Well personally I'm convinced by a paper on vaccines written by a gynaecologist and a linguist and published in an open access journal where anyone, however bonkers, can publish anything they like. I've got a Covid vaccination coming up, and it's about my fifth, so I'm wondering if the microstructures will be starting to fit together like vaccine Lego?
You're dead, well according to some after those jabs you should be, along with another couple of billion. The views expressed in my posts are not necessarily mine.
Iron? You need to clean it first - which wash do you put it in? I mean it’s clearly a delicate, but the combination of pristine white cotton with all that red offers a real risk of colour bleed. They just haven’t thought it through
Another twist in the (fury) tale or a defused con(spiracy) ... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy8095xjg4po
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/26/chris-whitty-covid-inquiry-live/ The Government potentially overstated the danger of Covid to the public at the start of the pandemic, Prof Sir Chris Whitty has admitted. The Chief Medical Officer told the Covid Inquiry he still worries about whether the Government got “the level of concern” right as it introduced lockdowns and shielding measures. Sir Chris said it was a difficult balance and if anything it was possible that authorities “overdid it” when communicating how dangerous the virus was at the beginning of the pandemic. “I was worried at the beginning. I still worry, actually in retrospect, about whether we got the level of concern right,” he said. “Were we either over pitching it so that people were incredibly afraid of something where in fact, their actuarial risk was low, or we were not pitching it enough and therefore people didn’t realise the risk they were walking into. “I think that balance is really hard, and arguably, some people would say we, if anything we overdid it, rather than under the beginning.” Latest updates Alex Barton. Samuel Montgomery. Michael SearlesHealth Correspondent 26 September 2024 • 4:50pm 4:48pm That’s all for today
I'd of had absolutely zero chance of getting my hip replacement done at 38 if I'd of had to have gone via the NHS, which is wrong as if it's needed then your age shouldn't matter ( but apparently it would have ) I've fortunately got Bupa it's it's all been covered and done without having probably 25/30yrs worth of waiting first
Yer it's pretty much guaranteed, plus I will need my other one doing in the next few years they reckon, so I'll have at least 2 on each over my lifetime
Isabel Oakeshott Whitty’s lockdown admission shows the public sector rewards failure, however cataclysmic The Chief Medical Officer has conceded ‘we overdid it’. So why haven’t many of the architects of this disaster been held accountable? please log in to view this image Isabel Oakeshott 27 September 2024 5:00pm please log in to view this image “The Prof is pivotal,” Matt Hancockobserved, as he mused over how to frighten the nation into following Covid rules. Writing about Chief Medical Officer Sir Chris Whitty in his Pandemic Diaries, the former Health Secretary noted that the public “seemed to like” his calm, reassuring manner. The Government needed to make the most of that respect, he concluded – and asked Whitty to use “his most authoritative voice” to make a bossy social media clip about new social distancing rules. The date was March 25, 2020: two days after Boris Johnson gave his historic address to the nation, instructing everyone to stay at home. Prince Charles had Covid and (though he didn’t yet know it) so did Hancock. Terrified by Doomsday predictions of bodies piling high, and apocalyptic scenes from hospitals in Italy, the British did what they were told. No government in history had ever attempted anything remotely like it – and trust was critical. Advertisement As Hancock told the House of Commons at the time, the draconian measures the government was taking to “stop the spread” would change the lives of everyone. The scale of public sacrifice required meant there was no room for doubt about what was at stake. Who better to convey the severity of the situation than a mild mannered distinguished medic like Whitty? Very early in the crisis, Hancock clocked that the man he affectionately called the “the Prof” was a very powerful asset. For all his legendary arrogance, the then health secretary was sufficiently self-aware to recognise that doctors always get a better hearing than politicians. In the league table of most and least trusted professions, medics consistently rank in the top five (alongside nurses, pilots, and librarians and engineers); while politicians always (quite rightly) languish at the bottom. With his gentle demeanour and unimpeachable professional credentials, the Chief Medical Officer was the perfect person to deliver difficult messages. Hancock had lucked out – and exploited it. Advertisement please log in to view this image 8 top tips to get the most when you travel Privately, the modest Whitty was far from comfortable with his new very public facing role. Recalling how he ordered the CMO to make social media clips “repeating key mantras” like the hated “two metre rule”, Hancock writes in his diaries that the Prof found recording these sorts of things “terribly embarrassing”. Nonetheless, Whitty did it, which means he cannot escape accountability for the