David Craig, on May 12th, 2020(Tuesday blog)
The greatest assholes – our Government or our media?
When this is all over, we can expect a public inquiry into our Government’s mis-handling of the Chinese Covid-19 plague.
Hopefully this inquiry will expose some of the Government’s worst mistakes:
- not taking the coronavirus seriously due to a fixation with Brexit
- muddling between a ‘herd immunity’ strategy and a lockdown strategy
- delays in implementing lockdown
- allowing over 10,000 arrivals at Heathrow airport each week with no testing and no quarantining
- turfing about 15,000 patients out of hospital into isolation, their families or care homes without any testing to make room in hospitals for the expected tsunami of Covid-19 victims
- believing a statistical model of 500,000 deaths from a group at Imperial College who had a stunning record of hugely exaggerating the effects of every situation they had analysed in the past
- etc etc
And the Government will be blamed (probably rightly) for many of the lives lost.
But nobody will be analysing the mistakes made by our career-hungry journalists and how many deaths they have caused. In yesterday’s blog, I tried to show that we could expect a mere 5% increase in annual death rates from the Chinese Covid-19 plague. But irresponsible journalists, desperate to make headlines, breathlessly quoted ever-rising numbers of Covid-19 deaths without ever putting these into context.
One of the worst mistakes our useless, self-promoting journalists made as they tried to turn a problem into a crisis was the great ventilator panic:
Ventilators! Ventilators! We need more ventilators! Ooops!
You may remember that just a few weeks ago, a howling screaming, mouth-frothing mob of journalists was attacking the Government for not having sufficient ventilators available to treat Covid-19 patients. The result – massive panic by the Government and frantic efforts to get any company that could producing ventilators for our hospitals. Who knows how many millions or tens of millions were spent buying these ventilators?
But you won’t hear our worthless, self-promoting, careerist journalists mentioning ventilators any more. Why not? Because our intensive care doctors are now finding out that intubation (putting Covid-19 patients on a ventilator) when they have ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) has been a disaster with over half of intubated patients dying.
Of course, there could be a chicken and egg situation here. Are the intubated patients dying in such high numbers because only the most seriously ill patients are intubated? Or are the high death rates due to intubation being the wrong treatment protocol for Covid-19 sufferers?
Increasingly, it seems that many medics are concluding that intubation is the wrong treatment for Covid-19 patients with ARDS. Here’s a graph of the level of intubations being performed at one New York hospital. If you can read the graph, you’ll see the level of intubations fell off a cliff on 4 April:
This is in spite of the fact that the peak for Covid-19 cases in New York wasn’t until 14 April.
In the UK�on 27 March, 78% of Covid patients who had gone to NHS ICUs were intubated and ventilated within 24 hours of arriving. By�April 24, that number had gone down to 67%. The cumulative mortality rate for NHS ICU Covid patients decreased from 52.1% to 50.7% over that same period.
This is why you won’t see our mostly worthless journalists mentioning ventilators any more. Because journalists (with their useless degrees in English or Gender Studies) got it wrong. Because we didn’t need more ventilators at all. What we actually needed were more CPAP devices and faster repurposing of existing medication to keep patients off ventilators – off the death machines which our journalists had so enthusiastically promoted just a few weeks ago.
Media asshole-level indicator
And now that the Government are suggesting we gradually lift lockdown, our sh*t-for-brains journalists are at it again. Once again a frenzied, screaming, howling, spittle-flecked mob of journalists are berating the Government. This time it’s for supposedly having�‘mixed messages’ and for ‘not making it clear‘ exactly how every single person in the country should act in every single possible imaginable situation during the gradual lifting of the lockdown.
When the PM did his Sunday evening talk, journalists screamed in outrage that the PM’s message lacked detailed instructions even though Boris Johnson made it perfectly clear that the Government would be publishing a 50-page document the next day detailing its advice. When the 50-page advice was published, the media mob howled that it didn’t cover every single eventuality that could possibly happen anywhere in the country even though the Government made it quite clear that further documents on helping reduce Covid-19 infections – such as redesigning work-places to allow social distancing – would be published this week. And when Boris Johnson dared suggest that people use their “common sense” rather than expecting the Government to tell them exactly how to behave, this caused total emotional meltdown in our self-regarding, UK-hating media.
