PUBLIC HEALTH ENGLAND UNDER THE MICROSCOPE: a massive, sprawling mess that signals a much bigger problem

Covid Con Goes On & On May 31^{^st} 2021

As many people flock to beaches, parks and beer gardens, one of the country’s top scientists has warned that the next two weeks are critical for the way out of the pandemic.

After weeks of being stuck indoors due to COVID-19 restrictions and recent heavy downpours, millions of Britons have taken advantage of the weekend sunshine.

The seaside town of Blackpool has been longing for tourists and good weather, following a dreadful year economically because of the pandemic.

On Sunday it was packed, with people travelling from far and wide to enjoy the town’s attractions.

Andy Hygate, operations director of Blackpool Pleasure Beach, told Sky News: “We’ve seen how busy it has been this weekend and this is what a seaside resort should be like – people enjoying themselves, having ice creams on the beach.

“To see that back and everything that supports the economy and the employment in the town is really important to us and the wider resort.”

Scientists are still urging caution, however, as the number of new COVID-19 cases continues to rise, fuelled by the variant first identified in India.

Professor Susan Michie, professor of health psychology at University College London and a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), told Sky News: “We’re on a knife-edge.

“We could go either way with this new variant.

“Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we’d have to have more restrictions, or potentially it could be contained. But that does mean everybody needs to be cautious right now.

“Everybody’s behaviour could potentially make the difference.

“So the key thing at the moment is for people to do their socialising outdoors, and if people are inside, make sure windows and doors are open.”

Many people who had summer holidays cancelled or couldn’t book because of travel restrictions, opted to use this weekend for a staycation.

Natalie Armstrong and her family travelled from Birmingham to Blackpool on Friday.

She said: “(The pandemic lockdown) been awful for everyone – the kids have been stuck in the house with the same routines, so it’s really nice to finally get away with all the family this weekend.

“We’re making sure we’re following all the rules, hand sanitising, wearing our face masks, but it’s just nice to finally do something a bit normal.”

Jamie Pye, who was also in Blackpool, said: “It’s amazing to be back and do things.

“For so long we haven’t been able to see friends and family.

“I forgot what it was like to be in a pub, go to a football match – it’s like a new world again.”

Craig Murray, a former British diplomat, once said that if the government wants you to know something, it won’t be true. Posted April 6th 2021

2021 Getty Images LONDON, ENGLAND – APRIL 04: People socialise in the sunshine on Primrose Hill on April 4, 2021 in London, England. Earlier this week, the UK government eased rules on socialising, permitting groups of six people (or more if limited to two households) to meet outdoors. The latest lockdown measures were imposed at the end of last year to curb a surge in Covid-19 cases. (Photo by Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)

Boris Johnson’s easing of lockdown measures could create a wave of Covid infections akin to that seen during spring last year, the government’s scientific advisors have warned.

The Prime Minister confirmed shops, hairdressers and pub beer gardens will reopen from April 12 in England and urged the public against complacency when it came to obeying the rules.

Mr Johnson, setting out the move to the second step of the road map on Monday, said the shift was “fully justified by the data” and that he had seen “nothing” to make him think he would have to “deviate” from his intention to scrap all restrictions by June 21 at the earliest.

His comments come despite modelling from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) showing that, while stage two of the unlocking is unlikely to exert pressure on the NHS, the proposed changes for May and June when social mixing is set to be permitted again could cause hospital admissions to rise to levels seen during January’s winter peak.

Stage two of lockdown easing will see some premises allowed to reopen – some of them for the first time in three months – from next week, including non-essential shops, hairdressers and nail salons, gyms, while independent or household visits to libraries, community centres, zoos, theme parks and drive-in cinemas will also be allowed.

Self-contained accommodation including campsites and holiday lets will be permitted to receive guests, and bars and restaurants will be allowed to serve customers outdoors, but groups will be limited to two households or by the rule of six.

A paper from experts at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said their projections suggested stage two of the road map “may lead to a small surge of cases and deaths” but stage four in June, when restrictions are expected to be abolished, could “lead to a larger surge of cases and deaths comparable to that seen during the first wave”.

They cautioned their findings were “preliminary” and made “pessimistic assumptions” about the later stages of the road map.

