Retired orthopaedic surgeon Professor John Fairclough claimed this morning that jabbing 12 to 15 year-olds is dangerous. He also criticised the government for overruling the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).
Speaking to Talk Radio’s Julia Hartley-Brewer, Professor Fairclough said:
“I think this is probably… I’ve been in medicine now for five decades. I think this is probably one of the most dangerous efforts that we’ve had in medicine because what we’re doing is we’re in fact overturning the position of medical individuals for political purposes.”
On the issue of informed consent, Fairclough said that it’s unlikely children understand the risks associated with receiving a jab, when SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) members themselves don’t seem to know. Fairclough said:
“Consent is that you are aware of what the consequences of a medical action is. Recently, one of the members of SAGE chose to go on a radio station and be interviewed with three or four young children and actually wasn’t able to give the information which is on the government website and had to Google it.
He also got the rates of inflammation of the heart incorrect and the published international data. So if he cannot actually be aware of the consent issues, then how can a 12 year-old?”
Fairclough was referring to England’s deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van Tam. While fielding questions from youngsters on BBC News recently, Van Tam was caught with his trousers well and truly down when wrongly downplaying the threat of myocarditis. The jellyfish in the presenters chair never called him on it.
Rather than challenge the witchdoctors who currently advise the UK government, the media has deified them. Earlier this year, speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, presenter Nicky Campbell said: “We all have our favourite scientist now. Isn’t JVT (Van Tam) great?”
I don’t know which is worse, the liars in Bill Gates pocket, or the whores in the media.
September 20, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | COVID-19 Vaccine, UK |
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The Covid vaccine roll-out for healthy 12-15 year-olds is due to begin this week, but scientists remain concerned about the likely side effects. Some teachers tell me their schools still aren’t fully aware of the role they are supposed to play – “I can see it becoming a minefield”, said one teacher at a school in Yorkshire – and there seems to be some confusion among parents about the power they hold. Can they withhold their consent for the vaccination of their children or not?
Parents will be sent consent forms but only, it seems, as a formality since children who are deemed ‘competent’ (the assessment of which contains no set of defined questions) will be able to overrule the decisions of their parents anyway. This is of a piece with the Government’s decision to push ahead with its roll-out despite being told by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) that “there is considerable uncertainty regarding the magnitude of the potential harms” of Covid vaccination in healthy teenagers and that – given the small risk Covid poses to healthy 12-15 year-olds – the “margin of benefit… is considered too small”.
The JCVI is “generous” in its assessment, according to an executive at a pharmaceutical company writing for the Daily Sceptic. (He, by the way, believes vaccines are among the “three greatest medical innovations”, so could hardly be labelled “anti-vax”!) Responding to the data, he says there is a “serious enough” risk of children developing myocarditis after vaccination (inflammation of the heart muscle, the long-term consequences of which aren’t fully understood) whereas the benefits of vaccination are “not well quantified” by the JCVI. The body also fails to properly consider the risk of other conditions following vaccination.
Professor Adam Finn sums up the situation by saying the vaccination of children would not – in normal times – have been approved because of the possible risks. He believes that parents are justified in waiting to allow their children to get ‘jabbed’ until these risks are better understood. But therein lies the problem. What – if anything – can parents do to delay the vaccination of their children?
I’ve been trying to find the answer to this question over the past week – and the prospects for concerned parents are fairly bleak.
It’s probably best to start by ruling out protesting, given that schools have been told to call the police if “anti-vaxxers” plan demonstrations outside their gates. (I’m not sure that seeing their parents being dragged away by the police will be great for children’s mental health, which the vaccine roll-out is supposed to protect, but that’s a matter for another article.) One also has to question whether protesting would be worth it even if there wasn’t the risk of arrest.
The main tool in the parent’s armoury seems to be the written – or, perhaps, the spoken – word. You can’t be arrested for telling your local headteacher (either in a letter or at a meeting) that you disagree with your child being vaccinated without your consent (though you might be removed from their Christmas card list). The Yorkshire teacher mentioned above tells me that he gets the impression his school will do all it can to wash its hands of responsibility on this matter, preferring to say that the important decisions (i.e., “who should be vaccinated at school”) will be made by health professionals who use the school site (School Age Immunisation Service (SAIS) officials), not by the school itself. The school would, in this case, be wrong. Lawyers For Liberty (LFL), a group of non-partisan lawyers, made this point quite clear in its recent letter to the heads of regulatory bodies concerned with the protection of children and safety in schools:
If schools are intended to be the ultimate setting for the child vaccination programme, then school leaders will be deemed to have approved the Vaccination against the JCVI Advice. This has a variety of potential legal ramifications for school staff. Certainly many are concerned that there may be a serious safeguarding concern that would not align with the legal duties of schools, as outlined in the Department for Education document “Keeping Children Safe in Education”.
In another letter that LFL has drafted for parents to send to schools (see more details here), heads are given notice of their (and their school’s) potential legal liability on the matter of Covid vaccination.
If a parent communicates to you that their child will not to be included in the vaccination programme or does not provide consent, then that decision must be respected, without any further consequences for the child, including direct or indirect discrimination or coercion. Failure to do so may result in possible legal claims against you personally and for your School.
(It is worth noting here that Government guidelines say if a child gets ill following vaccination and the SAIS team has left the school, the situation should be managed “according to existing policies for pupil sickness in school”. In other words, it will be the responsibility of the school.)
Given the likelihood that schools would sooner “wash their hands” of responsibility on this tricky and confusing matter than face an array of expensive legal challenges (schools could be “vicariously liable for any harm which may come to any child receiving the vaccination whilst in your care leading to financial sanctions between £180,000 to £20 million”, according to LFL), simply presenting (personally or through the LFL letter) the head of your child’s school with the above information could be enough to prevent your child from being vaccinated without your consent. Imagine raising a question about the school’s insurance policy coverage for vaccination on school sites in the case of side effects. Staff are likely to respect your wishes, but it goes without saying that responses will differ from one school to the next.
