Ten Months On – And Still the Same Government Responses

Friday 6 November 2020

49 million reported cases of Covid worldwide. The ‘case’ numbers are now rising at about half a million reported cases a day. Deaths of people worldwide who are reported to have Covid remain steady at about 8000 per day.

Sunday 7 November 2020

50 million reported cases of Covid worldwide.

We have another community case reported today. Someone who is with a health worker, reported to be a soldier, who works at the Jetpark hotel where all the active cases of Covid are sent to. The health worker catches the virus while treating an infected patient. The health worker goes to shops and restaurants in central Auckland and has meetings, all while probably infectious. One person at the meeting last Wednesday flies to Wellington on Wednesday evening and today is diagnosed with Covid. That person is reported to be a civilian NZDF worker.

If you truly believe that the disease is so dangerous that you must lock down the country, close the borders completely and quarantine everyone coming into the country then the community outbreaks are a disgrace because they are a breach of border security. This is the sixth community outbreak from the border. Not good enough or safe enough if this disease is deadly enough for the Government to force the country to sacrifice so much to avoid it.

If on the other hand, you are aware that the disease is not so dangerous, then it’s time to educate people on handwashing (better than hand sanitiser, not instead of or as well as hand sanitiser), protecting the vulnerable, keeping physical distancing when needed, and living with the virus in the community just as we live with colds and flu.

In the UK, the number of cases peaks before the second lockdown begins, but the lockdown continues. Some people ignore the lockdown, and I see many photos in the news of people queuing, enjoying parks, exercising, cycling and shopping, all without masks. I also read about marches and protests against lockdown.

There is much reporting in MSM of the rejoicing around the world because Joe Biden claims victory in the presidential election USA. This news dominates the headlines and pushes Covid off the ‘front page’. There is also talk of vote counting cheating occurring but this is mocked by MSM. I wonder what difference, if any, Joe Biden’s win will make to Covid news over the next few months.

Monday 9 November 2020

The weekly Covid Plan B webinar: Simon Thornley tells us about a South African website which has some very interesting statistics. He tells us that when looking at statistics we can expect to see a relationship between two variables especially if they are related. So when comparing lockdowns and reported cases and deaths we should see case numbers go down with lockdowns, and go up without lockdowns. We should also see deaths go up or down in relation to reported case rates. However, the graphs don’t show any connection at all. From this we can conclude that lockdowns don’t affect case rates or deaths from Covid.

Looking at the strictness of the lockdowns in various countries compared to the virus cases, there is no connection between the two either. So stricter lockdowns don’t prevent cases and deaths. In fact, it appears that stricter lockdowns lead to more deaths. Deaths in the UK are occurring at home and can be attributed to lack of care – is this because people are afraid to go to hospital? A large number of cases in the UK occur in hospital – people catch the virus in hospital.

The data show a ‘second wave’ of an increase in cases in Europe happening now but the death numbers aren’t rising to match. However, the thing that does affect case numbers is the testing: case numbers increase when testing increases.

Sweden has been the most liberal in terms of lockdowns (no lockdown) and is in the middle range for cases and deaths.

Data also show a 99.96 % survival rate from Covid.

Someone comments that FluTracker is showing hardly any reports of ‘flu like symptoms’. And in fact we have about 1500 less deaths than usual this year in NZ, and a 99.8% reduction in reported flu deaths. So it’s possible that we will have a more serious outbreak of flu and pneumonia when the Government does eventually open up the borders than if we had stayed open all the time

Simon says the NZ Government has painted itself into a corner with its elimination strategy and now they might be trying to find a way to ease out it and open up to travel without admitting that they are wrong. He talks about the Government’s response being like killing a flea by knocking the house down.

There is some civil disobedience happening in Europe in protest to the lockdowns and yet here in NZ people are still compliant. Jeremy says that he thinks the NZ public will allow another Level 4 lockdown. There may be some protests but the NZ MSM doesn’t and won’t report on them. This is because of the fear of the virus which is being encouraged and driven by MSM. Also, the police would come down hard on rule breakers. People are totally fuelled by fear and not by science or facts.

Jeremy tells a story about Tauranga Harbour Bridge which had a toll to pay for the bridge. At first people pay the toll but when the bridge is paid for the tolls are not removed. Eventually people stop paying the toll and just drive past the toll booths. At first it is just a few people, and the police follow up and fine the drivers. But eventually more and more drivers ignore the toll booths and after a time the booths are quietly removed. His message is that if enough of us resist the controls on our freedom then we will win through and the police will not be able to force us to comply.

A group of NZ GPs sign a letter voicing their opinion publicly about the futility of lockdown, but no one in MSM picks up the story.

The Danish Government says that mink carry the virus and so they order the slaughter of all the 17 million mink in Denmark. What about mink in many other countries? Or what about other animals related to mink? Jeremy Harris calls it hubristic to believe we can control the virus. He says that locking down in the northern hemisphere in spring and summer delays the virus so that now it is on the rise for the coming northern hemisphere winter.

Someone tells a joke to lighten the mood…One homeless guy says to another ‘Funny how we haven’t been affected by this virus.’ The other guy replies ‘Well we haven’t got a telly have we?’

A Vaccine

Tuesday 10 November

We hear that there is a vaccine which will be ready in ‘a few weeks’. It’s called the Pfizer vaccine and they say it’s more than 90% effective. Effective at what? With whom? As Covid is most seriously affecting old people, with mortality rate highest in the over-eighty-year-olds, has it been tested on this age group? If it’s effective with young people who are not seriously at risk unless obese or with other health problems why would they even need the vaccine? I am a lay person asking lay person questions. Maybe there is a level of knowledge here which hasn’t been revealed to the general public.

I see a headline on a UK news page saying ‘Yes, but you first, Boris.’ Countries around the world are buying up big and planning how to get and distribute the vaccine. Newspaper articles are discussing who should get it first. People are letting out a great big collective sigh of relief. They believe this will save them.

Thursday 12 November 2020

Some more news about the Pfizer vaccine; it doesn’t prevent the virus but it reduces the symptoms significantly.

Reported case numbers continue to rise at about 500,000 a day. We now have 52 million reported cases worldwide.

We have a new case in central Auckland today which appears to not be linked to any other recent community cases. This is a concern to health officials as they wonder where she picked up the virus.

The Minister for Covid Response, Chris Hipkins tell us that she is an AUT student in her twenties who works at a clothes shop in central Auckland. She starts feeling sick on Monday and gets a test on Tuesday. She tells her boss she is feeling sick but the boss persuades her to still come to work. The test comes back positive today, Thursday. A big concern for the health officials is that this woman goes to work in a shop in central Auckland for three days while she is feeling sick and therefore certainly infectious.

I am afraid that the Government is going to announce another lockdown and I am relieved that it isn’t doing that. They ask everyone who works in the Auckland CBD to work at home tomorrow. The MSM asks questions like ‘Are you going to put Auckland into Level Three Lockdown?’ and ‘Don’t you think you need to make masks mandatory?’

The student says she hasn’t visited the university campus or any supermarkets, she says she lives alone and that she hasn’t had much social contact. This is helpful in that there are few places outside of the shop she worked in where she could have infected others.

Friday 13 November 2020

Central Auckland is a ghost town today. They say it will cost $10 million in lost revenue for businesses for today.

The Mayor of Auckland, Phil Goff, says that he is disappointed that someone would go to work when feeling sick and thereby put so many people at risk of catching the virus.

The Chinese student admits that she did go to the university campus for a short time on Tuesday afternoon while she is feeling sick. The list of the places she visits while feeling sick gets much longer too.

This afternoon the student issues a legal statement saying that she has been asking for a translator and only today is one appointed. She says that the lack of translator results in misinformation which results in harassment. She says that she didn’t ask her employer for sick leave and get refused. She makes her own decision to go to work when feeling sick and she doesn’t tell her boss or manager that she is feeling sick. She blames the lack of translator for the misinformation.

I do wonder how she can be a student in an English-speaking university and live in an English-speaking country and have such a poor understanding of the language that she needs a translator when she is asked about her actions over the past week.

I see an article in the news written by Professor Philip Hill making a plea to have masks compulsory. He tells us that he has a mask in his bag when going on public transport but doesn’t use it because others aren’t wearing masks and he doesn’t want to be the odd one out. He then continues his argument for compulsory mask wearing with false information. He concludes by saying that it also shows solidarity with the rest of the world where Covid is widespread – we should wear masks in NZ because there is lots of cases of Covid in other countries. So we wear masks to show solidarity with the rest of the world?