But scientists at the University of Warwick also shared a similar conclusion that a “distinct third wave of infection” would arise due to the current rate of planned unlocking, with hospital admissions peaking between late July and mid-August.

Minutes from the Sage meeting on March 31 said there could be resurgences in hospital admissions “of a similar scale to January 2021 after later stages of the road map”.

It comes as England’s chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty warned that coronavirus “will be with us for the foreseeable future” while chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance suggested the pandemic could result in long-term changes in behaviour.

Sir Patrick said better hand hygiene, regular Covid-19 testing and staying away from work when feeling ill were “likely to be important baseline measures” in the future.

As well as warnings about the impact of his lockdown easing plans, Mr Johnson looks set for a showdown with Tory MPs as the Government appeared to pave the way for so-called vaccine passports to be used in the UK.

A Government paper on the interim findings of a taskforce review of Covid status certification said they could have an “important role to play both domestically and internationally, as a temporary measure”.

They will not be needed for the reopening of beer gardens next week or for the return of drinkers to pubs next month but the review, led by Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove, appeared to hold the door open to them being adopted by publicans at a later date.

The eight-page document said it was “possible” Covid certificates could “play a role in reducing social distancing requirements” in hospitality settings – a signal that if pubs want to be packed again, they might have to come up with ways of checking vaccine passports.

The Government has promised further consultation with the sector but the concept has riled Tory MPs.

Former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith told Times Radio further checks to go to the pub were a “diminution of your logical rights” while former chief whip Mark Harper warned their introduction would lead to a “two-tier Britain”.

With Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer calling the idea “un-British”, Mr Johnson – who is due to visit the North West on Tuesday – could be facing a defeat in the House of Commons if he concedes to the Covid Recovery Group, made up of lockdown-sceptic Tories, and agrees to a vote on vaccine passports.

The row over Covid certificates comes amid reports the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is considering proposals to restrict the use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in younger people and that, according to Channel 4, a decision could be made as early as Tuesday.

The MHRA said no decision on regulatory action had been taken in relation to reports of rare blood clots following being vaccinated with the AstraZeneca jab.

But epidemiologist Professor Neil Ferguson said the recent findings raised questions about the “risk-benefit equation” of younger people having the Oxford-made inoculation.

At Monday’s press conference, Mr Johnson confirmed plans to offer everyone in England twice-weekly quick-result lateral flow tests in a bid to stamp out asymptomatic transmission as the lockdown eases.

The Government has promised further consultation with the sector but the concept has riled Tory MPs.

The MHRA said no decision on regulatory action had been taken in relation to reports of rare blood clots following being vaccinated with the AstraZeneca jab.

Do Vaccines Stop the Spread of COVID-19? What You Need to Know February 20th 2021

Tracking the Vaccine: From Freezer to Front Line

By Alice Park February 11, 2021 8:30 AM EST

The way most people think of vaccines is pretty simple: you get vaccinated, and your immune system is primed and trained to fight off the invisible intruder in question, be it virus or bacteria. If you’re protected, you can’t be infected, and if you’re not infected, then you can’t spread it to anyone else.

And that’s true most of the time. But not all vaccines work that way, and it’s not actually what the two COVID-19 vaccines authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNtech—are designed to do. Their effectiveness is measured by how well they protect people against moderate to severe COVID-19 disease—not how well they prevent infection or spread of the COVID-19 virus itself.

That’s an important thing to remember as more doses reach more people in coming weeks. While the shots are 94% to 95% effective in preventing disease, there aren’t definitive data yet that they completely shut down the virus enough to stop it from moving from an infected person to someone else—say, if that vaccinated but infected person isn’t wearing a mask or isn’t keeping the recommended six feet apart from others. That’s why public health officials have said that even if you’re vaccinated, you can’t, unfortunately, ditch the mask or start holding intimate dinner parties with your other vaccinated friends and family. That won’t happen until researchers finish their studies on the vaccines, which will take another several months, to determine how well the shots have stopped the virus from jumping ship from a vaccinated person to someone else.