Perhaps concerned that their words won’t be enough to block the vaccination of their children, some parents have decided to go one step further and keep their children away from school to stop them from being peer-pressured to accept the vaccination, according to the Telegraph. If you do decide to do that, it’s worth bearing in mind that the SAIS providers will likely only set up in your local school for one to two days, depending on the number of students, and that parents will [allegedly] be notified of the specific date(s) beforehand.
September 19, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, UK |
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According to Kwasi Kwarteng, we have a diverse and reliable electricity system:
Well, we used to anyway!
The chart below sums up exactly how we and Europe got into the mess we are now in:
BP Energy Review
Because coal power capacity has been squeezed out of the system, we are now ultra reliant on natural gas when renewables fail to deliver, with the inevitable impact on power prices which we are now seeing.
Meanwhile if the government is serious in getting energy prices back down, I would suggest the following actions should be taken immediately:
- Abolish carbon pricing forthwith
- Support the opening of new oil and gas fields in the North Sea
- Impose an Intermittency Tax on wind and solar farms, so that they carry the full cost of intermittency, instead of the consumer.
- Take action to increase the UK’s natural gas storage capacity
- Abandon all spending plans for Net Zero, allowing money to be returned to taxpayers or energy users.
These actions would have an immediate impact on energy prices, as well as providing longer term energy security at little or no cost to the Exchequer.
September 19, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Economics | UK |
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1. IS THE UK HEADING FOR A WINTER BLACK-OUT?
This week it was reported that a fire at a power relay station has damaged a cable running electricity from France to the UK. The cable apparently can’t be fixed until March (although I have yet to see any explanation as to why), which means electricity prices are set to jump up this winter.
Real fire or no, you can be sure the power companies don’t mind the bump in revenue. But is there more to it?
We’re already seeing warnings of potential “blackouts” this winter, as the electrical supply fails to keep up with demand. Power shortages during cold weather could easily cause a heavy spike in the number of elderly or vulnerable people dying over the winter.
Those deaths, as pretty much all deaths are these days, could then be attributed to “Covid”, and used to enforce booster shots or another lockdown… or anything else they want.
Further, it’s conceivable that, just as lockdowns were sold as being good for the environment, any blackouts could be accompanied by news stories talking up the idea of living with less electricity.
Can’t you just picture the Guardian’s opinion section? “In the future rolling blackouts will be the new normal. And that’s a good thing.” or “temporary electricity outages are a small price to pay for healing the earth” and even “Back to nature: How the blackouts forced us outside to reconnect with our planet and our neighbours.”
It’s also possible, of course, that there was no fire, and there will be no blackouts, and that they’re just freaking people out to make them worry and stop them complaining when their electricity prices are hiked for no reason.
2. DOCTORS SHOULD “GIVE PRIORITY” TO VACCINATED PATIENTS
Ruth Marcus, a deputy editor at the Washington Post, has had enough of people pussy-footing around this issue and is going “come right out and say it” – unvaccinated people deserve healthcare less than vaccinated people.
She at least admits this “conflicts radically with accepted medical ethics”, which is completely true but for some reason that doesn’t seem to change her mind:
under ordinary circumstances, I agree with those rules. The lung cancer patient who’s been smoking two packs a day for decades is entitled to the same treatment as the one who never took a puff. The drunk driver who kills a family gets a team doing its utmost to save him
To be clear then – Ruth considers the unvaccinated as morally inferior to a drunk driver who ran over some kids. Which says a lot more about her, than the unvaccinated.
This is one of the feeler pieces. An antennae article, gently feeling the ground to see if it can bear the weight of the agenda coming behind it. It’s setting up the conversation. Because once we’ve established “anti-vaxxers” don’t deserve healthcare, those other people she’s so careful to mention – smokers and drunk drivers – they’re next. Along with the obese, or the clumsy, or the religious, or the politically inconvenient.
If you don’t believe me, just check the comments under the article. The WaPo has one of the most scripted comments sections on the internet, whose usual job is to play the “bad cop” to the author’s “good cop”. And, sure enough, BTL is full of hundreds of supposedly real humans saying the author doesn’t go far enough, and we should ration all kinds of healthcare based on personal choices.
This particular talking point is already being aired on CNN and by late-night talkshow hosts too. Expect it to spread quickly, especially when the flu season starts.
3. THE CAMPAIGN TO DE-FUND INDEPENDENT MEDIA CONTINUES
A Guardian article from today is warning that big companies might be “funding misinformation” through internet advertising. There’s a lot of words there, but you don’t need to read most of them, the agenda is clear from the headline:
Nike and Amazon among brands advertising on Covid conspiracy sites
The article is based on a report from the Bureau of Independent Journalism, which claims to be an “independent” non-profit, but which is funded by an entirely predictable list of billionaires. Seriously, check their “about us” page and play NGO Bingo with their donor list.
According to this “independent” report, internet advertising is too “opaque” and we need to increase the “transparency” of the system so that major companies don’t unintentionally back “misinformation” and only give money to “benign” websites.
This is a continuation of an ongoing campaign to make it harder for any independent content creators to exist. We’ve already seen PayPal team up with the ADL to “Fight Extremism and Protect Marginalized Communities”. You don’t need me to tell you what that means.
It’s not just political either, YouTube demonetises basically everyone for basically anything these days, turning their formerly public platform into a corporate desert devoid of individuality or creativity.