There are many reasons to avoid compulsory mask-wearing, but just two reasons:

1. The science is absolutely not conclusive and there is no firm medical evidence that masks prevent people getting Covid.
2. People don’t know how to wear masks and they are more likely to touch their faces and so spread any disease, and they often take the masks on and off. Also, the masks really need to be replaced very frequently and this doesn’t happen.

I won’t bother mentioning the pollution caused by the millions of disposable masks being thrown away every day.

Why should everyone be made to wear a mask because Philip Hill feels uncomfortable? This is an outrageous request from Philip Hill. Let him wear a mask if he wants to, but to ask the Government to make it compulsory for his comfort is contemptible.

This fear mongering is encouraged by MAINSTREAM MEDIA.

Saturday 14 November 2020

The Department of Health pushes back against the Chinese student. They insist that during the interviews a Chinese speaking nurse offers to translate for the student but the student says she is good to have the interviews in English. Someone is telling porkies.

Monday 16 November 2020

The Government flip-flops on mask-wearing. They decide to make mask wearing mandatory on public transport in Auckland and on all domestic flights. I don’t like this at all but there are two things that help. First, I don’t travel on public transport, and now I would go out of my way to ensure I never travel on public transport if I can avoid it at all. Secondly, I would rather have a mask-wearing mandate than a lockdown.

However. Mask wearing brings with it its own problems which are currently being ignored. And I wonder what new evidence the Government has which makes them change their mind on masks? What new threat do we have that means we now need masks?

The Government does not support this decision with evidence that masks will help prevent Covid. In fact, the Government until the past few days has been insisting that masks don’t help prevent Covid.

But Ardern says that she sees people wearing masks on flights so people are doing it already so it’s okay to make it mandatory. There is an implication that it’s what people want. The people who want it are those who have been terrified into believing that the virus is very deadly. That’s why people are wearing masks when they are not mandatory. That and the peer pressure to conform by wearing a mask on a plane.

The sight of people in masks does affect you. You feel less safe, you feel obliged to wear a mask yourself, you feel like Covid is of serious concern and we have to work together to ‘keep Covid out’. A little bit of thinking reminds me that all the cases of Covid over the past few months are security breaches at the border, they are not caused by not wearing masks. So masks now are not going to change anything.

Simon Thornley talks on the weekly webinar. He says that Government talks about ‘case’ when someone tests positive for Covid. Usually a ‘case’ is when someone has symptoms. As it’s possible to test positive with PCR test but have no symptoms we have a large number of cases but not a large number of sick people. I think this applies to other countries as well as New Zealand. This means that the true ‘case numbers’ is much lower than reported.

Simon says he thinks that without the worldwide fuss we wouldn’t notice the virus. He refers to the fact that people in various countries show antibodies when sewage is tested and before the first official case is announced in the various countries. This is interesting – so the virus is already around before the lockdowns start? What are the implications of that? For me, it means that I am no longer afraid of the virus, not at all. I am now sure that the virus has been in New Zealand for a long time.

Jeremy Harris on the weekly seminar talks about how the Pfizer vaccine will be stored. It needs to be stored at minus 70 degrees and this is not straightforward. He explains some detail about this. We hear we don’t know how effective the vaccine is, how it works on people, what the side effects are. One big concern from the comments is that the vaccine might become compulsory.

Tuesday 17 November 2020

54 million reported cases worldwide with a steady eight or nine thousand deaths daily.

A new vaccine called the Moderna vaccine is announced today. This vaccine is said to be 94.5% effective so it’s more effective than the Pfizer vaccine (same questions about this as about the Pfizer Vaccine). This vaccine can be stored in a fridge which is much better than the Pfizer vaccine.

Duncan Garner who is usually reasonably sensible about many issues has a different attitude to masks than I do. He thinks it is a wonderful thing and we should all be wearing masks because it is ‘a tiny price to pay for our relative freedoms’. He wants compulsory masks nationwide and not just on public transport in Auckland and on planes. He says we have a border breach every fortnight on average. Has he forgotten that it’s the Government’s failure that causes the breach, so the effort needs to be on effective border control, not on the population of New Zealand being forced to wear masks and scan bar codes?

He interviews Dr Michael Baker who is an epidemiologist in the Government pockets. Garner says wearing a mask is a no-brainer. Baker says that masks on public transport are ‘a start’. He calls this ‘the first step in a programme’. This shocks me. There is a programme and he knows about it but we don’t? I feel afraid at this. There is a lot more control coming from the sound of it. The Government is going slowly, assessing the population’s willingness to comply, and gently shepherding us along into compliance. Horrific!

Baker wants people to wear masks all the time. He compares mask wearing to seat belt wearing, sunscreen and sunhats. He wants mask wearing to be law. He says every New Zealander should have three reusable masks. He wants children in school to be making them!

Duncan Garner interviews the Covid Minister, Chris Hipkins about contact tracing. He asks about ‘no scan, no entry’ and Hipkins says businesses can force people to scan. The Minister also refers to how they watch how the public responds to restrictions to see how far they can go. So scary!

C gives me some information about what is happening in the UK. They have purpose-built hospitals built by the army with a total of about 6,000 beds each. They are called Nightingale Hospitals and there are about seven of them throughout the UK. They have all but one been mothballed. The one which is open has only about 30 patients. The ports have a backlog of hundreds of containers full of PPE from China. So the retailers say there will be a shortage of stock and choice for Christmas shopping as they can’t get supplies in.

South Australia goes into strict lockdown tomorrow for six days. The latest buzz word is ‘circuit breaker lockdown’. After six days of circuit breaker the lockdown will continue for another eight or maybe fourteen days. The lockdown means everything closed except for supermarkets, vets, medical centres, bottle shops, petrol stations and public transport. No exercising outside the home. Only one person in the home allowed out to go to the supermarket. The Chief Medical Officer says that this particular strain of COVID-19 is breeding very, very rapidly, with infected people showing few symptoms. Let me think about this – a particular strain that shows few symptoms? So it isn’t that dangerous is it?

Main-Stream Media Fawns Over Frauds

Thursday 19 November 2020

Pfizer announce that their vaccine is 95% effective (more effective than the Moderna vaccine). The Government has ordered two million doses of the Pfizer vaccine and five million doses of the Moderna vaccine. They really only need to get 4,999,999 doses of Moderna because I don’t need it. I am unwilling to submit to an untested, unproved vaccine with unknown side-effects.

Siouxie Wiles is named the supreme winner of the 2020 Stuff-Westpac Women of Influence Awards. She is not an epidemiologist; she is an associate professor of microbiology at Auckland University. However, she says what the Government wants to hear and she is approved of by mainstream media, so she is rolled out whenever it’s deemed that people need to get a little shot of fear to keep them in line. The judges refer to her ‘accessible and evidence-led commentary about staying safe during the pandemic’ – in other words, her foolish repetition of whatever the Government wants. The judges say she ‘helped ease the nation’s anxiety and became the basis for World Health Organisation communications tools’. Not for me, she doesn’t help ease anxiety. She increases anxiety with her scary predictions. I would say that Suzanne Wiles loves the limelight, loves people to be shocked or impressed by her waist-length, bright pink, curly hair, and loves to hear her own voice. This is the very one who says that having loud music in restaurants would increase the incidence of Covid.

She writes an opinion piece saying that Covid Plan B is ‘an unethical, eugenicist, have-your-Swedish-cake-and-eat-it-too sort of model. It also entirely minimises the huge toll Sweden has already paid for what appears to be surprisingly little benefit. Plan B academics have been pushing their agenda since April’

Of the Great Barrington Declaration written and signed by some of the world’s most eminent, experienced epidemiologists, she says ‘It’s the same unethical, eugenicist crap only they call it ‘Focused Protection’. What the Great Barrington Declaration and Covid Plan B have in common are a small number of contrarian or fringe academics, some from very prestigious universities, backed by slick PR companies and libertarians in positions of power and influence. It’s a tried and tested formula taken right out of the anti-tobacco control and anti-climate change mitigation playbook that pushes the false idea that experts are divided on a particular issue. The Great Barrington Declaration does seem to have the support of the current occupants of the White House. It also has thousands of signatories, though they apparently include the likes of Dr Johnny Bananas.’