Plus of course, given that the ginger-pubed wee Krankie from North of the border would never allow Scrotland to follow the same path as the hated English (especially the hated Brexiteer Johnson), journalists are now berating Johnson for not having a consistent policy for the whole UK and accusing Johnson of “breaking up the UK” even though the journalists know full well that policy on the Chinese Covid-19 plague is a matter for the devolved parliaments.
To help us all navigate our way through the lies, irresponsible mis-reporting, self-promotion and dishonesty of our worthless media, the Government has produced a very useful guide to be used by us plebs when listening to our know-it-all journalists’ reports. Here’s the first version of the guide:
But you plebs can adapt this as the Government gradually eases the lockdown restrictions and our self-regarding, know-it-all, pompous, 20/20-hindsight journalists continue to make fools of themselves.
Category: 
I have tried to look at the positives of Boris’s approach to the Plague crisis. His Sunday Speech to the Nation was, however, a total disaster. Of course he couldn’t go into details, but even his “broad brush” pronouncements were at best ambiguous, at worst incomprehensible. Certainly many journalists have relished every opportunity to polish their tarnished egos at the Government’s expense and have done themselves no credit. (I can think of several significantly more worthy of appearing on your Traffic Light Indicator of Infamy than Peston, who does at least understand economics!) However, where the general public are concerned the messages coming from Boris are nothing if not confused. That confusion would not matter were it not for the fact that in instances of transgression we know we can expect a visit – or if we are driving, being stopped – by Plod and the imposition of a significant fine. A couple of examples of the current idiocy. As of tomorrow, I can employ a cleaner, admit her to my home, by definition give her ingress into every room, allow her to use my bathroom, to make herself a cup of coffee in my kitchen. Yesterday she was in someone else’s house doing the same things. Tomorrow she will be in another. I know neither of these households or who inhabits them. Yet I cannot admit my own son or daughter to my house. I cannot even admit them to sit 2 metres away from me in my garden. I am encouraged to stand outside my house every Thursday evening, 2 metres away from my neighbours, to applaud the NHS. Yet to see one of my own children – just ONE and at a distance of 2 metres – I must go elsewhere and it must be outdoors. A park, according to Boris. As from tomorrow, my daughter may employ a nanny to come into her home for the day to look after my grandchild, thus enabling my daughter to return to work. I, however, who have been banned from meeting or hugging my daughter or my grandchild for 2 months and would love to take over the task of caring, am forbidden to do so. I assume the “nanny” my daughter might choose to employ could have stepped off a plane at Heathrow only a few days ago, with no health credentials. The Government has completely lost the plot and merits all the opprobrium currently being heaped on it!
Here in Wales decisions appear to be taken, like Scotland, for political reasons and to justify the existence of the Welsh Assembly (sorry I mean the Welsh Government).
Yesterday we informed that it�s OK to meet up outside with family members accidentally so long as you social distance but it�s illegal to plan to meet them in an open space and social distance!
Nation Emergencies should override devolved powers in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, we should have a unified UK approach.
Excellent comment Stillreading.
A much better analysis than anything I have read in the media.
What came first the government panic or the media panic. Are the two mutually exclusive or were the government secretly happy to accept the media panic – it seems creating media panic was part of their strategy, recommended by the nudge cowboys, to make the turkeys vote for christmas. They are now stoically refusing to budge and intend to pursue the lockdown into economic oblivion, whilst secretly promoting making Britain a third world country via their zero carbon wet dream. It took about 3 days of media briefings to abandon the successful swedish model. I remember Beth Rigby asking “on behalf of all Londoners when are you going to lock down the capital” and thought don’t include me in that! It seems the Westminster political press are a club who work with government at times and will do as they are told so questions on PPE and testing are permitted but anything on validity of lockdown, questionable death figures, deployment of fear tactics are avoided.
We are witnessing the collective wisdom of individual ignorance (HL Menchen, more or less), brilliantly illustrated by Stillreading.