terrible mistakes that were made. As the old Whitehall saying goes, advisers advise and ministers decide. But in these unique circumstances, it is no exaggeration to say that the Chief Medical Officer drove the pandemic response. Had he not personally recommended and promoted the lockdown policies we now know were so flawed, they would simply never have happened. Accordingly, he must take full responsibility for the dreadful consequences. Far, far too late in the Public Inquiry that took years to get underway, and still has no end date, Whitty this week acknowledged what so many of us could quite clearly see at the time: that the government went way over the top in its initial pandemic response. Of course, he didn’t put it quite like that. What he actually said, giving evidence this week, is that “in retrospect,” he still worries about whether the government “got the level of concern right.” Advertisement “Some people would say... if anything we over did it,” he conceded. In a further remarkable concession, he went on to declare that in hindsight, ordering 2.3million people to cut themselves off from the world entirely for 12 weeks may have done more damage than it prevented. He now says he is “unsure” he would go down that route again, because it caused “significant harms.” Say what? This is extraordinary! If Whitty is no longer sure that the elderly and most vulnerable (around whom the entire response to the pandemic revolved) needed to self-isolate, what on earth is left of the case for anyone else locking down? In his characteristically understated way, Whitty appears to have shattered the case for lockdowns. If even he wouldn’t repeat the policy, who would? Sadly, it has taken so long to extract this confession that the significance is in danger of being lost. For just as the criminally wasteful public inquiry is finally starting to get interesting, most ordinary people have lost the will to live, and are no longer affording it any attention. Who can blame them? We have had months and months of irrelevant minutiae from civil servants and other dreary figures nobody has ever heard of. That a government which spends so much time wailing about the state of the public finances nonetheless sees fit to spend £137,000 every single working day simply responding to this charade beggars belief. Shamefully, that official figure – £9.285 million in the first quarter of this year on civil servants and lawyers alone - is literally only the half of it. Every day, the Covid Inquiry itself spends almost the same amount again. The whole ruinously expensive exercise may not be of Labour’s making, but as they wail about great black holes in the public finances, they most certainly have the power to stop it. As many of us have argued ad nauseum, all it need do is answer the single most important question: were national lockdowns ever necessary or justified, and should they ever be repeated? As weary as we may all be of the Baroness Hallett boreathon, the answer to this question could hardly be more consequential. Therefore what Whitty has to say deserves very close attention, especially since he considers another pandemic is “inevitable”. Bit by bit, the edifice he and Hancock constructed to imprison us is now falling down. From the absurdity of the medically meritless pieces of cloth we were forced to wear over our faces, to the unforgivable sacrifice of a generation of children who were needlessly deprived of going to school, so much of what we were told has now been exposed as a monstrous lie. While youngsters are resilient, and most bounced back, a small but significant number are still suffering and will never achieve their full potential. As Whitty now admits, there’s a whole additional group of lockdown victims: those who were condemned to an early death or long term suffering because ministers put “protecting the NHS” ahead of caring for those who use it. The CMO now concedes that in their desperation to prevent the health service from becoming overwhelmed, those in charge of the pandemic response failed to convey that it was still open for business. The trouble is, it wasn’t. The gatekeepers to the system – GPs – literally shut up shop, posting hostile messages on surgery doors. No wonder people failed to get lumps and bumps checked out. What really rankles is that the architects of this historic disaster are all still sitting pretty. So far from the downfall they deserve, they have prospered. Knighted for his public service, Whitty is still in an almighty position of power, as Chief Medical Officer. Meanwhile his pandemic sidekick, former Chief Scientific Officer Patrick Vallance, is literally lording it, having recently been given a peerage to join Keir Starmer’s front bench. As for Hancock? Mercifully, since stepping down as an MP, he has temporarily disappeared. Rumour has it that he has landed a plum job in the Middle East. If so, those still suffering as a result of his blunders won’t be shedding any tears
Mate is a former Blades player , 1st hip at 53, other hip 55 , now got knee trouble - bugger plays off 5 at golf tho’ hmph. Hope it’s going ok HT
