Christmas is saved

[MiaMarshmallows]

So happy that my partner and big family can all be together this year. We are all really close and get on brilliantly. So pleased at the news today!

Thousands will die because of this when a vaccine is right around the corner, which seems nonsensical.

The thing is, people will meet up and then if their family member catches it and dies they'll blame the government for allowing it.

Some people have been breaking the rules all along and they always knew this would happen. Of course there were going to be people who meet-up at Christmas no matter what the rules were. But why encourage even more people to meet up by telling them they’re allowed? Now people are being pressurised by family to meet up when they don’t want to. It sends out completely the wrong message, we should be asking everyone, with a few exceptions, to sit tight for this year. All being well, next Christmas we’ll be in a very different place.

"Well I for one don't think I would be very happy about my husband being locked into a hotel away from me and cared for by strangers. What about those vulnerable people who have children and jobs? What about those vulnerable people who are children, should they be separated from their parents?

What you are suggesting is a huge infringement of civil liberies."

And lockdown isn't the most massive infringement of civil liberties in history?

It would be on a voluntary basis. No-one would have to shield who didn't want to and wives, husbands and partners could be included.

And again, where is the difference between lockdown and my suggestion when it comes to jobs or anything else? We're already being kept in virtual house arrest to a greater or lesser extent depending on tiers and tests and track and trace etc.

As the group we need to target most are the elderly neither jobs nor dependent children are an issue. The latest figures from the ONS says there have now been 61, 136 deaths with Covid and "the majority of deaths involving COVID-19 have been among people aged 65 years and over (54,698 out of 61,136). Notice they are careful to say 'involving' now, not definitely of Covid. Worldwide hardly any children have died from/with Covid. It's 5 so far in the UK. Flu is far more dangerous to children and the young.

The strangeness of your answer makes me think you don't have a clue who is actually at risk from the virus or who has died from or with it.

We already have the appalling situation in this country where relatives are not allowed to visit people in hospital, in care homes and in their own homes during lockdown. Again that is a matter of law, not the choice of those concerned.

"Sweden's economy is completely different to the UK's, it is not largely service based in the way the UK's is. That's why it is a bit pointless to compare the two."

No economy is that different and no economy can long survive continued lockdowns for a disease which kills the elderly in the main and people well above working age.

You want to dismiss the Swedish approach because it doesn't fit your lockdown agenda. It's a perfectly valid comparison between two first world countries both of which are/would be economically vulnerable to needless restrictions and authoritarianism.

"I think we will have to agree to differ Alexafrost. You are not going to change my mind and vice versa. Enjoy your Christmas, however you choose to celebrate it."

No, we're very unlikely to agree on this issue.

Ironically my husband and I will be spending Christmas in complete isolation as my relatives live miles away and his are all in the US. So we shall be shining examples of self isolation during the pandemic.

Have a good Christmas yourself.

"We're already being kept in virtual house arrest to a greater or lesser extent depending on tiers and tests and track and trace etc"

This is just hyperbole. Im Pretty sure that anyone who has actually been under house arrest would disagree with you. It's not like people are being watched or are wearing ankle monitors. You can leave your house as many times as you like. Loads of people go see friends and relatives all the time as it is more guidance for and the parts that are law are unenforceable. That"s why the tiers 1 and 2 haven't really worked; you cAn only stop the mixing by actually closing places they mix at. To an extent I no longer blame people for ignoring it. People are being asked to control the virus in their personal lives whilst nothing effective is being done to do the same where they work or their kids learn.

Short of attending very large or loud parties the chances of being fined or the police taking action is virtually zero.

"This is just hyperbole. Im Pretty sure that anyone who has actually been under house arrest would disagree with you."

It is and it isn't. At least with a house arrest you will have been accused of a real crime and it isn't rolled out to include the entire population.

The police are harassing lots of people and businesses are being fined for not following ridiculous rules or exercising their previous right to stay open.

What's frightening is the speed at which Western governments have become authoritarian and the degree to which people have cheerleading this and are continuing to do so even though the deaths don't warrant such a ridiculous and dangerous overreaction which will kill more people in the long term than Covid will.

Alexa you do know there's a pandemic on, don't you? Why on earth would you expect things to be normal?

"Alexa you do know there's a pandemic on, don't you? Why on earth would you expect things to be normal?"

Because the death rate doesn't justify the restrictions and the terrible danger lockdown poses to our liberty, economy and lives.

@Alexafrost

"Alexa you do know there's a pandemic on, don't you? Why on earth would you expect things to be normal?"

Because the death rate doesn't justify the restrictions and the terrible danger lockdown poses to our liberty, economy and lives.