Here is some common sense that Boris says we should be using from Bill Meher
https://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=Y35IZ52ad4TVZQ5a&u=/watch%3Fv%3DDyPWRaujBII%26feature%3Dem-uploademail
I notice in the midst of our VE-Day celebrations, we were ignoring the fact that we have now become a bubble-wrapped society, obsessed with safety first. I see about 75% of the population are terrified of leaving their lockdown bolthole and return to work. Nobody seems to be concerned that unless we get the economy moving as soon as possible, we face yet more millions unemployed, poverty, harsh (wartime) food rationing and with the very much �diverse� population we have become in a mere 75 years – serious, what is described as – �social unrest.� We cocked up the reaction to the pandemic from the start, I see the Germans are coming around to the same conclusion about their lockdown policy:
�Europe�s best-selling newspaper announced this weekend the lockdown in response to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic was a �huge mistake,� citing a number of public intellectuals critical of the country�s official response.
Reproducing comments from seven well-known intellectuals,�Das Bild�underscores�the importance of �warning, doubting, and arguing� in the case of a public crisis that involves the suppression of the fundamental rights of citizens.
In presenting the opinions of highly esteemed �lateral thinkers,� the newspaper notes Germany�s political leaders, on the contrary, �pushed the recommendations of other luminaries to justify the lockdown of the economy and public life, as well as the severe interference with everyone�s freedoms,� while ignoring contrary voices.
Prof. Klaus P�schel, for instance, a respected pathologist and head of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Hamburg University Hospital, argues that �in the end, COVID-19 is a viral disease like the flu, which in most cases is harmless and is only fatal in exceptional cases.�
Overview from Swiss Propaganda research:-
According to data from the best-studied countries and regions, the lethality of Covid19 is on average about 0.2%, which is in the range of a severe influenza (flu) and about twenty times lower than originally assumed by the WHO.
Even in the global �hotspots�, the risk of death for the general population of school and working age is typically in the range of a daily car ride to work. The risk was initially overestimated because many people with only mild or no symptoms were not taken into account.
Up to 80% of all test-positive persons remain symptom-free. Even among 70-79 year olds, about 60% remain symptom-free. Over 95% of all persons show mild symptoms at most.
Up to one third of all persons already have a certain background immunity to Covid19 due to contact with previous coronaviruses (i.e. common cold viruses).
The median or average age of the deceased in most countries (including Italy) is over 80 years and only about 1% of the deceased had no serious preconditions. The age and risk profile of deaths thus essentially corresponds to normal mortality.
In most Western countries, 50 to 70% of all extra deaths occurred in nursing homes, which do not benefit from a general lockdown. Moreover, in many cases it is not clear whether these people really died from Covid19 or from extreme stress, fear and loneliness.
Up to 50% of all additional deaths may have been caused not by Covid19, but by the effects of the lockdown, panic and fear. For example, the treatment of heart attacks and strokes decreased by up to 60% because many patients no longer dared to go to hospital.
Even in so-called �Covid19 deaths� it is often not clear whether they died from or with coronavirus (i.e. from underlying diseases) or if they were counted as �presumed cases� and not tested at all. However, official figures usually do not reflect this distinction.
Many media reports of young and healthy people dying from Covid19 turned out to be false: many of these young people either did not die from Covid19, they had already been seriously ill (e.g. from undiagnosed leukaemia), or they were in fact 109 instead of 9 years old.
The normal overall mortality per day is about 8000 people in the US, about 2600 in Germany and about 1800 in Italy. Influenza mortality per season is up to 80,000 in the US and up to 25,000 in Germany and Italy. In several countries Covid19 deaths remained below strong flu seasons.
Regional increases in mortality may be influenced by additional risk factors such as high levels of air pollution and microbial contamination, as well as a collapse in the care for the elderly and sick due to infections, mass panic and lockdown. Special regulations for dealing with the deceased sometimes led to additional bottlenecks in funeral or cremation services.
In countries such as Italy and Spain, and to some extent the UK and the US, hospital overloads due to strong flu waves are not unusual. In addition, up to 15% of doctors and health workers were put into quarantine, even if they developed no symptoms.
The often shown exponential curves of �corona cases� are misleading, as the number of tests also increased exponentially. In most countries, the ratio of positive tests to tests overall (i.e. the positive rate) remained constant at 5% to 25% or increased only slightly. In many countries, the peak of the spread was already reached well before the lockdown.
Countries without curfews and contact bans, such as Japan, South Korea or Sweden, have not experienced a more negative course of events than other countries. Sweden was even praised by the WHO and now benefits from higher immunity compared to lockdown countries.