However, there has been some early good news on that front, thanks to two recent studies, one by AstraZeneca and one by a group of Israeli scientists. Both groups recently published data suggesting that COVID-19 vaccines might reduce the spread of virus, but that data begs closer scrutiny. (AstraZeneca’s vaccine is authorized in the U.K. but the company has not yet applied for authorization in the U.S.)

On Feb. 1, AstraZeneca and its academic partners at University of Oxford reported the results of their late-stage, Phase 3 studies of their vaccine. It’s made from a weakened adenovirus that causes infections in chimps, which was modified to carry the genetic instructions for making a COVID-19 viral protein. This protein triggers the human immune system to make antibodies against it, which, if the vaccinated person is then infected with the virus, can block the actual COVID-19 virus from sticking to and infecting cells. In the study, the scientists said that their shot was 67% effective in protecting people from COVID-19 disease, and nearly 100% effective in shielding them from severe disease requiring hospitalization.

They also took weekly swabs from the study volunteers and tested them for the COVID-19 virus, and found 50% fewer positive tests among people who were vaccinated than among people who weren’t. Because people who don’t test positive are less likely to be infected, and therefore unable to spread the virus, they extrapolated from that data that their shot can lower spread of the virus.

That might be the case, but public health officials say the findings still need to be confirmed. Yes, the people who were vaccinated had less virus in them if they were infected, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t still able to spread the virus to others. As infectious disease experts like to say, all it takes is one virus to cause an infection. “The fact is that what they showed is that there was decreased viral shedding, or decreased detection of the virus,” says Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease expert and executive associate dean at Emory University. That doesn’t mean, he says, that the virus isn’t still there and can’t be transmitted to another person.

A week later, scientists in Israel published a preliminary report hinting that among the 20% or so of its population who have been vaccinated, mostly with the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, those who were vaccinated might be less likely to spread the virus. In that study, the researchers compared people over age 60, who were among the first in the country to get vaccinated, beginning in late December, to those aged 40-60, who have recently been invited to get immunized. Since the shot requires two doses, most of the first vaccinees in the older group would have received both shots by the end of January, so the researchers compared positive COVID-19 tests between the two age groups after that time. (Before that time, there was little difference between the two groups in terms of positive COVID-19 tests.) They found that that the relative number of positive tests among the fully vaccinated older people was significantly lower than that among the younger group, and hypothesized that the vaccine was in part reducing spread of the virus. They then created models to estimate that the vaccine was lowering the amount of virus by anywhere from 1.5 to 20 times among people who got the shot and then happened to get infected. Still, they measured the amount of virus in people, or viral load, and not the actual rate of transmission from one person to another.

All of which boils down to the fact that it’s not entirely clear yet whether getting vaccinated can stop you from spreading the virus if you’re infected. It might, but the definitive studies to confirm that haven’t been completed yet. So stay tuned. In the mean time, even if you have gotten both shots, follow the advice of public health officials: wear a masks, practice social distancing, and avoid crowded areas, especially indoors. It’s not easy to do, but if more people practice these behaviors, the harder it will be for the virus to continue spreading. And that’s something that we can all agree on.

Are Covid patients getting younger? January 9th 2021

Phillipa Roxby

Are different age groups being affected now?

There are more people of all ages in hospital with Covid now than in the first wave last spring – that includes the young and old.

Infections have been highest in teenagers, students and people in their 20s and 30s in recent months. A small percentage of people from these age groups inevitably end up in hospital needing treatment.

But the overall pattern of those at risk of becoming seriously ill or dying has not changed significantly.

The older someone is, the greater their risk from Covid-19 – particularly over the age of 65.

For people under 40 who are infected, their risk of death is 0.1%. This rises to more than 5% for people over 80, according to Imperial College London research on the first wave.

‘How long can we keep going like this? About a week’

This is equivalent to the risk of death from Covid doubling approximately every eight years of ageing.

Better treatments, greater knowledge of how the disease progresses and the rollout of vaccines should all improve these figures in the second wave.

Age groups most likely to be admitted to hospital with Covid in England

Since the start of the second wave in late September, the highest hospital admission rate for confirmed Covid-19 has been in the over-85s, followed by 75 to 84-year-olds.

Children and young adults have consistently seen the lowest rates.