There’s a reason OffG has always resisted putting ads on the site, over the years that decision has cost us a lot of money, but we have our independence and don’t live under threat. For any independent media out there who do rely on advertising income, now might be a good time to develop a plan B.
… More at OffGuardian.
September 19, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | UK |
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The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has suggested that more than half of those who believe that they have so-called long covid, may just be suffering from normal bouts of ill health.
The ONS looked at 27,000 people who tested positive for covid. Three different methods were used to estimate the prevalence of long covid. One analysis found that 5 per cent reported at least one symptom 12 to 16 weeks after their infection.
But, the ONS found that 3.4 per cent of people who didn’t have covid reported the same long covid symptoms.
According to The Telegraph :
Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at The Open University, said: “That’s not all that much less than the 5.0 per cent for the infected people, which does show that having one or more of these symptoms isn’t uncommon regardless of Covid-19.”
Long Covid symptoms are fever, headache, muscle ache, weakness/tiredness, nausea/vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, sore throat, cough, shortness of breath, loss of taste and loss of smell.
The ONS said however, that these symptoms are common in the general population.
The long covid fairy-tale is coming apart at the seams. Earlier this month, University College London produced a study that concluded that the danger of long covid to children had been wildly exaggerated.
Dr Michael Absoud, honorary reader at the department of women and children’s health at King’s College London told The Telegraph :
“The ONS are to be congratulated for engaging with clinicians and scientists to review their methodology and provide updated estimates on post-Covid symptoms. The ONS first published the approach in April 2021, and reported a 12-week prevalence of long Covid in 14 per cent. This has now been revised down to 3 per cent in the latest estimate.”
The ONS and University College London are to be congratulated for doing their jobs. Long covid was invented to encourage uptake of covid jabs. Covid itself (if it exists) is a mild respiratory illness, dangerous only to the very elderly and those with underlying health conditions.
Knowing that covid itself wasn’t enough to send folks rushing to the jabbatoirs, they needed to come up with something else to convince them that covid was far more serious. Long covid was perfect. They attributed so many common symptoms to it, that anyone at anytime could claim to be suffering from it.
I called it bollox last year. Scientists are calling it bollox today.
September 17, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Covid-19, UK |
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Around 35,000 women have come forward to report irregularities with their menstrual cycle, including abnormal period pain, after they received a covid jab.
Writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Dr. Victoria Dale called for an investigation. She lectures on reproductive immunology at Imperial College London.
Incredibly, The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the UK’s drug watchdog, has refused to accept that there is a link between the jabs and menstrual cycle problems.
According to the MHRA:
“The rigorous evaluation completed to date does not support a link between changes to menstrual periods and related symptoms and Covid vaccines.”
According to The Mail Online this morning:
Data on the number of period problems following vaccination was collected from the MHRA’s Yellow Card Scheme, which keeps a record of every case of a potential side effect. But this data is reliant on women coming forward, meaning nearly 35,000 figure could be the tip of the iceberg.
So-called experts were rushed onto UK TV and radio shows this morning to assure the public that even if there is a link between the jabs and period problems, the jabs do not affect fertility.
They’re lying. I am not saying that I know the jabs affect fertility. I do not know that. But equally they cannot know that the jabs do not affect fertility in males or females.
That’s because they have no long-term data on how the jabs affect fertility or anything else for that matter. I really hope this information is getting through to people. The jabs are unnecessary, untried, unsafe and the manufacturers have been indemnified against legal action from anyone injured by their products.
September 16, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, UK |
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The UK government’s ‘Winter Plan’ for Covid is likely to mean the attempted introduction of vaccine passports and more lockdowns. It’s all a far cry from the freedom we were promised would come with mass vaccination.
Suppose someone had told you back in March 2020, that, 18 months later, despite two-thirds of the population being double-vaccinated, Britain would be facing the prospect of another depressing autumn and winter of Covid restrictions and lockdowns?
Well, there were people back then who warned such things would happen, that life would never be allowed to get back to the ‘old’ normal and that the governing, globalist elite was working to a different plan that had little to do with countering a virus. These people were denounced as ‘conspiracy theorists’ and ‘crackpots’. Yet, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s unveiling of yesterday’s ‘Winter Plan’ for England, it seems the ‘conspiracy theorists’ and ‘crackpots’ have got it right once again.
Plan A is learning to live with Covid. But this doesn’t mean living totally normally. There will still be border restrictions. We’ll still be urged – some would say coerced – to get the booster jab and to have our kids vaccinated too (even though, less than a fortnight ago, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation didn’t recommend it). We’ll still be encouraged to wear masks in certain settings.
Yet for all its downsides, life under Plan A is still better than the alternative, Plan B. This “toolkit” includes the return of mandatory masks, and the introduction of jab-only vaccine passports for large events, which could be extended to other gatherings too. And, most revealingly of all, further lockdowns are not ruled out, despite the disastrous impact they have had on both the economy and on society.
Let’s be clear what we are dealing with here: it’s psychological warfare on an industrial scale. The semblance of normality that Plan A gives us can be withdrawn at very short notice and Plan B – or parts of it – will be put into operation if ‘cases’ surge and the NHS comes under “unsustainable pressure.” But the NHS comes under pressure every winter, meaning Plan B is actually Plan A. Plan B is clearly what the government really wants to implement, but Johnson knows that, to keep disgruntled Tory backbenchers on side, he can’t do so straightaway.
Hospitals are nearly always close to capacity in December and January. Inevitably, once the flu/cold season starts up again in October, and with mass testing still in place, we’ll see a rise in ‘cases’, which will then see Johnson reach for his “toolkit.” That will be preceded by the usual doomladen and ludicrously over-the-top predictions from ‘modellers’ and ‘advisers’ of what will happen if the Prime Minister fails to ‘act’.
