She says she is invited to do a radio interview and minutes before going to air she is told she mustn’t mention the Great Barrington Declaration. A few days later she is invited to another radio programme and then gets uninvited as it would ‘not be in the national interest’. She talks about MSM in UK like The Guardian repeatedly publishing factually incorrect, scientifically flawed opinion pieces and statements and defamatory comments. She tells of how social media is vicious against her, calling the Declaration ‘fringe’ and ‘dangerous’. Even Wikipedia links the Declaration to ‘right-wing think tank and financed by climate change deniers’. She emphasises that the Declaration didn’t need any great financing and she has not accepted any payments for it. She talks about the personal nature of the abuse, the attack on her professional abilities and qualifications.

She also points out that ultimately, lockdown is a luxury for the affluent in wealthy countries. She says Covid will not just go away, lockdowns don’t cure Covid, and the longer we take to recognise this the worse will be the permanent economic damage. Finally, and most encouragingly, this brave lady says she will not be swayed from the principles that sit behind what she writes when she works at putting out a message of truth and sanity.

Sunday 1 November 2020

There are 326 reported Covid deaths in the UK in 24 hours, although infection numbers are dropping. I take this to indicate that Covid related deaths will also fall in a couple of weeks as death numbers follow infection numbers. Boris Johnson, UK’s PM comes under tremendous pressure to announce a nation-wide lockdown. The UK’s PM, health minister, finance minister and Covid minister meet with some researchers who talk scary stuff like storing bodies in municipal ice rinks, and up to 4000 deaths a day by Christmas. With France and Germany already under a month-long lockdown, the pressure increases and Boris capitulates and plans a lockdown. There is much disagreement within the UK Cabinet and within the Tory caucus. Some MPs are quoted as saying things like ‘Lockdowns make everyone poorer and poor people even poorer’. ‘There has to be another way of doing this.’ There is much disagreement among the powers-that-be and it appears that Boris just doesn’t have the strength, the leadership skills or the control of the situation to make wise decisions and hold the country together. The pressure must be tremendous, and sometimes you can get so close to a situation that you lose perspective. A nationwide lockdown is unlikely to the be solution for France, Germany or the UK, as Dr Gupta says, lockdowns just delay the virus and at great expense and mental and emotional cost.

Monday 2 November 2020

One new community case. It’s in Christchurch and it’s a healthcare worker who looks after the Russian seamen. This person tests negative on Thursday, starts feeling sick on Saturday but then still goes to the supermarket on Sunday, before going for another test which comes back positive today.

Covid Plan B group webinar today – Prof Michael Jackson says I suspect that politicians have been captured by a group of risk-averse health scientists and are scared to relax their stance for fear of criticism. If the relax and people die they’ll be rubbished. Prof Jackson talks about the growing discontent in UK and the protests in Europe, especially Spain. Numbers of cases are increasing in UK, but testing is also increasing and is now 100,000 tests per day.

Interestingly, seasonal flu numbers are ‘bafflingly low’. Are flu deaths being counted as Covid deaths?

Currently, Sweden is tracking to have a total of 90,000 deaths in the whole year of 2020. This is the average for the past fifteen years. This means that Sweden has not got extra deaths and has not had any lockdowns. The UK is trending towards no excess deaths which are due to lockdowns.

Tuesday 3 November 2020

Ardern on the radio this morning says:

‘MIQ [managed isolation and quarantine] workers are in contact with people with Covid. They are very aware of their circumstances, keep good records of who they’re in contact with and behave really responsibly when they feel even a touch unwell, as in this case.’

This interview is followed by a news bulletin telling us that ‘in this case’ the health worker gets sick on Saturday and goes to the supermarket on Sunday while feeling sick. That doesn’t sound very ‘responsible’ to me.

Thursday 5 November 2020

The UK starts its month-long lockdown today. The rules are arbitrary. You can buy beer from the pub but you can’t drink it on the premises. You can have 30 people at funeral but only six at a wedding. Your children can play team sport at school but not at their local club. You can visit parks but not botanical gardens. You can’t go to work unless you can work from home or are listed an essential service. You can go through a drive-through MacDonald’s but not through a drive-through wildlife safari park. You can shoot ducks but you can’t feed them. You can sleep with your spouse but you can’t play tennis with her/him. Chain stores are allowed to open but small, independent shops have to close.