I find her comments and articles distasteful and unhelpful. I find the unquestioning adulation and elevation by mainstream media disturbing. I am concerned that she is not the expert on epidemics or viruses but she is treated as Covid-Knowledge Royalty. She also refers to Sweden disparagingly. She is wrong. Sweden’s death figures are similar to other countries where they have had big lockdowns. And, as in other countries, Sweden’s death figures for the year to date are on a par with figures over the previous five years.

Friday 20 November 2020

We hear that one of the guys who caught Covid in South Australia lied and his lie is what drives the state Government to declare strict lockdown. The guy says that he went to buy a pizza at the pizza shop where a worker tests positive so that the health authority thinks that the virus strain is hugely contagious if he could catch it in just a few minutes. In actual fact the guy works at the pizza parlour and spends seven hours with the contagious guy. The authorities are furious and say that South Australia will come out of lockdown early but not until they finish doing whatever it is they are doing.

I hear another voice speaking out against the governmental restrictions and house arrest rules being perpetrated on tens of millions of people around the world. This is Dr. Roger Hodkinson, MA, MB, FRCPC, FCAP. He is the CEO Medical director of Western Medical Assessments. He speaks at the Edmonton City Council Community and Public Services Committee meeting on November 13 about the city’s move to extend its face-covering bylaw. He is listed as speaker number 95 on the meeting agenda. This is a transcript of his submission:

I do appreciate the opportunity to address you on this very important matter. What I’m going to say is lay language, and blunt. It is counter-narrative, and so you don’t immediately think I’m a quack, I’m going to briefly outline my credentials so that you can understand where I’m coming from in terms of knowledge base in all of this.

I’m a medical specialist in pathology which includes virology. I trained at Cambridge University in the UK. I’m the ex-president of the pathology section of the Medical Association. I was previously an assistant professor in the Faculty of Medicine doing a lot of teaching. I was the chairman of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada Examination Committee and Pathology in Ottawa, but more to the point I’m currently the chairman of a biotechnology company in North Carolina selling the COVID-19 test.

And so you might say I know a little bit about all of this. The bottom line is simply this: There is utterly unfounded public hysteria driven by the media and politicians. It’s outrageous. This is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public. There is absolutely nothing that can be done to contain this virus. Other than protecting older, more vulnerable people. It should be thought of as nothing more than a bad flu season. This is not Ebola. It’s not SARS. It’s politics playing medicine and that’s a very dangerous game.

There is no action of any kind needed other than what happened last year when we felt unwell. We stayed home, we took chicken noodle soup, we didn’t visit granny and we decided when we would return to work. We didn’t need anyone to tell us.

Masks are utterly useless. There is no evidence base for their effectiveness whatsoever. Paper masks and fabric masks are simply virtue-signalling. They’re not even worn effectively most of the time. It’s utterly ridiculous. Seeing these unfortunate, uneducated people — I’m not saying that in a pejorative sense — seeing these people walking around like lemmings, obeying without any knowledge base, to put the mask on their face.

Social distancing is also useless because COVID is spread by aerosols which travel 30 metres or so before landing. Enclosures have had such terrible unintended consequences. Everywhere should be opened tomorrow as well as was stated in the Great Barrington Declaration that I circulated prior to this meeting.

And a word on testing: I do want to emphasize that I’m in the business of testing for COVID. I do want to emphasize that positive test results do not, underlined in neon, mean a clinical infection. It’s simply driving public hysteria and all testing should stop. Unless you’re presenting to the hospital with some respiratory problem.

All that should be done is to protect the vulnerable and to give them all in the nursing homes that are under your control, give them all 3,000 to 5,000 international units of vitamin D every day which has been shown to radically reduce the likelihood of Infection. And I would remind you all that using the province’s own statistics, the risk of death under 65 in this province is one in 300,000. One in 300,000. You’ve got to get a grip on this.

The scale of the response that you are undertaking with no evidence for it is utterly ridiculous given the consequences of acting in a way that you’re proposing. All kinds of suicides, business closures, funerals, weddings etc. It’s simply outrageous! It’s just another bad flu and you’ve got to get your minds around that.

Let people make their own decisions. You should be totally out of the business of medicine. You’re being led down the garden path by the chief medical officer of health for this province. I am absolutely outraged that this has reached this level. It should all stop tomorrow.

I am blown away by the directness of this uncompromising speech and by the clarity of the message. I want governments all over the world to start waking up to the truth and releasing people from the terrible restrictions which cause more trouble than they solve. I want the population of the world to waken up and start pushing back against the outrageous control behaviour of governments. Things are desperately out of kilter and we need to hear this voice of reason loud and clear.

Unfortunately, we don’t see this submission reported in mainstream media, although we have people like Siouxie Wiles being paid by the Government and calling this voice of reason ‘unethical, eugenicist crap’. Wiles who is not a medical doctor, not an epidemiologist, not a virologist, uses crude language to launch ad hominem attacks and insult her betters. And she is the one getting air time and newspaper column space. God love us! We need help!

Saturday 21 November 2020

The UK is again in a lockdown for the whole month of November, despite numbers of cases and deaths starting to decline before the start of lockdown.

Some statistics from the UK:

• In July a report commissioned by the UK’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance, scientists estimate there will be 119,000 deaths if a second spike coincides with a peak of winter flu. The second peak of Covid appears to have passed and the mortality number is 54,286 which is less than half the number predicted.
• In mid-September Vallance predicts that the UK would see 50,000 new cases per day by mid-October unless draconian restrictions were introduced. Restrictions are not introduced and the number of new cases per day reaches half that number and falling daily.
• Currently, only 13% NHS beds are occupied by Covid patients. But figures can be presented in a scary way. For example, on Monday 16,271 hospital beds had Covid patients, this sounds terrible. But there 101,255 general and acute beds in England, 15,392 beds in Scotland and 10,563 beds in Wales.
• Hospitals are not fuller than usual for the time of year. In fact, hospitals all over England have got fewer patient numbers than usual for November compared with the last five years (2015 – 2019).
• The Nightingale hospitals have never been more than 1.23% full.
• Of 37,470 Covid deaths recorded by NHS up to 18 November, 53% were people aged over 80 years old. Only 0.7% are people under 40 years old.
• Those who do die are overwhelmingly likely to be suffering from a pre-existing condition. In fact, there are only 40 deaths of people under 40 without a pre-existing condition out of a population of 68,000,000. Pre-existing means overweight, respiratory condition, or serious debilitating disease. 27% with diabetes and 18% with dementia.
• There are not more elderly people than normal dying; for over-75-year-olds, October 2020 shows 6,901.7 deaths per 100,000 people and October 2019 shows 7141.7 deaths per 100,000 people.

So why all the drama and scary stories and lockdowns and masks and rules? Why? I don’t know why and I am concerned that facts are being ignored by governments and by mainstream media. It’s enough to drive anyone to believe in conspiracy theories!

Masks Don’t Give Effective Protection From Covid

Sunday 22 November 2020

Mask wearing is virtue signalling! There is a study on the use of masks as a preventative measure for Covid. I hear that there is some trouble getting the study published and mainstream media is ignoring it too. Covid Plan B website reports on the results of the study.

Result: A total of 3030 participants were randomly assigned to the recommendation to wear masks, and 2994 were assigned to control; 4862 completed the study. Infection with SARS-CoV-2 occurred in 42 participants recommended masks (1.8%) and 53 control participants (2.1%). The between-group difference s −0.3 percentage point (95% CI, −1.2 to 0.4 percentage point; P = 0.38) (odds ratio, 0.82 [CI, 0.54 to 1.23]; P = 0.33). Multiple imputation accounting for loss to follow-up yielded similar results. Although the difference observed is not statistically significant, the 95% Cis are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection.

Conclusion: The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use. The data were compatible with lesser degrees of self-protection.

In the end the guy who produced the study says he wears a mask because he might as well wear one. One thing that I wonder about is the danger of mask wearing.

I see a website with masks for sale. They are protest masks with wording on the masks. Some of my favourites:

It’s not about safety, it’s about compliance.

This mask is useless and so is yours.

Worn by force, not by fear.

Covid-19 survival rate 99.6%.

Placebo

Let’s all pretend this mask is useful.