‘Something must be done!’ will be the cry from those who will lose nothing financially from another lockdown.
In fact, the calls for an immediate return of restrictions have already begun. A headline on the BBC News website reads, “Hospital Covid cases may see big jump, say experts.” The piece refers to how the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) committee modelling “suggested” hospitalisation could reach 2,000 to 7,000 per day next month.
We’ve been here before. Lots of times. Only a few months ago, there were dire predictions from ‘modellers’ and ‘experts’ of what would happen if restrictions were lifted in England in July. A member of Independent SAGE – which is even more hardline than SAGE – said the UK could face cases of more than 100,000 a day if lockdown easing went ahead. Well, lockdown easing did go ahead, and guess what? Cases fell. From 43,910 cases (on a seven-day average) on July 16 to 23,002 by the end of the month.
We’re meant, though, to have the memory of a gnat and to have forgotten how wrong the ‘modellers’ have consistently been, and to be terrified once again by their latest ‘predictions’, which make Private Frazer of 1970s sitcom ‘Dad’s Army’ fame – whose catchphrase was “We’re doomed!” – sound like the world’s greatest optimist.
With all the sensationalist ‘cases set to surge this autumn unless restrictions are re-imposed’ headlines, I expect that, straight after next month’s Tory Party conference – and after the Coronavirus Act has been renewed for another six months – Johnson will reach for his “toolkit” and bring back mandatory masks. Then, a few weeks after that, it’ll be ‘accept jab-only vaccine passports or we’ll have to do another lockdown’.
But hang on a minute… weren’t the vaccines meant to put an end to all of this? “15 million jabs to freedom” was the famous headline in the Daily Mail last 27 December. Yet with 66% of the population double-vaxxed – and around 90% of those deemed the most ‘vulnerable’ having had their jabs – we have more ‘cases’ and deaths with Covid than we did this time last year, when no one was vaccinated. How come?
On ‘Good Morning Britain’, Richard Madeley, a proper ‘old-school’ journalist asked this emperor’s new clothes question to Dr Hilary Jones. Jones struggled to answer and kept muttering about cases being higher this year. But if the vaccines work so well, and so many people have been vaccinated, why are we even talking of having more restrictions this autumn and winter? Either the vaccines work or they don’t. If they work, then there’s no need to discuss restrictions. If they don’t, then why push them?
The government line is we need more jabs and a “toolkit” of restrictions too. More lockdowns as a “last resort,” if cases surge, “to protect the NHS.” And vaccine passports too – without a negative-test or prior-infection option – even though we know the vaccines don’t prevent transmission.
Like the autumn and winter of 2020-21, this coming ‘winter of discontent’, of fear and dread, and restrictions being imposed or re-imposed at a moment’s notice, is meant to be our ‘new normal’. Which means this will only end when people realise it’s never meant to end.
Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. His award winning blog can be found at http://www.neilclark66.blogspot.com.
September 15, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, UK |
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Richard Sharp, BBC Chairman, is likely to back proposals to increase regulation of the world’s largest social networks and platforms to combat “fake news” and “disinformation.”
It is pertinent to ask “urgent questions” about these platforms, since platforms have allowed lies, conspiracy theories, and falsehoods to spread rapidly, the chairman claimed in a speech to the Royal Television Society convention.
Since assuming office in February, Sharp will make his first significant public statement, calling for an update to outdated Communications Act of 2003, calling for a crackdown on speech online.
He continued stating that he wants the BBC “to define itself globally as a pre-eminent purveyor of facts in the disinformation age.”
Sharp also claimed that “The pandemic and ‘infodemic’ that has spread alongside have left us in no doubt of how vulnerable we all are. But it has also suggested that some are more vulnerable than others…. The magnetic draw of conspiracy theories in our societies is getting stronger. And we can no longer pretend it doesn’t have real-life consequences – whether it’s pulling down 5G masts, driving down vaccine take up, or leaving the results of democratic elections in doubt, ” Televisual reported.
Even though the provision of fact-checking services and coordinating efforts between platforms and credible news organizations to detect misinformation is important, Sharp alleged more needed to be done.
“There are urgent questions to be answered about the future media world we want to live in. We need to rethink the regulatory environment in this country – and replace a Communications Act that predates Facebook with one that can deliver on a clear vision,” the chairman said.
“But we also need to look at where the digital world comes up against the fundamental rights, freedoms and privacies we sign up to as societies and individuals. Does the principle of media freedom need to be redefined and re-enshrined for the digital age? Do we need to claim our personal data as a human right, rather than an asset to be bought and sold?”
September 15, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | BBC, COVID-19 Vaccine, UK |
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FINALLY, an MP has challenged the government on the horrific levels of Covid vaccine damage recorded under the Yellow Card Scheme run by our watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). It currently shows 1,632 deaths and 360,000 injuries since December 1, 2020, far more than any vaccine in the past.
Sir Christopher Chope, Conservative MP for Christchurch, has researched the reporting system set up in 1979 and its accompanying compensation programme and found them woefully inadequate; a fact anyone who has tried to claim for damage by a vaccine is painfully aware of. He has introduced the Covid-19 Vaccine Damage Bill to deal with the vaccine claims which are currently handled in what is best described as a hostile environment.
Chope told the Commons last Friday that he estimates that more than 10,000 people ‘have suffered real, serious damage as a result of doing the right thing’, and was shocked when the Labour MP for Cambridge, Daniel Zeichner, suggested there were more urgent priorities, asking: ‘I wonder why this issue should get preference over others?’
Chope was clear in his criticism: ‘Families should not be left hanging around for years wondering whether they will be eligible for any compensation. That is totally the wrong message. The government should be sending the message that, “if you do the right thing, you will be looked after by the government if something goes wrong”.’