Show your workings. Maybe look at the US to see what a half-hearted effort to control Corona looks like?

WRT to civil liberties, lawyers are looking at this and concerned about the duration of the statutory measures - and I'll be listening to those lawyers, not the likes of the anti maskers who's most recent encounter with civil liberties was probably to deplore those same lawyers trying to prevent illegal deportations. There's so much gammon crossover with the plandemic types it's practically a circle.

"Show your workings. Maybe look at the US to see what a half-hearted effort to control Corona looks like?"

You could take a look at Peru which has had one of the most severe lockdowns and also has one of the highest death rates.

Lockdowns don't stop a virus. Even government advocates of the lockdown know this. They're just there to prevent the health service from being overrun which was never a problem in the UK. The fear of that was based on appallingly bad predictions of death rates which never materialised.

You cannot hide from a virus and the longer you lockdown the longer you drag out the pandemic doing untold damage to the economy which will lead to far more deaths in the long term than Covid ever will. ONS estimates for deaths resulting from lockdown are 200,000.

"WRT to civil liberties, lawyers are looking at this and concerned about the duration of the statutory measures - and I'll be listening to those lawyers, not the likes of the anti maskers who's most recent encounter with civil liberties was probably to deplore those same lawyers trying to prevent illegal deportations. There's so much gammon crossover with the plandemic types it's practically a circle."

Yes, someone like you would resort to terms like gammon. You want to bundle everyone who disagrees with you in a basket of deplorables as you wallow in your own bigotry while deploring everyone else's.

What use are a bunch of lawyers in the face of government authoritarianism? Even Sumption doesn't think the government are acting illegally overall given the split in the scientific community and is fighting this politically not legally.

As to being anti-mask it has been very well known for decades that masks don't stop viruses so wearing them is at best a waste of time and at worst more harmful than not as people don't replace or wash them regularly and it encourages people to touch their faces more than they need. Even if they did work most masks worn by most people offer no protection or prevention whatsoever.

You might want to get out of your echo chamber and read around the subject. It might be wise to listen to scientists who oppose these mad policies before pontificating in such a prejudiced and ludicrous way.

Show your workings - what would be the impact on the economy of unrestrained transmission? What would be the impact on the NHS, and what would be the knock on effect on other treatments?

And where has it been known for decades that masks don't stop viruses? Despite all the recent papers showing reduced transmission in masked environments?

Yes, I'm rude and biased about people wading in spouting so much bullshit that it would take an age to go through and correct all the misstatements and lies.

So I won't do that. I'm not going to argue - I'll just ask you to actually back up at least 3 of the assertions you made. Go on. YouTube doesn't count.

Show your own workings. Yours are just assertions without anything to back them up. Don't ask for what you don't show yourself.

There are scientists on both sides. Evidence has been presented on both sides. Google is your friend here. I can't be bothered to provide endless links. I can name some of the many eminent scientists who are against the lockdown if you want but anything else would be a waste of effort for someone like yourself.

The terrible damage to the economy comes from lockdown and only from lockdown. In the UK the lockdown did nothing to slow down infection rates as it was too late and lockdowns don't magically stop people getting infected. At best they merely delay the inevitable while causing huge collateral damage.

There would have been little more strain on the NHS without lockdown than with it and death rates haven't been anything out of the ordinary overall. Shielding the vulnerable and not allowing the virus to run unchecked through care homes would have reduced the death rate.

There are decades of studies showing masks do little to stop viral infections. The papers saying otherwise have appeared very recently and are obviously politically motivated. There was a recent study in Denmark showing how ineffective they are. Even supporters of masks think most masks by most people are useless.

Yes, you are rude and biased but worse than that you are wallowing in self righteous ignorance.

Nope, your both-sidesing makes a false equivalence of the vast majority of medics, and a small group of struck-off nurses and osteopaths. The Danish study proved nothing - and the guy in charge of it stated unambiguously that no one should draw any anti-mask conclusions from it.

Why do many studies this year? Well, could it possibly be that the pandemic has created a vast real time laboratory where population studies can be made? Or could it be that people really needed to know in order to keep people safe, so they went and looked?

Death rates overall are still up, and would have been much higher without the first lockdown - you can just read the graphs to see the effect lockdown had. Whether the second lockdown will do anything, with children and teens crammed in unventilated rooms with 29 other kids and one poor adult? Maybe not so much.

But doing nothing? Have you read the news from America lately?

Try harder.

Lol 6 adults living together, you can't individually form separate bubbles, that would be crazy and is not the regs. 2 reasons for a bubble, single parents and childcare. Glad as a 6 you are sticking together, technically, the whole lot of you could mix with 2 other households in the same day, but taking it as splitting off to see others would obviously not be in the spirit of the idea of Xmas relaxing. Just a shame that ordinarily, we would have 4 households together mum& dad, sister, brother, grandkids - who misses out?