Monday 23 November 2020

Covid Plan B webinar has two medical doctors as guests. They talk about the lack of questioning in the medical community.

Dr Samantha Bailey says that she has lost jobs and been sacked for publicly questioning the Government’s decision to lockdown. She believes she has a duty to question things.

GP, Dr Alison Goodwin says she hasn’t seen any Covid patients. She wonders if very old people really do want to be locked up and treated by people in ‘space suits’, or would they prefer to hug their grandchildren despite any risks. Alison also wonders if it might be good to spend time focusing on building up immune systems rather than locking down. They both talk about how their colleagues treat them as ‘quacks’ for just questioning things. They are very brave to even be on the webinar.

There is a comment about what is happening in South Australia where surprise is expressed about the extremely strict lockdown which is put in place even after many months of learning about lockdowns and Covid. This is the event caused by one guy saying he only popped into the pizza parlour for a few minutes when he actually worked in the pizza parlour. Why did he lie? Because he had no symptoms and he didn’t want to have to go into self-isolation for two weeks? Could be. The comment is that yes, people are going to lie if they think telling the truth means you have to go into ‘quarantine’ for 14 days regardless of signs of illness and your income will be affected.

Jeremy Harris is an economist and has a young family. He is usually pessimistic on the webinars, although the moderator, Mark, indicates that Jeremy is usually a barrel of laughs. Jeremy tells us that it is said that some of the negative effects of lockdown will last seventy or eighty years. If this is the case, then it will last for a lifetime for those people who are young children today. I want them to know that older people do not want this. Surveys show that younger people are more worried about returning to work after lockdowns or about being risky situations. The older people are generally not so afraid of the virus that they want the world to lock down for their safety. They do not want to be locked down and isolated but they obey the powers-that-be, trusting that they know better. I don’t believe the powers-that-be do know better. I believe they panicked and behaved foolishly, copying each other, being afraid to take any risks, and then being afraid to admit they are wrong. I am sorry. I am sorry that I, as a person over sixty years of age, might be considered one who needs protection to such an extreme degree – I don’t. I am sorry that the lockdowns are occurring and causing untold pain and future problems.

There is talk on the webinar of the vaccines and the two doctors are cautious because the vaccines haven’t really been tested thoroughly. People wonder if the vaccine will be mandatory and some think that it might not be mandatory but there will be rules for things like travel or certain events where you can only join in if you have had the vaccine. So unvaccinated people will be restricted and excluded if they don’t have a ‘vaccination passport’. These concerns are treated as conspiracy theorist nonsense by MSM. I hope they are right.

Tuesday 24 November 2020

And so it begins!

Alan Joyce, the boss of Australia’s national airline, Qantas, says requiring proof of vaccination before boarding flights is going to happen. ‘We will ask people to have a vaccination before they can get on the aircraft… for international visitors coming out and people leaving the country we think that’s a necessity’. Alan Joyce believes that other international airlines will be following suit. For me, this means I may not be able to travel internationally again because I will not willingly submit to a Covid vaccine. How do I feel about that?’

This evening we have a ‘Breaking News’ headline: an Air New Zealand crew member might have Covid and the person was in Resene Paint Shop in Mount Roskill last Friday morning for 25 minutes. All the staff look like they have not caught the virus, but the shop is closed today for deep cleaning and will only open again when the deep clean is complete. That sounds pretty serious, doesn’t it? Certainly worth a ‘Breaking News’ headline on TV One.

Wednesday 25 November 2020

The Air New Zealand crew member tests positive for Covid in China, comes back to NZ today and tests positive again. If two tests are needed to show that someone has Covid, it sounds like he has no symptoms, so we have a deadly disease that you need a test to see that you have it.

What concerns me is that we actually have airline crew flying to other countries and then coming back into New Zealand and going home and living life as normal here. I am concerned because if the Government says a positive PCR test is a ‘case’ and we are at risk of having another lockdown if we get ‘cases’ in the community, and we are supposed to have the borders shut, then it looks pretty irresponsible to me to have airline crew not quarantining. What have I not understood here?

Today we get a list of places the Covid-positive crew member visited on Friday and Saturday. We are told that if you visited any of these places you should look out for symptoms and in some cases get tested. There is a sly dig at people not scanning when they are entering shops – fewer than ten people scanned into Animates during the time the Air NZ crew member was there. Tut.

Overseas Workers or Local Workers?

Friday 27 November 2020

Orchardists and fruit growers are asking for restrictions to be eased on foreign workers coming into New Zealand. They say the fruit and veggies won’t get picked if they can’t have the overseas workers. Some people wonder why, with our rising unemployment, the orchardists can’t employ New Zealanders. There is a suggestion that New Zealanders don’t have what it takes, that they are too soft, and they won’t or can’t do the hard work.

The Government relents and say they will allow 2000 Recognised Seasonal Employees (RSE) to enter the country early in 2021. There are currently about 4000 in the country and they usually have 14,000. So 2000 is a small number. The 2000 will have to go through Managed Isolation and that will need to be paid by the growers/employers at $4700 per worker. Also, the workers must be paid $22.10 per hour which is considered to be the ‘living wage’ as opposed to the minimum wage of $18.90. And they must be paid for 30 hours a week while they are in Managed Isolation for a fortnight.

A union spokeswoman says that if the growers paid $22.10 to New Zealanders they might not need to get workers from overseas. She also points out that foreign workers send much of what they earn offshore, whereas Kiwi workers would spend that money in New Zealand, which helps New Zealand. She says that it’s not true that Kiwis are lazy and unwilling.

She refers to a survey of union members who are asked if they are willing to move to go and pick fruit for minimum wage. 96% say no. But if paid the living wage the number who say no drops to about 66%. She sees this as Kiwis being willing to work. I see it differently. I see overseas workers who are willing to upend their lives and come to New Zealand to earn minimum wage for their families, but New Zealand beneficiaries are mainly not willing.

Who knows? The story can be spun either for or against local workers. What we can be sure of is that fresh fruit will be more expensive this summer.

Saturday 28 November 2020

I read the news daily to see how things are progressing with Covid so that I can record news and opinions here. I find it depressing to read the news daily. I think so many people are sad, grumpy, worried, and lonely because of the dreadful daily news.

Reported case numbers are rising in the Northern Hemisphere as they head into winter. If you think of Covid as a seasonal virus then that’s what is expected. It seems ridiculous that people are put in lockdown during the northern summer when they need to be out and about, building up immunity, getting healthy and strong and getting a daily dose of sunshine to boost their levels of Vitamin D. Infection numbers fall because it’s summer. And then autumn arrives and the numbers of Covid rise, of course. But the rise in numbers is attributed to no lockdown and so lockdowns are put in place again.

There is often an article summarising Covid news around the world and it always sounds terrible. For example, this morning I see that there are about 90,000 Covid patients in hospital beds in USA. That sounds dreadful. I checked how many hospital beds there are in USA and there are 924,107 staffed beds (www.aha.org) which is almost a million hospital beds.

I also read that portable mortuary containers are being ordered, which sounds frightening, but when I look more closely I see that the containers are being ordered but not used, they are being got ready and in reserve.

There is an article showing a photo of a nurse in March and then now. She is looking dreadful now. This indicates that hospital staff in USA are overworked and overwhelmed.

So I look for statistics to show how full the hospitals are and on 19 November 2020 American hospitals are between 62% and 92% full with most in the high sixties and low seventies per cent occupied. (www.aha.org) There is a projection that on 27 November the hospital beds in USA will be 71% occupied, with 11% of those beds being Covid patients.

That would give just over 100,000 Covid patients in the projection, which is about one in every 3650 people in USA in hospital because of Covid. How is 0.028% of hospitalisations of the population a pandemic worth closing down an economy for?

If I look only at the news I soon get worried and depressed about how terrible Covid is. I start to believe we are more fortunate than anyone could imagine, compared to the rest of the world. Things are terrible in Europe, Asia, the Americas, India… And we have been saved and are being kept safe until the vaccine arrives.

Everywhere you go you see Perspex walls between shop assistants or receptionists and you, the possibly infectious public. There are hand sanitisers and little signs telling you to sign in or use the hand sanitiser. Few people are signing in, but I see people regularly using the hand sanitiser. I am not seeing many masks on people, but I see ‘reusable masks’ for sale in the pharmacy for $12.95. And everything will go back to normal when the vaccine arrives.