Compared with the first wave in the spring, more children are being admitted to hospital on a daily basis – but this is true of adults in all age groups too.

“Children’s wards are usually busy in winter,” Prof Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said recently.

“As cases in the community rise, there will be a small increase in the number of children we see with Covid-19, but the overwhelming majority of children and young people have no symptoms or very mild illness only.”

Although people in middle age are less affected than the over-65s, they are by no means risk-free.

Covid intensive care admission rates by age groups

In the last few weeks, for example, adults aged 18-64 have accounted for 40% of daily Covid admissions to hospitals, data from Public Health England shows. This compares to 40% for 65-84 year olds and 20% for the over-85s.

And around three in every 100,000 people aged 45-64 are becoming seriously ill with Covid and being admitted to intensive care units.

In contrast, children under 17 make up a very small percentage of those admitted to hospital with Covid – around 1% – and very, very few have needed intensive care treatment.

Among those aged 15-44, fewer than one in 100,000 was critically ill with Covid in December.

Confirmed Covid deaths by age since June

The ages of people who have died with Covid-19 since June show the huge impact on older age groups and the rarity of a Covid death in the under-30s.

But there have been some during the pandemic. Twenty-seven deaths have occurred among under-19s who tested positive for Covid-19, according to NHS England, and 317 among 20 to 39-year-olds.

More than 80% had an underlying health condition, such as heart disease or type 2 diabetes, which may have increased their risk.

Dr Nick Scriven, a former president of the Society for Acute Medicine, says he has seen a patient in their 20s requiring oxygen treatment but most were in their mid-40s, 50s and above – and the most seriously ill were over 50.

“They are not very different ages to the first wave,” he says, although people are surviving for longer and fewer are being put on ventilators.

Age and sex of critically-ill patients in hospital with Covid

In intensive care, the average age of Covid patients in the second wave is 58.8 years compared with 60.4 in the first wave.

According to analysis of 10,000 patients in intensive care in the last four months of 2020, men are around twice as likely as women to end up critically ill with Covid, from the age of 40 upwards.

While most seriously ill men in intensive care were in their 60s, around 5% were in their 40s and 15% in their 50s.

The new variant, which is thought to be more transmissible than previous forms of the virus, is behind the recent sharp rise in cases.

It appears to affect people of all ages – but there is no evidence it makes people more seriously ill with Covid-19, including children and young people.

White Racists Blamed For BAME lifestyle link to high Covid infections. Major Incident Declared in London where BAME, Obese , and other health issues cause record infections. Racism is at root of Britain’s problems it is alleged. Whites need to confront their racism. It has nothing to do with wealth class and globalisation free movement ! January 8th 2021

Factors such as racism and social inequality may have contributed to increased risks of black, Asian and minority communities catching and dying from Covid-19, a leaked report says.

Historic racism may mean that people are less likely to seek care or to demand better personal protective equipment, it says.

The Public Health England draft, seen by the BBC, contains recommendations.

Other possible factors include risks linked to occupation, it said.

And inequalities in conditions such as diabetes may increase disease severity.

The report, the second by PHE on the subject, pointed to racism and discrimination as a root cause affecting health and the risk of both exposure to the virus and becoming seriously ill.

It said stakeholders expressed “deep dismay, anger, loss and fear in their communities” as data emerged suggesting Covid-19 was “exacerbating existing inequalities”.

And it found “historic racism and poorer experiences of healthcare or at work” meant individuals in BAME groups were less likely to seek care when needed or to speak up when they had concerns about personal protective equipment or risk.

The report concluded: “The unequal impact of Covid-19 on BAME communities may be explained by a number of factors ranging from social and economic inequalities, racism, discrimination and stigma, occupational risk, inequalities in the prevalence of conditions that increase the severity of disease including obesity, diabetes, hypertension and asthma.”

Recommendations include:

Better data collection about ethnicity and religion, including having this recorded on death certificates to accurately monitor the impact on these communities
Making it law for health risk assessments to be done for BAME workers and giving them better representation in the health service
Culturally sensitive public health messaging so that people, particularly those who may not speak English as a first language, understand the advice on how to protect themselves
Continuing work to tackle racism and discrimination within the health service with a clear commitment to increase diversity in leadership at all levels.