There is no false equivalence. A large number of eminent scientists with distinguished careers at top universities disagree with current policies. Bury your head in the sand if you want to but that is the reality and resistance is growing constantly. Unjustified ad hominem attacks on the reputations of those opposing lockdown makes your position look weak not theirs.

Science doesn't work by consensus but by evidence and there's precious little of that to justify lockdowns especially as they don't magically disappear viruses. They're still there when you come out of lockdown ready to infect people. You only need basic logic to understand that. Apparently that's something you struggle with. My guess is you are putting all your hopes in the new vaccine being a miracle cure.

The main difference between this pandemic and other recent ones is the gross overreaction to it. The first couple of weeks of lockdown could be excused when people didn't know much and 'experts' were producing doomsday predictions which proved to be ridiculously exaggerated. Now, there's no excuse for continuing to live under restrictions the effects of which are more deadly than the disease.

You don't need a pandemic to test masks and they've been testing them over years during other pandemics and evidence for them working is extremely small and inconclusive at best. Manufacturers of masks have never recommended them for protecting against viruses. The evidence for them not working is much larger and the only conclusion you can draw from the Danish study is they are ineffective. The author of the study would obviously hedge his bets in this political climate. Many people are losing their jobs for speaking out against this madness.

You have also carefully ignored the point that most masks most people wear even pro-maskers don't think are effective and people don't clean or replace them often enough to make them anything but an added danger.

Death rates are up very slightly over the year in comparison to some years but the difference is slight and from a statistical point of view don't justify the destruction of economy, liberty and the inevitable large rise in the death rate from lockdown itself. The large spike was in the early days of the first lockdown. Now we are not above the average for season and below some previous years. Deaths have slowed down dramatically and are within the normal range for seasonal infections.

Again you carefully avoid dealing with the predicted deaths from lockdown itself. Early government predictions were above 200,000 deaths from lockdown. We can only pray that they are as mistaken as the predictions of deaths from Covid. However, given the deadly nature of poverty, missed cancer diagnoses/treatments, depression, alcoholism and suicide that's less likely.

Try harder yourself. Resist being an arrogant cheerleader for one of the most suicidal policies in history. A phrase leftists like to use is being on the wrong side of history. You are going to be on the wrong side of history on this one. This is the WMD dossier of this era and you've bought the propaganda and joined in the panic hook, line and sinker.

I've seen what's happening in the US. I've also seen what happened in Peru and can compare it to what happened in Sweden where their only major mistake was not acting over care homes. The only thing that will save lives is not locking us all down and making us wear useless masks it's shielding the sick and elderly who make up 95% of all Covid deaths and being careful about basic hygiene.

A large number of eminent scientists with distinguished careers at top universities disagree with current policies names?

Early government predictions were above 200,000 deaths from lockdown link?

Peru - you can't make a meaningful comparison when the society and infrastructure is so different than our own - www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-53150808

And for anyone reading this who wants to check on the more interesting statements flying around the internet, this isn't a bad place to start - fullfact.org/health/how-to-fact-check-coronavirus/

(There's a reason the likes of 'truth seekers' groups on Facebook want to see fact checking abolished. It's a silly reason akin to a toddler hiding a clock so you don't know it's bedtime, but it's a reason)

Finally Alexa, again you're making scattershot assertions without evidence, tland throwing it back at me that I've said I'm biased against people making scattershot assertions without evidence. There's people who want to do the right thing who get confused by this sort of bullshit, and I happen to think that's a bad thing.

So, put up some actual evidence or admit you fell down a Qanon-adjacent rabbit hole. Because randomly talking about 'top scientists' without addressing any of the facts doesn't cut it.

What's happening in the US isn't pretty - mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSL1N2IB0MP - and many hospitals are reporting that they can't take on any new admissions for whatever cause.

Covid is mostly survivable and treatments have got a lot better, but some people need a lot of care over a lot of time to make it - and those beds aren't then available for emerging other illnesses, or accidents.

Ok, you want names and google searches are beyond you:

At universities there is Carl Heneghan, Karol Sikora, Martin Kulldorff, Stephen Bremner, Helen Colhoun, Eitan Friedman, Sunetra Gupta, Sucharit Bhakdi, David Livermore, Anthony J Brookes, Gabriela Gomes, Angus Dalgleish, Sylvia Fogel, Uri Gavish, Jay Bhattacharya, Mike Hulme, David Katz, Laura Lazzeroni, Michael Levitt, Jonas Ludvigsson, Paul McKeigue, Motti Gerlic, Andrius Kavaliunas, Rodney Sturdivant, Simon Thornley, Ellen Townsend, Simon Wood, Cody Meissner, Lisa White, Ariel Munitz, Yaz Gulnur Muradoglu, Partha P. Majumder, Matthew Ratcliffe, Udi Qimron, Mario Recker, Eyal Shahar etc. etc.