He recognised that some of the injured had ‘taken one for the team’ and that their sacrifice should be recognised in a similar way to a soldier suffering severe injury. He said: ‘In a sense, that is what we do with the military covenant. People enter the armed forces of our country and, if something goes wrong, they expect the government to look after them, and we do.’
A petition to update the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS) circulated in July but received only 17,000 signatures; 100,000 are needed to trigger a full debate in the House of Commons. Still, the government had to respond to signatories, which it did on August 5, but Chope was scathing. He told the House the response said: ‘The government has a robust system to monitor potential side effects of the Covid-19 vaccine and has added the vaccine to the VDPs. We will consider further action as more evidence becomes available.’
Chope was not impressed. He said: ‘We already have a lot of evidence that people have suffered damage, if not death, as a result of these vaccinations. The government are saying they are “looking at how it can improve the operational aspects of the VDPS to better meet the additional demand created by the inclusion of the Covid-19 vaccine and improve the customer experience. Once more is known about the possible links between the vaccine and potential side effects, it will be considered whether a wider review of the VDPS is needed.” My Bill answers that question by saying that we need such a review now.’
He told the House that until June 23, there had been 154 applications for compensation: ‘Obviously, there are many, many more now, but there are only four people in that department dealing with all vaccine damage applications, so no decisions have been made and there is no indication as to when any decisions will be forthcoming.’
Claimants will have a rough experience if history is anything to go by. It took Jackie Fletcher 18 years to win compensation for her son Robert, who was severely damaged by the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine as a toddler. The injured, in a time of great need, are likely to find they are gaslighted, that they must spend thousands on specialist lawyers and that the burden of proof to explain why they are vaccine-damaged will be on them rather than Big Pharma, who manufactured the shots.
Chope set out the scheme’s inadequacies. He said: ‘The Pearson commission [1979 reform of compensation for personal injury, including from vaccination] found that those injured as a result of vaccination should have access to financial support, however, the 1979 Act makes provision of a maximum payment of £120,000 together with a threshold of 60 per cent disablement. As a result, fewer than 2 per cent of applications are successful. My Bill calls for the Government to set up a judge-led inquiry into the issues raised.’
Like all MPs and leaders to date, Shaun Bailey, Conservative MP for West Bromwich West, was more concerned with upholding the integrity of the vaccine programme and protecting Big Pharma than the victims. Missing the point, he said: ‘How do we ensure that we do not create a culture of hesitancy where people do not uptake vaccines or, equally, do not produce vaccines because of the fear that they might cause mass severe side-effects?’
If Big Pharma have not worked out how to avoid mass severe side-effects after hundreds of years of vaccination, and government are approving vaccines with that knowledge, we really are in trouble.
Chope agreed and basically said the government had to take responsibility rather than hide serious vaccine damage as it consistently tries to do. ‘We cannot suppress reports of coroners saying that somebody has died as a result of vaccination. I know from personal experience people who were in really good health and then had their first vaccine. I know one person who had a stroke and then severe heart problems. These are not just anecdotes; these are facts known by people across the country. We need to say to people we will look after them 100 per cent without expecting them to get lawyers engaged which is agonising for families and loved ones.’
The AstraZeneca jab is incurring double the number of adverse event reports of Pfizer. There are rumblings that it will be discontinued under the guise of a mix ’n’ match programme.
MHRA Yellow Card reporting published September 9 2021, figures to September 1
Pfizer – 21.9million people – 40million doses – Yellow Card reporting rate: 1 in 197 people impacted
AstraZeneca – 24.8m people – 48.9m doses – Yellow Card reporting rate: 1 in 107 impacted
Moderna – 1.4m people – 2.3m doses – Yellow Card reporting rate: 1 in 93 impacted
Overall, 1 in 134 people injected experienced a Yellow Card Adverse Event, which may be less than 10 per cent of actual figures, according to MHRA.
Reactions – 314,700 (Pfizer) + 820,923 (AZ) + 47,977 (Moderna) + 3244 (Unknown) = 1,186,844
Reports – 111,317 (Pfizer) + 230,499 (AZ) + 15,079 (Moderna) + 1,061 (Unknown) = 357,956
Fatal – 524 (Pfizer) + 1,064 (AZ) + 16 (Moderna) + 28 (Unknown) = 1,632
Acute cardiac – 5,129 (Pfizer) + 9,214 (AZ) + 544 (Moderna) + 40 (Unknown) = 14,927
Pericarditis/myocarditis (Heart inflammation) – 427 (Pfizer) + 259 (AZ) + 81 (Moderna) + 3 (Unknown) = 770
Anaphylaxis – 476 (Pfizer) + 816 (AZ) + 37 (Moderna) + 1 (Unknown) = 1,330
Blood disorders – 10,736 (Pfizer) + 7407 (AZ) + 895 (Moderna) + 44 (Unknown) = 19,082
Infections – 7,421 (Pfizer) + 18,237 (AZ) + 802 (Moderna) + 90 (Unknown) = 26,550