The fear of a shortage of ventilators was unjustified. According to lung specialists, the invasive ventilation (intubation) of Covid19 patients, which is partly done out of fear of spreading the virus, is in fact often counterproductive and damaging to the lungs.
Contrary to original assumptions, various studies have shown that there is no evidence of the virus spreading through aerosols (i.e. particles floating in the air) or through smear infections (e.g. on door handles, smartphones or at the hairdresser).
There is also no scientific evidence for the effectiveness of face masks in healthy or asymptomatic individuals. On the contrary, experts warn that such masks interfere with normal breathing and may become �germ carriers�. Leading doctors called them a �media hype� and �ridiculous�.
Many clinics in Europe and the US remained strongly underutilized or almost empty during the Covid19 peak and in some cases had to send staff home. Numerous operations and therapies were cancelled, including some organ transplants and cancer screenings.
Several media were caught trying to dramatize the situation in hospitals, sometimes even with manipulative images and videos. In general, the unprofessional reporting of many media maximized fear and panic in the population.
The virus test kits used internationally are prone to errors and can produce false positive and false negative results. Moreover, the official virus test was not clinically validated due to time pressure and may sometimes react to other coronaviruses.
Numerous internationally renowned experts in the fields of virology, immunology and epidemiology consider the measures taken to be counterproductive and recommend rapid natural immunisation of the general population and protection of risk groups. The risks for children are virtually zero and closing schools was never medically warranted.
Several medical experts described vaccines against coronaviruses as unnecessary or even dangerous. Indeed, the vaccine against the so-called swine flu of 2009, for example, led to sometimes severe neurological damage and lawsuits in the millions.
The number of people suffering from unemployment, psychological problems and domestic violence as a result of the measures has skyrocketed worldwide. Several experts believe that the measures may claim more lives than the virus itself. According to the UN millions of people around the world may fall into absolute poverty and famine.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden warned that the �corona crisis� will be used for the massive and permanent expansion of global surveillance. The renowned virologist Pablo Goldschmidt spoke of a �global media terror� and �totalitarian measures�. Leading British virologist professor John Oxford spoke of a �media epidemic�.
More than 500 scientists have warned against an �unprecedented surveillance of society� through problematic apps for �contact tracing�. In some countries, such �contact tracing� is already carried out directly by the secret service. In several parts of the world, the population is already being monitored by drones and facing serious police overreach.
A superb summary Chris and you will be lucky to find one so well written, researched and argued in the MSM.
William refers to VE Day and there was an excellent series, a repeat, called Our Greatest Generation. It worth finding on catchup. I wonder how they can talk so calmly about what they went through personally and what they witnessed. The reality has now been replaced with emotional nonsense. What would they think about today?
Good review from Chris, but I think we will need to wait for a year to get better statistics and there will still be uncertainties. I wasn�t clear about the transmission. How does it spread?
I agree – excellent analysis. The absence of distinction between “dying OF” and “dying WITH” is inexcusable, making as it undoubtedly would if recorded a very significant difference to the so-called Covid-19 Death Toll. And how the media do relish that phrase, enabling them as it does to hype up public hysteria! Meanwhile cancer patients are undiagnosed or, having been diagnosed, untreated. Stroke and heart attack patients are so frightened of hospitals that they are dying or suffering the long-term effects of delayed or no treatment. People are pulling out their own teeth with pliers – shads of the blood-apattered fair-ground tooth-puller of past centuries. The situation as it now pertains to getting willing employees into workplaces is ludicrous The owner of a long-established firm which makes whistles has just explained on R4 that he has kept his factory going, with the full co-operation of his staff, because it is sufficiently large for him to “socially isolate” employees throughout the day, including meal breaks. But while many employees are getting into work on increasingly crowded public transport, doubtless a risk factor for contracting the plague, where that is unavailable for any reason he is prohibited from going in his car to bring an employee into work, as has been his practice in the past, because a car may not be shared with anyone from a different household. (That’s after years of the Government pushing car-sharing as a “greener” way of life of course!)
0.004% of the worlds population have died of Covid…
Keep Calm and Stay at Home only 1.6 Billion jobs lost, all going to plan for the Central Banksters , buy up everything with printed funny money, you are now officially a Slave.