The draft report from Public Health England says questions remain on the role of diet and vitamin D and makes clear no work has been done to review this evidence yet.

A recent review confirmed the risk of death from Covid-19 higher for ethnic minorities. PHE found that people of Bangladeshi heritage were dying at twice the rate of white Britons, while other black, Asian and minority ethnic groups had between 10% and 50% higher risk of death.

Incredible NHS & Lockdown January 8th 2021

Statistics, lie

When announcing the national lockdown, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the NHS risked being overwhelmed if the measures weren’t taken.

But statistics suggest that the proportion of beds currently occupied by patients is actually lower than usual.

So how can both things be true?

What is different this year?

Winter is normally an incredibly busy time for the NHS, coinciding with the peak of the flu season.

This is why we often see new stories at this time of year about patients facing long waits for care and ambulances struggling to get patients into emergency departments.

But this year, the system is facing the added pressure of preventing coronavirus spreading between patients while anticipating surges in cases.

The changes this year include:

Less space for beds due to the need for larger gaps between them
The division of wards into three zones: those for people with coronavirus, those awaiting test results and those who have tested negative
Increased infection control – including cleaning and putting on personal protective equipment (PPE) – which takes up staff time
Increased critical care beds and patients, which require more intensive staffing

Combined, these factors mean that hospitals have less capacity than usual, meaning fewer beds are available for fewer patients.

In total, NHS hospitals in England have about 7,000 fewer available beds than usual.

What does the data show?

The data shows that hospitals were at about 87% occupancy in December and early January, however this figure increases to just over 90% in London and the South East.

This means that for every 10 hospital beds available across England, roughly nine had a patient in them on any given day.

This occupancy rate is actually noticeably lower than a usual year. In a normal winter, occupancy tends to average between 93% and 95%.

But NHS England warns against using direct comparisons because – as mentioned – you wouldn’t exactly be comparing like for like in the way the hospitals are being run.

Effectively, bed occupancy shows how many beds are available should patients need them, but what it doesn’t paint a picture of is how much work is needed to tend to these beds.

And this year, with increased infection control and the movement of staff to intensive areas, that workload has increased.

Even in early December, NHS Providers, which represents NHS trusts, said that already the pressures felt as bad as a normal year despite fewer patients and lower bed occupancy.

How much extra room is there?

In theory, there are 12,000 free beds in NHS hospitals in England.

But no hospital ever aims to be close to 100% occupancy.

Guidance actually recommends that an optimum level is about 85% occupancy. This is to reduce the risk of staff becoming overstretched or being unable to deal with any unexpected surges of patients for whatever reason.

The coronavirus has meant that hospital bosses have felt the need to ensure even more wiggle room than usual, because the virus tends to spread quickly.

The number of patients in hospital in England with the virus has increased by 8,000 since the start of December, hitting 22,534 on 1 January, a record high.

And once the virus is prevalent in a community, it affects hospital staffing as some of them need to take time off due to sickness or self-isolation. During the first wave in April, 6.7% of staff were absent from work, compared with 4% in the previous year.

So while hospitals are feeling these increased winter pressures, they need to ensure that they still have that wiggle room.

Outside the NHS, the government can work with private hospitals and also look towards the Nightingale hospitals, but this also might be affected by staffing pressures.

Why are operations being cancelled?

To create that wiggle room, there has been a big decrease in patients coming in for non-urgent operations and outpatient appointments, to ensure that space is there and pressures are not increased.

Even in September 2020, when hospitals were beginning to increase the number of operations carried out, these were still 25% lower than in previous years.

This also helps explain why there are also fewer patients in hospitals this year, as well as fewer beds.

The impact of this is a large backlog and the potential for certain treatments – such as cancer care – being delayed.