But when I start looking more closely at new items, statistics and survey results, and when I read the comments on some online news articles, I am convinced that we are being spun a story. This story that we are to believe is when the vaccine arrives we will be able to go back to normal. This is true lunacy. There will never be a return to normal. And that worries and depresses me too. I suspect we will be getting Covid next winter.

On the whole, I don’t tell people what I think. I do try to gently discover what others think, sometimes. I discover that a lot of people believe the Government story that we are being ‘kept safe by Jacinda’, but there is a silent and sizeable minority who are not in agreement with the lockdowns and face masks approach. Their voices are not heard, they are treated as ‘fringe’, or ‘Covid deniers’ who are not to be trusted.

Monday 30 November 2020

Covid Plan B weekly seminar. We hear that flu numbers this year are extremely low. Death numbers are not higher than usual. Is all flu is being diagnosed as Covid?

Simon Thornley talks about what is happening in USA which is considered to be having a terrible time with Covid, and having a large number of Covid deaths. He quotes from a YouTube video Covid-19 Deaths: A Look at U.S. Data – YouTube

He tells us that it appears that there isn’t a big spike in deaths and also the cause of death is being called for Covid when it might be other things. The GP, Dr Alison Goodwin, tells us how doctors decide on cause of death; it’s not straightforward and it’s not scientific. It’s the doctor deciding what he/she will put on the certificate.

Dr Alison also wonders how many positive test cases actually have symptoms. She says she wonders how a positive test can be called a case if there are no symptoms. Someone tells us that at Jet Park where all the positive cases are taken, about 80% of people there are asymptomatic.

Dr Alison says that the focus needs to be on being healthy, and increasing our immunity, rather than focusing on the virus as the enemy. She says that the pandemic we need to be concerned about is obesity and diabetes. 10% of people have diabetes – that is a true pandemic. Also diabetes and obesity make a person more susceptible to Covid death. Mark says that Pharmac won’t fund diabetic medicine which really does save lives, while billions is being spent on fighting Covid.

Simon refers to the vaccine rushed out in 2009 for Swine Flu and the dangers and damage caused by the vaccine. Someone comments that people have been trained to see vaccines as a silver bullet and they don’t distinguish between them, but vaccines are very different, and come with different risks. Mark tells us that 40% of GPs in the UK say they will not be getting the vaccine themselves. He wonders if the New Zealand Government will take responsibility for any problems from the vaccine as the vaccine makers are covered under some international agreement which says they are not liable for any problems with their own vaccines.

There is a question about masks – where is the evidence that wearing masks works at preventing Covid, and what does it do? There is discussion about the dangers mask-wearing can cause. Jeremy tells us that mask-wearing in USA is at about 87% and he believes it will fall off. He thinks we need to protest peacefully against the restrictions of masks, lockdowns, and vaccines.

Someone asks how she can avoid wearing a mask on a flight in New Zealand where they are mandatory. Suggestions include sipping coffee or water very slowly for the whole journey, eating a bar of chocolate really slowly, wearing a belly dancer mask, saying the mask makes you feel sick, carrying an asthma inhaler.

The PCR Test

Tuesday 2 December 2020

The Covid test used in New Zealand is the PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) test. It indicates the presence of RNA, remnants of Covid, in a person’s respiratory tract. The PCR test doesn’t discriminate between an active case, a previous case or whether the patient is asymptomatic. The PCR test is not designed as a diagnostic tool. It is designed only to aid a clinical diagnosis by a doctor who is reviewing patient symptoms before making a diagnosis. Despite this, New Zealand uses a deep nasal swab for the PCR test administered with no reference to symptoms, to diagnose Covid.

There is some important news from overseas which hasn’t made it into the New Zealand media, or indeed onto any major headlines worldwide. Four German holidaymakers are quarantined in Portugal after being given PCR tests. The tourists are ordered to stay in the hotel over the northern summer after one of them tests positive and the other three are labelled close contacts and therefore made to quarantine as well. The case centres on the reliability (or lack thereof) of Covid PCR tests.

The tourists say that they are being illegally confined to a hotel without their consent. They take out a writ of habeas corpus and they win their case. There is an appeal and the higher court upholds the lower court’s decision.

A legal dictionary describes habeas corpus like this: A writ of habeas corpus—which literally means to ‘produce the body’—is an order issued by a court of law to a prison warden or law enforcement agency holding an individual in custody. It requires that they deliver that prisoner to the court so a judge can decide whether that prisoner had been lawfully imprisoned and, if not, whether they should be released from custody.

The Portuguese court case fails because there is no doctor to perform a medical examination of any of the four Germans. The report says, ‘The judges also said that only a doctor can ‘diagnose’ someone with a disease, and were critical of the fact that they were apparently never assessed by one.’

So if a PCR test cannot tell us whether someone is infectious with Covid then New Zealand’s tally of Covid ‘cases’ (and everyone else’s around the world) are totally unreliable. I read that this unreliability of PCR testing has been common knowledge for the past two months.

It’s odd that we have a deadly virus with symptoms so mild that you need a test to tell you whether you have it or not. The latest data show it is the eighth most common cause of death in England, and it doesn’t make the top ten in Wales.

Meanwhile, in Wuhan, the Chinese Government says it has stopped testing and they have zero cases of Covid. Could it be that they just stopped testing and got on with their lives?

Thursday 3 December 2020

There is great excitement as the UK announces that the Pfizer vaccine is approved for distribution and vaccines will start happening as early as next week. This is the first country in the world to announce they are ready to vaccinate the population. The vaccine has taken ten months to develop, under normal circumstances it would take up to ten years.

Chatting with an acquaintance she tells me that her daughter, son-in-law and grandchild who all live in Hong Kong, are due to arrive back in NZ today for a Christmas holiday. They take six weeks off work for the trip. They will be in Managed Isolation for a fortnight, then they will have nine days with family before returning to Hong Kong for a fortnight’s Managed Isolation there.

Friday 4 December 2020

I turn on the radio this morning and listen to a few minutes RNZ National Programme. Their correspondent in USA is saying how very terrible it is there, and how there are 100,000 people in hospital with Covid and how there is no leadership on Covid coming from President Trump. He omits to say that the hospital admission numbers are about normal for the time of year and that the Covid response in USA is down to the Governors of the individual states. The interviewer and the correspondent tut about this ‘lack of leadership’ in shocked tones. This is New Zealand’s national radio station, where one might expect to hear the most trusted and balanced news and views.

The figures today are 65 million reported ‘cases’ and 1.5 million reported deaths. Doctor Genevieve Briand, the Assistant Director for MS in Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University in USA gives a video lecture in which she examines the deaths due to Covid and the deaths overall in the USA. She discovers that the number of deaths don’t rise in line with the number of recorded deaths with Covid. In fact, the deaths for flu and heart disease drop dramatically. She says that we can only say Covid is causing deaths if the number of deaths rise when Covid is present. I am thinking about what NZ GP Doctor Alison says about how doctors write death certificates. I also mull over the fact that the US Government passed a law in March which gives a 20% bonus to doctors if the cause of death is Covid.

At first, the hospital removes the article revealing Dr Briand’s findings. It is later restored. Then fact checkers start fact-checking in order to discredit Dr Briand. But she doesn’t have an agenda; she merely reports what she discovers. The result of her investigation is that it is easy to see that death numbers haven’t risen in line with Covid-reported deaths. That doesn’t mean that Covid doesn’t exist, or that people are not in hospital or dying because of Covid. However, it does call into question the validity of the extreme measures which are in place all over the world to try and stop Covid from spreading. Even if Covid is killing more people than normal, does that really mean we need to cause so much pain and suffering especially to the poor of the world with lockdown and social restrictions?

I keep thinking about the 80% of Covid-positive test people in NZ who are asymptomatic; the only reason they know they have Covid is because they have been told they have. A deadly disease where you need a test to tell you that you have it is a strange phenomenon. Especially when it’s so deadly that you are taken into enforced quarantine by the Government for 14 days and only released if you agree to submit to a deep nasal swab test which must come back with a negative result. Is enforced quarantine not prison? You are being denied your freedom. But what is the crime? It’s having a positive test for a coronavirus, mainly without symptoms.