Egon von Greyerz: As the Nasdaq makes a new high for the year, the world outside the stock market time-bomb is falling apart. For example, the UN agency, The International Labour Organisation (ILO), reports that 1.6 billion jobs are at risk in the global economy. That is half of the global workforce of 3.3 billion. Particularly vulnerable are the 2 billion people in the informal economy. For most of these vulnerable people, this means no income, no food, and no security, reports the ILO. This is a human tragedy on a massive scale and most people in the Western world are totally unaware.
HALF UK ADULTS PAID BY THE STATE
Looking at the UK, 23 million people, which is half of all adults, are now paid by the state. This includes people being furloughed, on unemployment benefits and public sector workers and pensioners. That is just an incredible proportion of the population which are getting free money for making no productive contribution. Yes, the human side is of course incredibly important and suffering people should be helped. The problem is only that THERE IS NO MONEY. What half of the adult population is receiving is money that doesn�t exist but is just printed out of thin air and thus has no real value.
https://kingworldnews.com/man-who-predicted-the-global-collapse-just-warned-investors-they-should-now-prepare-for-the-collapse-of-the-world-financial-system/
Many words have been written here by intelligent individuals but, nevertheless, it is a fact that government and other authorities are an utter hindrance to normal peoples’ lives. End of.
Hmm, I seem to recall that before he came into the business of political leadership, the Prime Minister’s profession was, er, Journalist….
Incidentally, I live in central London, and last Friday – VE day – for my permitted exercise I took a twenty minute walk down to Whitehall, to see how the day was being commemorated there.
Interestingly, there wasn’t a single wreath on the Cenotaph from the ‘British’ Government, despite it’s being only a matter of yards from the front door of Number Ten. Nor, for that matter, was there one from Royalty.
Demonstrating quite clearly exactly what our modern leaders really think of the British people, our history, and our heritage.
Macron, Merkel, even Putin saw fit to mark the day in person. But our lot? Couldn’t be bothered.
When i was a young man aged about 25, I used to travel to Germany on a regular basis on business. I frequently met Germans at the top of their game aged about the same as my dad at that time, say 60 to 65. these guys used to enjoy telling me all about their exploits during WW2 where many of them were tank commanders and the like. These people had no remorse whatsoever about the morals of WW2 and were proud of what they had achieved and how they did it. They were indignant when I pointed out that folk like my dad kicked their ass.
Then they would mock me because, even though they all had highly paid jobs, they also were in receipt of war pensions for their gallant efforts on behalf of the fatherland and they laughed that my dad got nothing.
These unrepentant Nazi scumbags were pulling the equivalent of �30k a year as a pension, and that was in the 1980’s .
And 75 years later, we can’t even place a wreath on the cenotaph ! For fuck sake !!!
There
I read, a couple of years ago, that Belgian former Waffen-SS veterans were still in receipt of German government war pensions. So there’s no such thing, in reality, of mythical ‘German Guilt’ – it’s all for show.
We think we won, but in reality what happened was that the German oligarchs who originally backed Hitler because they thought he was the man to ‘Unify’ Europe, realised in 1944 that he wasn’t going to win, pulled the plug on him and got in touch with their French equivalents. They then began the process of starting the EEC, based on the very plan Bismarck used to unify Germany under Prussia. And just as in the run-up to 1870, it worked, far better and more cheaply than military conquest, even if it took rather longer.
And in the UK, we are now being ‘Governed’ by the heirs to Lord Halifax, who in 1940 wanted to come to an agreement with the Germans.
Perhaps we might have got a better deal then than we’re likely to get now…..
Very revealing comments from Jeffrey & Brian concerning WW2 and its aftermath. I was born just before the war and recall a surprising amount of what happened and the collective patriotic national state of mind. In subsequent years my parents periodically remarked how astonishing it was that suddenly there were no more Nazis in Germany! I’ve drawn my own conclusions ever since, so the above revelations do not surprise me. Utterly deplorable that not a single UK Politician or member of the Royal Family thought fit to place a commemorative wreath on the Cenotaph on VE Day – I admit the omission had not occurred to me, although I did see on BBC News Macron standing in isolation beneath the Arc de Triomph. In fairness, Prince Charles and Camilla, currently isolating in Scotland, did place a wreath on the local War Memorial. Incidentally, a ten year old in my family is being taught in her primary school in the South of England (or was when she was last able to attend) that Winston Churchill was a war criminal.