Herpes – 1,602 (Pfizer) + 2,492 (AZ) + 81 (Moderna) + 13 (Unknown) = 4,188
Headaches – 22,354 (Pfizer) + 83,728 (AZ) + 2,883 (Moderna) + 232 (Unknown) = 109,197
Migraine – 2,599 (Pfizer) + 8,064 (AZ) + 319 (Moderna) + 29 (Unknown) = 11,011
Eye disorders – 5,236 (Pfizer) + 13,818 (AZ) + 542 (Moderna) + 57 (Unknown) = 19,653
Blindness – 101 (Pfizer) + 283 (AZ) + 14 (Moderna) + 4 (Unknown) = 402
Deafness – 195 (Pfizer) + 367 (AZ) + 16 (Moderna) + 2 (Unknown) = 580
Psychiatric disorders – 6,444 (Pfizer) + 17,172 (AZ) + 977 (Moderna) + 76 (Unknown) = 24,669
Skin disorders – 22,076 (Pfizer) + 50,525 (AZ) + 7,024 (Moderna) + 214 (Unknown) = 79,839
Muscle & tissue disorders – 37,907 (Pfizer) + 98,975 (AZ) + 5,235 (Moderna) + 371 (Unknown) = 142,488
Spontaneous abortions – 301 + 7 stillbirth/foetal death (Pfizer) + 203 + 2 stillbirth (AZ) + 29 + 1 foetal death (Moderna) + 2 (Unknown) = 535 + 10 (figures now imply 24 related maternal deaths)
Vomiting – 3,390 (Pfizer) + 11,377 (AZ) + 574 (Moderna) + 42 (Unknown) = 15,383
Facial paralysis including Bell’s Palsy – 727 (Pfizer) + 879 (AZ) + 54 (Moderna) + 7 (Unknown) = 1,667
Nervous system disorders – 55,002 (Pfizer) + 174,814 (AZ) + 7473 (Moderna) + 615 (Unknown) = 237,904
Strokes and CNS haemorrhages – 515 (Pfizer) + 2033 (AZ) + 17 (Moderna) + 9 (Unknown) = 2,574
Guillain-Barré syndrome – 46 (Pfizer) + 397 (AZ) + 3 (Moderna) + 5 (Unknown) = 451
Tremor – 1,349 (Pfizer) + 9,692 (AZ) + 173 (Moderna) + 38 (Unknown) = 11,252
Pulmonary embolism & deep vein thrombosis – 623 (Pfizer) + 2,737 (AZ) + 32 (Moderna) + 18 (Unknown) = 3,410
Respiratory disorders – 13,500 (Pfizer) + 27,616 (AZ) + 1,253 (Moderna) + 113 (Unknown) = 42,482
Seizures – 757 (Pfizer) + 1891 (AZ) + 127 (Moderna) + 11 (Unknown) = 2,786
Paralysis – 308 (Pfizer) + 748 (AZ) + 39 (Moderna) + 6 (Unknown) = 1,101
Haemorrhage (all types) – 2,755 (Pfizer) + 4,877 (AZ) + 342 (Moderna) + 29 (Unknown) = 8,003
Vertigo/tinnitus – 2,801 (Pfizer) + 6,389 (AZ) + 293 (Moderna) + 25 (Unknown) = 9,508
Renal/urinary – 852 (Pfizer) + 2,534 (AZ) + 103 (Moderna) + 23 (Unknown) = 3,512
Reproductive/breast – 18,171 (Pfizer) + 17,023 (AZ) + 2,388 (Moderna) + 131 (Unknown) = 37,713
See Annex One for full reports.
September 14, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine, UK |
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Speaking in the House of Commons this morning, Health Secretary Sajid Javid said that a consultation has been launched over making Covid and flu vaccinations mandatory for front-line healthcare and social care workers in England.
Javid said that while he’s keeping an open mind until he sees the results of the consultation, he believes that:
“It is highly likely that front-line NHS staff and those working in wider social care settings will also have to be vaccinated to protect those around them and this will be an important step in protecting those at greatest risk”.
Tyranny just rolls off the tongues of these fascists doesn’t it? Nobody cares though. There wasn’t so much as a murmur from the Labour Party benches, the so-called party of the working man and woman.
The Health Secretary had just threatened hundreds of thousands of people who work in the nation’s hospitals and care homes, that if they don’t take his medicine, they’ll be out of a job. Not a peep from Labour.
Javid was laying out his plans for tackling covid and flu this Winter. On flu, he said that in the next few weeks we will see the launch of the largest flu vaccination campaign the country has ever seen.
He said that people will also be encouraged to meet outdoors where possible, and try to let in fresh air when meeting indoors.
He also said that people will be encouraged to wear face masks in crowded areas where they can come into contact with others they don’t normally meet. This was greeted by jeers from his Tory colleagues on the backbenches.
I never believed for a moment, that we would ever see the back of the arbitrary measures introduced to tackle covid. I said many times on The Richie Allen Show that we’d be living with these measures and more forever. I hate being right.
September 14, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Human rights, UK |
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Pinter & Martin; paperback, £9.99. Published 17 May 2021
IN HER INTRODUCTION to ‘A State Of Fear’, Laura Dodsworth writes, “We don’t like to believe we can be manipulated, let alone that we have been manipulated – this book may hurt.”
Hurt it will, pitilessly exposing by turns the damage that fear has done to us over the past year, the way that terror eclipses reason or common-sense, and the way it has been weaponised to control us by the Government’s behavioural scientists. If you care about the future of liberty and democracy in the UK, this book will not help you sleep at night. It may however find a place at the top the pile on your bedside table: its hard-hitting chapters read once with shock and maybe, for some, a degree of incredulity, but then referred to again with increasing belief and conviction as a new revelation, campaign or headline brings home a key theme or passage.
It’s well researched and rigorously factual, but passion and anger shine through every page. They turn it from a dry analysis into a page-turning thriller in which we repeatedly discover ourselves as protagonist, victim, or supporting cast. The anecdotes and observations resonate with moments from our own lives over the past eighteen months, making personal the revelations about the polished levers and engines which generated them.