Sunday 6 December 2020

Russia announces that it has its own vaccine and is already vaccinating people. The UK will start vaccinating this coming week. The Queen and Prince Philip are said to be getting the vaccine when it’s their turn.

In New Zealand the Government says that border restrictions will continue for another 12 – 18 months. The poor of New Zealand are suffering because of lockdowns and closed borders. In general the MSM reports that the Government is doing an admirable job of dealing with the pandemic. However, I am thinking of how things were before the pandemic is declared: the Finance Minister, jovial Grant Robertson inherits a six billion dollar surplus and a 4% growth rate at the end of 2017. By March 2020 as the lockdown begins, the surplus has disappeared and the growth rate is reduced to around 1.6%.

Thursday 10 December 2020

The Pfizer vaccine is being administered in the UK now. On the first day there are two people who suffer an ‘anaphylactoid reaction’ after receiving the vaccine. They are both health workers who need to carry an adrenaline auto-injector with them. This sounds like the vaccine causes them to go into anaphylactic shock – very serious. So now anyone receiving the vaccine is asked about allergic reactions and anyone who has a history of ‘significant’ allergic reactions to medicines, food or vaccines will not be allowed to receive the vaccine.

The first non-medical staff to receive the vaccine are very old people. One of them says that now she will be able to hug her grandchildren. Who told her this? She won’t be able to hug her grandchildren now, any more than she could yesterday. She has to wait three weeks, have a second dose of vaccine, and then wait another week. Only then does she have about 94% chance of being immune for up to six months. The jab is not a magic wand.

We hear of a new group being set up. It’s called ‘Voices For Freedom’. They are three women who are not happy with lockdown ideas and restrictions on freedoms. They are very excited about what might come and how their group might grow. One idea they talk about is for groups of like-minded people to meet in cafes and talk (loudly) about how ineffective lockdown is, how it’s wrong and not a good idea to wear masks, etc. So that they educate in a small way, all around them who might be listening in.

We continue to hear of large numbers of people with the virus around the world and people dying with the virus. In USA today we hear that 3000 people die in one day.

Joe Biden, president–elect, is talking about the Covid response team that he will have and he talks about 100 days of mask wearing to help beat the virus.

Friday 12 December 2020

I look through some December issues of magazines, one from USA, one from Australia, two from New Zealand. The number of articles referring to ‘this difficult year’ or ‘hard times’ or ‘lockdown’ or whatever is remarkable. New Zealand has references like this in more than half the articles, the Australian one is full of references too. The American magazine makes no reference at all to Covid or Covid restrictions, apart from one tiny, almost missed reference in the editor’s letter.

Monday 14 December 2020

There is much talk in Europe about social events over Christmas. Germany says Christmas is cancelled. The Netherlands say no Christmas socialising allowed. The UK says they will have a five-day break from restrictions for Christmas. In USA a young family is thrown off a flight because their two-year-old toddler refused to wear a mask.

At the last Covid Plan B weekly webinar before Christmas Simon Thornley compares Norway and Sweden. Norway has lockdowns and Sweden has none, but allows citizens to be responsible and makes some restrictive rules without imposing a full lockdown. Norway spends about three times more per person with their lockdowns. Looking at overall deaths in Norway and Sweden per capita there is very little difference. Interestingly, the New Zealand Herald puts out another article today telling us that Sweden has failed in its response to Covid.

Simon talks about excess mortality rates, there is very little information available yet. The only place with any statistics on excess death is New York where ventilators were used excessively and ventilators can cause problems of their own. He tells us that it’s very difficult to get an accurate cause of death because of too many things around death, and researchers have known about this difficulty since the sixties. It really does depend on the definition of cause of death.

Dr Mike Jackson tells us that anyone dying within 28 days of a positive Covid test is defined as a Covid death no matter how they die, so if you die in a car accident it’s still a Covid death? Yes, this is the case everywhere except for Singapore.

We are reminded that Italy has serology which confirms SARS-CoV-2 in the north of Italy in September 2019. In fact, Covid is present in Milan’s wastewater as early as mid-December 2019 at concentrations ‘comparable’ to those found in swabs tested at later stages of the pandemic. This is significant. And this evidence reinforces the theory that the spread of the virus is happening before Italy’s first official Covid patient in mid-February – and even before the person who is considered to be the first person in Europe to get Covid who is a 43-year-old from Paris who is sick in November 2019.

One of the doctors on the weekly webinar tells us that the Medical Council contacts her after she says on social media that she wouldn’t have the vaccine herself but people need to decide for themselves. She says that now she won’t speak out again and she won’t say again that she won’t have the vaccine. This is concerning – is the Medical Council interested in ‘informed consent’ and ‘freedom to decide’? Is the Medical Council muzzling any dissension? Why can’t a trained medical person give her professional opinion openly?

I listen to these people talking; I am not a medical doctor, an epidemiologist, a virologist or an economist. I have no expertise in any of these areas, and yet I am reassured and convinced by what they say and their calm, intelligent, knowledgeable manner. What they say makes so much sense. Away from them, I am completely discouraged and confused by the nonsensical, irrational and completely cold-hearted drivel I read in MSM. But one thing I am convinced of – this virus is not a true dangerous pandemic needing lockdowns to combat and conquer it.

The weekly webinars finish now until after Christmas. The new group Voices for Freedom will have a couple of online meetings this coming week.

Thursday 17 December 2020

The Franklin County News has an article about Christmas with a headline reading ‘Festive Cheer in a Post Covid World’. P laughs out loud and wonders planet the writer is living on. There is no ‘post Covid world’. Eventually we will learn to live with Covid-19. But that is not going to happen as long as there is a belief that we can eradicate Covid.

Boris Johnson promises the UK that Christmas gathering will be allowed, despite the three ‘traffic light’ levels of restrictions called ‘tiers’. Even those in the strictest Tier Three will be allowed to meet family over the Christmas period.

A Report on the Government’s Response to the Covid Crisis

Friday 18 December 2020

A report into the Government’s response to Covid is presented to Government in September before the General Election, but is kept secret for three months until today – the Friday before Christmas.

The report gives a long list of Government failures. Despite the authors of the report being Government insiders and supporters, the report criticises the Government response, saying that ‘consistency and quality of communication, and consultation with relevant stakeholders was sub-optimal’.

Clearly, if this report had been released to the public in September, before the ‘Covid Election’, the election result would have been very different.

The report refers to:

• Inappropriate accountability for various aspects of the strategies and their implementation
• Border control directives have been difficult to understand and implement
• A lack of clarity in the testing framework
• A lack of good forward planning from the perspective of an end to end system
• Under-utilisation of health expertise outside the Ministry of Health leading to sub optimal analysis and planning documents
• A lack of confidence in data being reported to key decision makers
• Poor communication by the Ministry of Health with those working on the ground
• Testing ‘wasn’t fit for purpose’.
• The country needs a ‘more effective, coordinated and aligned approach’ to ‘safeguarding our borders.’
• There is ‘poor communication between and within the Ministry of Health’.

The Government agencies the Committee spoke to without exception expressed concern at their inability to be heard by the Ministry of Health. ‘The Ministry of Health were seen as operating without full regard for the impact of and or understanding of the operationalistion impacts of their decisions.’

‘The Ministry of Health is not well informed on details of how the economy or the social sector operates.’

‘Health sector providers expressed frustration at receiving last minute instructions for changes which they believed did not recognise much of what was happening on the ground.’

‘There was a feeling that a lack of preparedness to understand the implications of some of the advice being offered put the Government and key affected parties in a difficult position’.

This all fits in with my observation and careful reading, but not with the facts being presented daily by MSM and not with the impression the public has of how the Government is dealing with all things Covid. Jacinda Ardern says her Government’s first priority is transparency. And yet we have wonderful PR and NO transparency. We are being lied to and people believe the lies.

We hear that our Government is planning to borrow money to keep the Managed Isolation facilities in large hotels in city centres for another eighteen months. That will make two years of closed or tightly restricted borders with expensive and unsuitable Managed Isolation facilities. I am still wondering why large population centres are a good place to put potential risks, and why purpose-built facilities are not being built quickly away from population centres.

We are told that there is some ‘good news’ – travel will be allowed between Niue and New Zealand ‘some time in the first half of 2021’. I would hardly call that ‘good news’, or even ‘news’. News would be ‘travel allowed from this date onwards to these places’.