Boris Johnson: I am no longer sure ‘medieval’ lockdowns beat Covid In his memoir, ex-PM likens himself to King Canute and wonders if restrictions ‘were decisive in beating back the disease’ please log in to view this image Boris Johnson described the pandemic restrictions as ‘literally medieval in their savagery and consequences’ in his new memoirLeon Neal Henry Bodkin Senior Reporter. Jacob Freedland 28 September 2024 8:10pm Boris Johnson has said he is “no longer sure” lockdowns played a decisive role in defeating Covid. Describing the pandemic restrictions as “literally medieval in their savagery and consequences”, he likened himself to King Canute and questioned whether it was possible for government action to “repel the waves of a highly contagious disease”. He has also said that he now believes Covid-19 emerged from a Chinese laboratory leak, rather than from transmission in a wildlife market. The admission, revealed in extracts from his new memoir, Unleashed, indicates a significant change in thinking from the architect of arguably the most controversial peacetime policy in modern British history. At the Covid inquiry last December, Mr Johnson acknowledged “appalling harms on either side of the decision” and issued a general apology for mistakes made. But he has never before admitted to serious doubts about the effectiveness of lockdown. please log in to view this image On March 23, 202, Mr Johnson told the British public to stay home to contain the virus - a decision he says he’s no longer sure aboutPAUL ELLIS Mr Johnson writes in the memoir, serialised in the Mail on Sunday, that he initially believed lockdowns were having a suppressing effect on the virus. “It was only later that I started to look at the curves of the pandemic around the world - the double hump that seemed to rise and fall irrespective of the approaches taken by governments,” he said. Advertisement “There were always two waves, whether you were in China, where lockdowns were ruthlessly enforced, or in Sweden, where they took a more voluntary approach.” He then added: “I am not saying that lockdowns achieved nothing; I am sure they had some effect. But were they decisive in beating back the disease, turning that wave down? All I can say is that I am no longer sure.” He made a parallel with the story of King Canute, questioning whether he had been right to demonstrate to his courtiers that he had no power to control the elements by vainly ordering the Thames to recede. Mr Johnson added that by locking down society, the country showed it had “barely progressed” from early modern England, citing restrictions during Shakespeare’s time, such as the closure of theatres and limits to the number who could attend funerals. The first national lockdown was imposed towards the end of March 2020 and began to be lifted in June. Local lockdowns followed, with authorities given extra powers to enforce social distancing. In September 2020, an indoor “rule of six” was imposed in England, with a tiered traffic light system the following month. This did not prevent the need for a second national lockdown in November, which lasted nearly a month. The third began in early January 2021 and was still partly in place in May. Advertisement Experts have said the intervention harmed disadvantaged children the most. Mr Johnson’s attachment to the policies appeared in contrast to his history of championing individual liberties. Michael Gove, a key enthusiast for tight controls during Covid, told an inquiry last November that lockdowns went against the former prime minister’s “world view”. On Saturday night, Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader and outspoken lockdown critic, said Mr Johnson had been “basically bullied” by the scientists. “Boris realises in hindsight that we had been led down the garden path by the scientists,” he said. “I wrote that this was a mistake – we should have only looked after the most vulnerable. “His advisors poo-pooed that. The reality is he should have looked at other sources. In the book, Mr Johnson reportedly describes as “bonkers” the tier system in late 2020. “It’s like those weird bans in Leviticus on the types of four-legged animal you can eat or the ban on trimming your sideburns,” he wrote. please log in to view this image Mr Johnson also questioned Covid-19’s origins THOMAS PETER Speaking about the origin of coronavirus, Mr Johnson added: “The awful thing about the whole Covid catastrophe is that it appears to have been entirely man-made, in all its aspects. Advertisement please log in to view this image Why heat pumps are here to stay Read more “It now looks overwhelmingly likely that the mutation was the result of some botched experiment in a Chinese lab.” The virus leaking from the Wuhan Institute of Virology is a view long promulgated by Donald Trump. Latterly, the FBI has said it believes it is “most likely” that the virus originated in a Chinese government-controlled lab. The theory was aggressively resisted by much of the mainstream academic community during the pandemic, who advocated a zoonotic, or animal-to-human, theory. Just under 227,000 people died in the UK with Covid-19 listed as one of the causes on their death certificate. The most deadly day, according to reported figures, was Jan 19 2021, during the second lockdown, when 1,490 Covid-related deaths were registered. Mr Johnson said following the birthday gathering for which he and Rishi Sunak were fined, he assumed the fixed penalty notice was “a practical joke”. He added his biggest mistake was to issue “a series of rather pathetic apologies, even when I knew zero about the events for which I was apologising. My grovelling just made people angrier.”