In a book about fear, perhaps the most frightening point of all is just how easy it now is to control a democratic society through the levers of behavioural science. Without debate or public consent, the Government has built capabilities in department after department to control how we think, feel, and act subliminally using cutting-edge psychology, research and communication. The advent of Covid-19 turbocharged these teams, which were headed by the SPI-B behavioural science committee and handed almost unlimited power and money. As the discipline with the greatest representation on SAGE, behavioural scientists carried more weight in the pandemic even than virologists and medical experts.
Likely anticipating the charge that she has succumbed to the dark theories of those who smell conspiracy in every action of Government, Dodsworth has rigorously researched and checked her claims. What emerges is comprehensive, informative and authoritative: page after page rings true and makes one nod as an anecdote of the past year strikes a chord.
Dodsworth vividly illuminates not just the effects fear has had, but how it influences us and why we are so prone to these extreme reactions. The expert insight and personal testimony show both how fear was created and how it took control of the population, often driving victims to extremes of behaviour that they view in hindsight as totally out of character.
Little here is speculative: the book deals in what we can see and know of events over the past year. It draws on highly-placed sources, though sadly many of those with real inside knowledge are quoted anonymously as they were too frightened of losing their careers to go on the record. This inevitably raises questions over the credibility of their claims, but it’s impossible to dismiss what they say because the substantiation is robust, the evidence convincing, and it so often chimes with personal experience.
At one point, a source in Government is quoted as saying,
“Hancock is quite paranoid and a total ‘wet’. He’s a real panicker.”
This will surprise few people – we can all see Hancock’s shortcomings – but these moments of recognition are important in building our understanding of the way in which politicians moved so quickly from championing freedom to enforcing repression. ‘The fear spread from the health department to the other departments and they all fell under the spell of the SAGE scientists foretelling doom’.
This was a different kind of fear to that felt by the public: fear not of the illness itself, but of its political fall-out. Politicians were terrified of failing in any step which might later be found to have saved lives. The virus might not represent a deadly threat to the vast majority of British people, but it could certainly be lethal to their own prospects for electoral success.
An insider tells Dodsworth that ministers fear ‘they’ll get hauled through the press for their own mistakes and that’s worse for them than ruining people’s businesses.’
This spectre still stalks Whitehall. I’m told that from March 2020 onwards, any Civil Servant minded to reject tough restrictions has simply been asked, ‘what will you tell the Inquiry?’ Few are brave enough to resist that threat. Yet it only works one way – deaths and suffering from Covid-19 may bring retribution. Deaths and suffering caused by restrictions are so unimportant to the decision-makers that they have not even bothered to consider whether the harm of measures may outweigh the benefits. Recovery has been campaigning since its launch for the coming Covid-19 inquiry to be comprehensive, investigating the full impact of the measures taken, positive and negative: this is why it’s so important.
We now know beyond question that the consequences of the Government action will be devastating for many, from the thousands who have not been treated or diagnosed with cancers over the past year to the millions whose livelihoods have gone. The mental health impact alone has been enormous and experts warn that some will bear the scars for life – including many children. This is vividly brought to life via the personal experiences which preface each chapter of the book.
Yet fear sells above all else. Broadcasters have enjoyed unprecedented viewing figures while Covid-19 has raged. An Ofcom report in September found that the average UK adult spent 6 hours 25 minutes watching content in April 2020 – up by an hour and a half from 2019.
That kind of power over eyeballs brings huge influence and profits, so broadcasters who gorge on drama and sensation grow fat. The reporters who provide it win pay rises and awards. For them, the best scientist is not the most accurate or eminent expert, but the one who produces the most wild and exciting prediction: the one which will really get viewers scared.
Reporters rush from No.10 conference to Covid ward with breathless anticipation of a child at a theme park racing from the dodgems to a rollercoaster. It’s what happens next that matters: the next scary number, the next variant. Checking whether the last prediction came true is dull. Boring old cancer and heart disease may be the bigger killers, but they’re old news. No-one has pushed a camera in the face of the grieving relatives of a cancer patient who was turned away for treatment or a worried oncologist. If you want to be heard, you have to talk Covid.
The pressure on Government is no longer to do what is best for the country, but what is best for the story. Over and over again, this leads to poor decision-making. Leaders are rewarded not for good policy, but for media-friendly sound-bites. Today, the business of Government has become less about doing what is right and more about doing what will play out best on the airwaves. Managing the opinion of the country has become more important than managing the country. Behind closed doors, our leaders have taken the logical next step.
Dodsworth reveals how successive governments have assembled a vast interconnected machine for producing and weaponizing fear with the explicit aim of controlling behaviour. Those who operate it argue that their intentions are good.
It’s the old paternalist thinking with a high-tech upgrade. People can’t be trusted to make the correct choices if they are given access to information and left to decide for themselves. So they must be subliminally ‘nudged’ in the right direction (or, during Covid-19, bludgeoned). Information which might disrupt the narrative is suppressed. Those who choose for us won’t admit the possibility that they could get it wrong. We, the ordinary people, are fallible; they are not. As Dodsworth says,
“Nudge is clever people in government making sure the not-so-clever people do what they want.”
All this was already happening prior to Covid-19. Yet it was little studied. A colossal machine was assembled out of public sight without any consideration as to the ethics and consequences, since those involved saw their goals as good and the ends as justifying the means.
As Dodsworth finds, its workings are wrapped in shadow. Attempting to dissect its component parts, she identifies some of the departments involved, but beyond confirming their existence, no-one in Government will answer her questions. In a book which contains many shocks, not least is how much of all this is being hidden from us in our supposedly free and democratic society. Not only are our strings to be pulled without our conscious knowledge, the details of how and why we are being manipulated must be hidden from us, lest we see through the tricks and hold the puppet-masters to account.
Behavioural science regards the mass of humanity as no more than rats in a maze, to be prodded down one alley and forbidden another. The scientists wish to control the rats: they do not accept that the rats should have any control over them.