I read an article written by C J Hopkins, an American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. He writes: ‘… societies throughout the world have been transformed beyond recognition. Constitutional rights have been suspended. Protest has been banned. Dissent is being censored. Government officials are issuing edicts restricting the most basic aspects of our lives … where we can go, when we can go there, how long we are allowed to spend there, how many friends we are allowed to meet there, whether and when we can spend time with our families, what we are allowed to say to each other, who we can have sex with, where we have to stand, how we are allowed to eat and drink, etc. The list goes on and on.’ This sums things up well.

Pre-Christmas Panic

Saturday 19 December 2020

Alarm! Alarm!

New South Wales records some community ‘cases’ in Sydney’s Northern Beaches this week. The number reaches 17 ‘cases’ on Thursday. Thousands of people wearing their masks hurry to get tested. There are 12,374 tests done in one day. Out of all those thousands of tests, 23 new ‘cases’ are turned up. The normally busy beaches are deserted, people are voluntarily staying at home.

Twenty-three positives out of 12,374 tests is less than one positive test in 500. That’s 0.2% of the tests. There no-one is in ICU. There are no deaths. How would that compare in normal circumstances to people having a cold? How many people would have a cold? We have no idea. We would only know if someone went to hospital. What about flu? We would only know about the serious cases of flu when someone is sick enough to go to hospital. It seems reasonable to assume that there would be more than 40 colds or 40 flu cases in a city of nearly six million. It’s the serious cases that are of interest and there are no reports of any hospitalisations in Sydney.

The media reports news of the virus cases with language like ‘in the grip of a new outbreak’, ‘ballooned to 17 cases’, ‘high risk’, ‘what we know’, ‘what you need to know’, ‘braces for lockdown’, ‘cases continue to surge’, ‘wakeup call’. These words grip, ballooned, brace, surge, are emotive.

There is talk of interviewing the ‘cases’, tracing the genomic sequencing, searching for patient zero, tracking down contacts, investigations underway. People are told to abandon all non-essential shopping (on the last Saturday before Christmas), not to go to the Christmas parties or lunches or barbecues, not to panic buy, to isolate immediately.

The Premier of NSW puts the Northern Beaches into lockdown from 5 pm Saturday until midnight on Wednesday, 23 December. There is concern that Christmas may be cancelled in Sydney or NSW. Other states in Australia are gearing up to preventing Australians from NSW entering their state.

Meanwhile, Austria goes into lockdown for the third time, the French president has Covid, the Slovak PM has Covid, England might go back into lockdown for Christmas, Northern Ireland is going into lockdown for six weeks on Boxing Day.

One person likes the masks – Paul McCartney likes not being recognised in public when he is wearing a mask.

Sunday 20 December 2020

Boris Johnson reneges on his promise to ease social restrictions for Christmas in England. He makes an announcement telling of the discovery of a new variant of the virus which is much more contagious although not any more deadly. He says that there will be a new stricter tier called Tier Four. This will be put in place in various parts of England and will affect more than 18 million people. It starts in a few hours and will go right through Christmas.

London is one of the places in Tier Four. There is a mad scramble to leave the city with roads blocked, trains being booked, flights being booked. People are told that if they have booked a holiday for Christmas and they live in a Tier Four area than they are not allowed to go. The airlines say that if people are not allowed to go on holiday they forfeit their money and there will be no refunds. About a dozen countries ban UK flights from landing at their airports because of the new variant of the virus.

Ports are blocked with containers containing PPE that the UK Government bought at a premium from China who allegedly bought up PPE around the world before the pandemic and then sold it back to countries at a higher price.

Lines of trucks to cross the Channel are queued up for many miles as things slow down because Brexit final date for an agreement draws near. Now those queues are getting longer as France doesn’t want the truck drivers in France and French truck drivers are not keen to enter England.

The Post Office says that they are receiving over 200 million extra parcels and letters than usual for the time of year. This is because people are shopping online of course. The Post Office sorting offices are resorting to storing bags of mail and parcels outside because it doesn’t fit into the sorting office.

Positive tests for Covid rises in the UK but Nightingale hospitals are still empty despite the rising ‘case’ numbers.

People are hurting, suffering, scared, angry and confused.

Monday 21 December 2020

In Australia, there are more than 28,200 tests conducted in 24 hours in NSW, producing 15 positive results.

Restrictions are increasing in Sydney and also between states. A New Zealand epidemiologist popular with Government and also with MSM says that the new contagious strain of the virus will be in New Zealand within weeks. He also says that we are likely to be like Sydney very soon.

So the threat of more lockdowns and restrictions hangs over us in New Zealand like the sword of Damocles.

Tuesday 22 December 2020

In Australia, there are 44,000 tests conducted in Sydney in 24 hours. This turns up eight positive results.

In France, President Macron closes the border between the UK and France for 48 hours because of the new strain of Covid that Boris Johnson refers to. Trucks line the roads of Kent for kilometre after kilometre. French truck drivers say they just want to get home for Christmas. They won’t be able to do that now.

Sweden, without forced lockdowns continues to make recommendations and is under pressure to introduce strict measures. However, Sweden continues to make strong recommendations to work from home, avoid public transport, wear masks in public, keep physical distancing, and so on. And numbers of positive tests and of deaths rises as expected for winter and in line with other countries in the Northern Hemisphere. But numbers are not hugely worse than other European countries, with Sweden being the twenty-seventh highest in the list of recorded deaths with Covid. This surely begs the question – if there is not much difference between lockdown countries and an extreme-care-recommended country, do lockdowns work?

In England, supermarkets warn people not to panic-buy. There is talk of food shortages in the UK as the final Brexit agreement day comes closer and uncertainty increases, all in addition to the Covid situation.

Dozens of countries close their borders to flights from the UK. But lone voices here and there point out that the new variant is already a couple of months old so it’s not that new, it will already be in many countries, and it’s not more deadly or dangerous, just more contagious.

In UK newspapers online I read of reactions to Boris Johnson’s Tier Four and the new restrictions. Are people are becoming ‘Covid weary’? They might be. I do a quick straw poll on about thirty top comments in this article, all of them have lots of ‘up’ arrows and ‘likes’. A few comments agree that the UK Government has made a good call and people breaking the rules are to blame for the spread. For the rest, it’s not just disagreement with the rules, it is rage and fury at the last-minute change to the rules. Some comments are:

‘We have been isolating in the run up to seeing my mum and brother at Christmas, as have they. We would have posed no risk to each other, or to anyone else. Yet it is now illegal for us to meet as planned. I have been fairly supportive of everything (and the Government) up until now. But, from this point I feel completely over it.’

‘My kids were due to come from London to spend Christmas in Devon with their parents and sister. All within the rules we were told. Now they’ll be spending it alone. There isn’t a word for how angry I feel now.’

‘I am pleased the Government has acted. My 90-year-old mum had already decided to self-isolate over Christmas. She sensibly reasoned that she’d had enough turkey dinners to worry about one more and why take an unnecessary risk with a vaccine imminent when she plans to take a holiday in the summer and see some old school chums.’

‘My 85-year-old parents, including my mum with dementia, will now have Christmas alone. No presents, no Christmas dinner and no company. I cannot express in words what I’m feeling at the moment.’

‘Let’s put things into perspective and have some facts here everyone. The Government is only listening to these so-called Medical Experts, who are scare mongering us all with their doom and gloom ‘might bes, and what ifs’; What would you have said if you’d been told a year ago that 99.91% of the UK’s population were well. Laughed and accepted it. Well that is exactly the situation now. The number of COVID deaths equate to less than one tenth of one percent, so the remaining 99.9% of us are fine. Why are we all being targeted with the same punitive actions – because of the ‘scientific experts’ This is not a pandemic when you compare it to The Spanish Flu. As horrible as any death is (I’ve suffered too), we need to be practical and sensible. The mental health situation this is causing and the serious illnesses not being diagnosed is unacceptable.’

‘I am totally fed up with the Government by scientists, and only one group of them. Especially the faith Boris has in Prof Ferguson and his failed models (repeatedly failed) 50,000 dead by May, over 3 million dead by now, which never came to be. This lockdown strategy seems the only one governments pursue even in the light of both the Barrington scientists and the WHO saying it is the wrong route. We should protect the most vulnerable (IF they choose protection) allow the rest to catch and develop immunity to this virus, then the other sick would be treated and the economy wouldn’t tank!’