There are also numerous people working outside universities in pharma companies or the private sector with medical expertise who are against lockdown as well as many economists.

Links to 200k prediction - www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/19/lockdown-may-cost-200k-lives-government-report-shows/
metro.co.uk/2020/07/20/coronavirus-lockdown-cause-200000-extra-deaths-13014848/

Once again google is your friend. You could have found that out for yourself.

Yes you can make comparisons to Peru. You can also make comparisons with Sweden. You can't just pick and choose countries based on how they support your position.

The bullshit and scattershot assertions are yours and you produce no supporting evidence yourself. You simply haven't bothered to read the opposing case which is why, even now you want me to spoon feed you everything.

Of course people are confused, Our most basic freedoms have been taken away and we are being forced to help trash the economy for a virus whose death rate doesn't justify the overreaction. The NHS wasn't overwhelmed during the actual crisis in March and certainly isn't now when the death rate is normal and steady for the time of year.

Once again you fail to suggest how lockdown is going to save us in the longterm or deal with the huge costs to the economy and lives as a result of the lockdown.

I've linked to articles, you've given me another scattershot of random names, so I'll spend half a day googling without knowing why you think any of them are experts.

You've also yet to tell me why you think the increased infection rates of not locking down will be better for the economy and death rates than locking down. Why not start there?

They're all professors at universities, almost all of which have scientific and/or medical expertise. There's one professor of statistics in there. I made it clear they were all at universities and yes, you will need to google each one if you want to know what they think and say. You can start with Carl Heneghan as one of the most eminent and outspoken.

As to infection rates, you cannot hide indefinitely from a virus on the hope that a magic cure will be found. You can shield a certain number of people but once you shut down large parts of the economy then you're immediately in danger of causing death through poverty and related issues which will get only worse the longer it goes on.

As I have said before it is a matter of simple logic that lockdowns will not stop the spread of the virus in the longterm. At best they might delay it in the short term but at a terrible cost. However, as soon as you go out, open up society as normal and open borders then infection rates will naturally go up as the virus didn't go away while everyone was hiding. That cannot go on indefinitely as you will grind the country into the ground. Eventually you have to learn to live with the virus as we have with all the others. You can't gamble on a vaccine which may only work partially.

The economy is not harmed by a very manageable number of people getting infected and getting over it nor by the deaths that occurred among the old and sick during the lockdown as we failed to shield the genuinely vulnerable, the elderly and sick who made up 95% of all Covid deaths while we were very busy protecting everybody else.

What harms the economy is destroying businesses in ever increasing numbers and causing widespread unemployment as well as borrowing wartime levels of money and accruing many generations worth of debt to pay for measures to fight an inescapable virus.

Every year we deal with flu and other infectious diseases. Many of the deaths from those diseases regularly go into tens of thousands without causing a national panic. Hospitals are regularly squeezed at these times as well. This is all nothing new. What is new is the idea that Covid 19 is so much deadlier than everything else when it is so obviously not.

The figures were cooked in the first place and the government have been using dodgy statistics and predictions and faulty logic ever since to push through their authoritarian and destructive measures.

Again you've given me a whole load of option and absolutely no demonstrable facts. Can you not see the difference?

Ok, let's go smaller. You said about masks "wearing them is at best a waste of time and at worst more harmful than not as people don't replace or wash them regularly and it encourages people to touch their faces more than they need"

Give me some links to evidence to demonstrate this?

I've given you a lot more than you've given me. The facts are out there for everyone to find for themselves.

It's time for you to put up your reasons why the restrictions are a brilliant idea. I'm not writing a thesis, this is just a comment thread on a blog. I've made a clear argument and have provided both names of scientists opposed to the government position and statistics. You've done nothing except provide one single link to an article.

As to masks I'd support them as useless as they are if they stop this authoritarian madness. But do you really need evidence that people don't replace and wash masks? Wouldn't personal observation suffice?

You're the one that keeps presenting crap as known fact, and repetition doesn't make a thing true. But even for Donald Trump.

That's what I'm asking you to prove. You haven't done so, just added more and more opinions. If you genuinely can't understand the difference than that explains your posts.

@DameFanny, I applaud your patience, calm and eloquence, in the face of such blather and bullshit.

Was that list of names lifted straight from The Great Barrington Declaration? @Alexafrost