These are disturbing claims, but the more they are researched, the more substantiation can be found. For example, she refers to the questionable role of Ofcom in enforcing a distorted narrative across the broadcast media, citing the guidance issued to broadcasters on 23 March 2020. This says that any report featuring content around Covid-19 which ‘may be harmful’ will be subject to statutory sanction.
As she points out, these comparatively innocuous words in practice force broadcasters to censure a huge amount of critical content, even where it is accurate, especially where it tends to calm fears or reassure people, since fear has been used to maximise compliance with restrictions.
An online search reveals that this was followed by additional Ofcom guidance on 27 March 2020, which is chillingly explicit. For example, it prohibits the broadcasting of ‘medical or other advice which… discourages the audience from following official rules and guidance.’ There’s no ambiguity here. Ofcom is telling broadcasters that they cannot allow informed, expert opinion, no matter how accurate or important, if it conflicts with the official guidance. This is extraordinary.
It gives added bite to her central point: ‘any regulator charged with upholding freedom of expression – as is the case with Ofcom – should proceed to restrict that freedom only on a closely reasoned basis. That is something Ofcom has manifestly failed to do.”
In the process, it has turned our theoretically impartial broadcasters into mere cheerleaders for restrictions. She argues that what they report is no longer news: “There is a word for only sharing information which is biased and used to promote a political cause: propaganda.”
Could the BBC have done more to preserve its integrity? When reporting restrictions were imposed on it during the Gulf War, it prefaced reports with a reminder that restrictions were in place. It could have done the same here, alerting viewers to the controls on pandemic reporting. It chose not to do so and therefore the public is unaware that anything has changed.
Her interview with Piers Robinson, Co-Director of the Organisation for Propaganda Studies, concludes with the stark warning, ”It is not inconceivable that we are walking into an absolute nightmare in which freedom of speech and debate become significantly curtailed.”
It’s one of many moments in the book where you catch yourself thinking, ‘can this really be happening?’ It’s hard to believe that we have lost so many freedoms without a whisper from the supposed parliamentary Opposition, or that a leader who has championed our liberties so loudly in the past has moved so decisively to remove them.
‘A State Of Fear’ is essential reading if you want to understand how majority backing for the uniquely repressive response to Covid-19 was engineered so quickly. It’s a deeply troubling tale. However, it raises broader concerns about a world in which the combined power of psychology, technology, media and research are increasingly being used to dictate our choices without our knowledge or consent.
These questions go to the heart of our humanity and the kind of world we want for ourselves and our children. How many of us really want to live in fear, even if it means we are protected from our own misjudgements? Can governments be trusted with subliminal tools so powerful that they can instruct us what to think? With ‘A State Of Fear’, Laura Dodsworth has launched a vital debate.
About Recovery
Recovery formed last October to campaign for the Five Reasonable Demands for good government during Covid-19, a moderate, balanced alternative to the Government’s damaging approach to Covid-19, which experts have warned will end up costing many more lives than it saves and the Government itself says has already cost the country as much as the entire Second World War.
For Recovery’s campaign against fear go to: www.timeforrecovery.org/fear
Jon Dobinson, is a co-founder and Campaign Director of Recovery, and MD of award winning advertising agency Other. He is a former D&AD judge and Chair of the Creative Jury of the International Business Awards.
September 14, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | BBC, Covid-19, Ofcom, UK |
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UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid told the BBC’s Nick Robinson yesterday, that his government has decided to scrap the vaccine passport scheme which was due to be implemented at the end of the month. Javid was telling porkies.
He told Robinson:
“We shouldn’t be doing things for the sake of it. We’ve looked at it properly and, whilst we should keep it in reserve as a potential option, I’m pleased to say that we will not be going ahead with plans for vaccine passports.”
However, The Times reports this morning that:
Downing Street has insisted that vaccine passports are still a “first-line defence” against a winter wave of Covid-19 after the health secretary said plans to introduce them had been scrapped.
No 10 said checks on the vaccine status of people going to nightclubs and other crowded events remained a crucial part of the government’s winter Covid plan due to be unveiled by the prime minister tomorrow.
They haven’t scrapped the scheme, they’ve simply postponed it. Facing a backlash from backbench MP’s and the wrath of night-time industry leaders, the government has decided that the smart move is to row back on vaccine passport plans, for now.
But when the NHS is overwhelmed again this Winter (as it is every Winter), vaccine passports will be back on the table. Hospitality bosses will be told to implement the scheme or face mandatory closure.
Dr. Chand Nagpaul is the chair of the British Medical Association. Today, he will address the BMA’s Annual Representative Meeting. He is expected to deliver a damning assessment of the Government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. According to The Telegraph :
Dr Nagpaul will argue that the health service was already in crisis before March 2020, after parts of it had been “starved” by a lack of facilities and almost 90,000 staff vacancies.
The latest NHS England figures show 5.6 million people are now waiting to start treatment, up from 4.2 million in March 2020.
The number of NHS hospital beds in the UK has more than halved in the last 30 years, from around 299,000 in 1988 to 141,000 in 2019.
In 1988, the UK population was 56,812,757. Today it’s 68,207,116. NHS Winter crises are as certain as death and taxes. Now factor in the tens of thousands of staff who will leave the health service (and social care) because they will refuse to be jabbed and you have a perfect storm.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson will address the nation tomorrow. He will say that he wants to move towards “living with covid as an endemic disease.” He’ll say that he doesn’t want to lockdown again this Winter and that he is diametrically opposed to vaccine passports.
However, the power to reimpose any measure he sees fit will remain on the statute books. Lockdowns, masks and vaccine passports will be back this Winter. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.
September 13, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, UK |
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