The commenters who agree with the new Tier and Christmas restrictions believe that those not obeying lockdown rules are causing the increased number of ‘cases’ leading Boris to renege on his Christmas promise. I think it’s the people Boris is listening to who are causing him to change the rules. He is being told frightening things by people he obviously trusts. Maybe he is not a strong, decisive and wise leader but a hail-fellow-well-met sort of libertarian people pleaser who is uncomfortable with making these announcements but doesn’t know how to not make them.

However, a larger survey reveals that 85% of people polled will keep the Christmas rules and are okay with keeping the Christmas rules. So clearly, the ones commenting are not in the majority.

I am looking for a rise in hospitalisations and deaths which will actually show that there is an increase in real life cases. Today the figures are steady. So is it the increased testing which causes increased positive test results which prompts Boris and others to impose such restrictions at such a time after such a year?

Wednesday 23 December 2020

Things deteriorate in Europe with thousands of truck drivers stranded in Kent, away from home and unlikely to be able to get home for Christmas because of President Macron’s decision to close French ports to UK ships for 48 hours. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor of The Daily Telegraph in the UK writes ‘Emmanuel Macron’s ban on trucks entering France wins the prize for the most fatuous political gesture since the onset of this pandemic. The mutant strain B.1.1.7 is already all over Europe. British scientists spotted it early … because the UK … has the most advanced genomic monitoring regime on the planet.’

Many more countries ban flights from the UK. The knock-on effect for New Zealanders returning home is that their flights through these other countries are banned so the flights have been cancelled. Many of them are stranded. One guy gives up his job, gives notice on the rented house, has the flights booked and then cancelled on the last minute and he with his wife and their two children are effectively homeless and stuck now. He says it’s not too bad for him and it’s much worse for others. He says he can’t get a flight and a voucher for managed isolation with matching dates and gets no help from the powers-that-be in New Zealand.

Thursday 24 December 2020

So many people across the planet with heartrending stories of broken plans and loneliness for Christmas. I read a couple of stories and I weep. It’s worse than inhumane. It goes against everything it means to be human. We are created as social beings for relationship with each other. As a species we are gregarious, we want to share and be together in groups. We support, encourage, fight, disagree, share, compete – all in groups and not alone. And yet so many people will spend Christmas alone this year. This may be the saddest Christmas ever for many people. Will it be worth it? One painful, lonely Christmas to conquer Covid? Who knows? No-one knows at this stage, but you have to believe that it is worth it in order to buy into it and agree to the restrictions. Time will show if it is worth it.

I ask family in the UK if they received their Christmas cards yet. Two say yes, others say no, not yet. The cards were all posted together on 17 November. Under normal circumstances they would be there within five to seven days. The cards are not there after 37 days.

We watch a programme about Chatsworth House at Christmas. They decorate it beautifully and have Christmas Markets. It’s a very big event for Chatsworth. The programme tells the story of Christmas 2019. At the end of the programme they talk about their plans for 2020. When we watch we know that those plans are going to be upset. It’s a strange feeling. What will they do about it? They make a ten-minute video giving a tour of the Christmas decorations through the house. It’s beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. You see hours of work in things like flocks of paper birds all handmade, and huge Christmas trees full of handmade decorations. Everyone is sad that people are not there to walk through and enjoy the house, but they are very happy to be showing the decorations on camera. They appear individually until the end when they are in one room, metres from each other, all wearing masks, and they shout in unison ‘Merry Christmas’.

A Year of Lunacy Draws to a Close

Sunday 27 December 2020

I see some news about a possible cure for Covid. It’s Ivermectin. The brand name is Strometrol. As well as treating humans, it can also be used in large animals to clear parasites. Initial tests on small groups of people with Covid in various countries around the world show an 80% recovery rate if given early enough. This is hopeful, and obviously there is a need for more tests. If this proves to be useful it will be wonderful. It’s a generic drug, it’s available, it has been in use for about forty years and it’s very cheap.

Monday 28 December 2020

There are 81 million confirmed positive test results worldwide. 1.7 million deaths are recorded as Covid deaths. Sounds worrying until you convert it to percentages.

More and more areas of the UK are going into Tier Four. A headline talks of the National Health Service (NHS) being ‘overwhelmed by highly infectious new strain’ and there is talk of more areas being put into Tier Four which basically means all fun things are stopped and people must stay at home except for food shopping and emergencies.

This is interesting as NHS data shows that only 388 people aged under 60 with no underlying health conditions have died of Covid in hospital in England since the start of the virus. More people die in road accidents. In fact, there are 1,784 reported road deaths in 2018. Do we stop all driving? Ban all cars? No. If you are under the age of sixty and in good health you are more likely to die on the road than from Covid. But we don’t stop healthy people from driving and make them stay at home, close their businesses, stop them from seeing family and friends, prevent them from holding their new born grandchild or holding the hand of a dying loved one.

The UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) is calling all flu and pneumonia deaths Covid deaths. This does increase Covid death numbers, and this has been the case since June, four months after the first reported cases in the UK.

Here in New Zealand we are told that those returning from ‘higher risk countries’ such as UK will need to have extra tests – one before they get on the plane, one when they arrive and then the standard two more on days three and twelve. Each test costs $200.

Tuesday 29 December 2020

A guy phones talkback radio to say that he thinks only New Zealanders should be allowed into New Zealand at this time when the Managed Isolation facilities are stretched and people are desperate to get back into New Zealand. The talkback host says that this is already the case, whereupon the guy phoning in says that he is in central Auckland and it is ‘overrun with Italians who are here for the Americas Cup’. So how does that work? How do rich holidaymakers get into New Zealand while New Zealand families are stuck overseas or separated from loved ones in New Zealand by the entry restrictions? Just wondering about this.

A scary headline from a UK newspaper declares that there might be a new ‘Tier Five’ as the number of people in hospital with Covid positive patients ‘soar’ to twenty thousand from about seventeen thousand a week ago. Twenty thousand hospital beds is about 12% of the hospital beds in the UK. Positive test results increase also, in line with the number of tests done.

I read some articles which imply that anyone who doesn’t believe that Covid is deadly and to be avoided at all costs is a ‘conspiracy theorist’. All ‘conspiracy theorists’ must not be listened to, must be discredited, and must be shown up as irresponsible. People are banned from social media sites if they insist on saying that the virus is contagious but not deadly and that we need to learn to live with it in the way we live with colds and flu.

Wednesday 30 December 2020

I read an article about the WHO’s definition of ‘herd immunity’. Until 15 October 2020 the WHO definition of herd immunity is; ‘Herd immunity is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or a natural immunity developed through previous infection.’ This is a standard definition for ‘herd immunity’ which first came into usage in the nineteen-twenties.

Then on 15 October 2020 the WHO quietly changes its definition to read: ‘Herd immunity’, also known as ‘population immunity’, is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached.’

Less than a month later the UK approves the first commercial vaccine for Sars-Cov-2 infection. Why? Why the change of definition? Why the speedy acceptance of a vaccine? Why is the definition changed quietly and all previous WHO website references deleted?

An article on a New Zealand news site lists the ‘Stars we have lost this year’. I read the article and see that there are 35 names, I know three of them the rest are not ‘stars’ or even ‘starlets’. Of the three I know the names of, two of them are in their eighties and one is 79. In another time they may have died from flu or pneumonia. This article is another example of Covid-fear-mongering.

Thursday 31 December 2020

The New Year’s Honours List today shows that Professors Michael Baker and Shaun Hendy are both being honoured with the title Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Prof Baker is given the title for his services to public health while Shaun Hendy is a recipient for services to science.

Shaun Hendy is the one who in March predicts that New Zealand will have up to 40,000 deaths from Covid, or even up to 80,000 deaths if we don’t have lockdown. He is the one who copies Neil Ferguson in the UK, plucking the figure 10-20 percent deaths based on modelling, not on any facts. He is a disgrace to his profession and has failed.

Michael Baker is the one who recommends we stay in lockdown much longer than we do and he disagrees with the WHO when they say that lockdown should not be a primary method of controlling Covid. He also thinks we should all wear masks because the rest of the world has community Covid and are wearing masks. Yep. Two muppets are chosen to be honoured. The brave people of Covid Plan B who go against the flow, who look at facts and suggest we need to look at facts very seriously are called names and vilified while the muppets are honoured.