Statistics and the virus: Tim Harford’s five lessons from a pandemic January 5th 2021

In an age of disinformation, the value of rigorous data has never been more evident

Will this year be 1954 all over again? Forgive me, I have become obsessed with 1954, not because it offers another example of a pandemic (that was 1957) or an economic disaster (there was a mild US downturn in 1953), but for more parochial reasons. Nineteen fifty-four saw the appearance of two contrasting visions for the world of statistics — visions that have shaped our politics, our media and our health. This year confronts us with a similar choice. The first of these visions was presented in How to Lie with Statistics, a book by a US journalist named Darrell Huff. Brisk, intelligent and witty, it is a little marvel of numerical communication. The book received rave reviews at the time, has been praised by many statisticians over the years and is said to be the best-selling work on the subject ever published. It is also an exercise in scorn: read it and you may be disinclined to believe a number-based claim ever again.

There are good reasons for scepticism today. David Spiegelhalter, author of last year’s The Art of Statistics, laments some of the UK government’s coronavirus graphs and testing targets as “number theatre”, with “dreadful, awful” deployment of numbers as a political performance. “There is great damage done to the integrity and trustworthiness of statistics when they’re under the control of the spin doctors,” Spiegelhalter says. He is right. But we geeks must be careful — because the damage can come from our own side, too. A cigarette ad from the 1950s, when the tobacco industry pioneered an especially powerful strategy: emphasise uncertainty, expert disagreement and doubt, and you will find a willing audience

A cigarette ad from the 1950s, when the tobacco industry pioneered an especially powerful strategy: emphasise uncertainty, expert disagreement and doubt, and you will find a willing audience © Archive Photos/Getty Images For Huff and his followers, the reason to learn statistics is to catch the liars at their tricks. That sceptical mindset took Huff to a very unpleasant place, as we shall see.

Once the cynicism sets in, it becomes hard to imagine that statistics could ever serve a useful purpose. But they can — and back in 1954, the alternative perspective was embodied in the publication of an academic paper by the British epidemiologists Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill. They marshalled some of the first compelling evidence that smoking cigarettes dramatically increases the risk of lung cancer. The data they assembled persuaded both men to quit smoking and helped save tens of millions of lives by prompting others to do likewise. This was no statistical trickery, but a contribution to public health that is almost impossible to exaggerate.

You can appreciate, I hope, my obsession with these two contrasting accounts of statistics: one as a trick, one as a tool. Doll and Hill’s painstaking approach illuminates the world and saves lives into the bargain. Huff’s alternative seems clever but is the easy path: seductive, addictive and corrosive. Scepticism has its place, but easily curdles into cynicism and can be weaponised into something even more poisonous than that. The two worldviews soon began to collide.

Huff’s How to Lie with Statistics seemed to be the perfect illustration of why ordinary, honest folk shouldn’t pay too much attention to the slippery experts and their dubious data. Such ideas were quickly picked up by the tobacco industry, with its darkly brilliant strategy of manufacturing doubt in the face of evidence such as that provided by Doll and Hill. Darrell Huff’s book, ‘How to Lie with Statistics’, received rave reviews when published in 1954 and is said to be the best-selling work on the subject ever published Darrell Huff’s book, ‘How to Lie with Statistics’, received rave reviews when published in 1954 and is said to be the best-selling work on the subject ever published

As described in books such as Merchants of Doubt by Erik Conway and Naomi Oreskes, this industry perfected the tactics of spreading uncertainty: calling for more research, emphasising doubt and the need to avoid drastic steps, highlighting disagreements between experts and funding alternative lines of inquiry. The same tactics, and sometimes even the same personnel, were later deployed to cast doubt on climate science.

These tactics are powerful in part because they echo the ideals of science. It is a short step from the Royal Society’s motto, “nullius in verba” (take nobody’s word for it), to the corrosive nihilism of “nobody knows anything”. So will 2020 be another 1954? From the point of view of statistics, we seem to be standing at another fork in the road.

The disinformation is still out there, as the public understanding of Covid-19 has been muddied by conspiracy theorists, trolls and government spin doctors. Yet the information is out there too. The value of gathering and rigorously analysing data has rarely been more evident. Faced with a complete mystery at the start of the year, statisticians, scientists and epidemiologists have been working miracles. I hope that we choose the right fork, because the pandemic has lessons to teach us about statistics — and vice versa — if we are willing to learn. The numbers matter “One lesson this pandemic has driven home to me is the unbelievable importance of the statistics,” says Spiegelhalter. Without statistical information, we haven’t a hope of grasping what it means to face a new, mysterious, invisible and rapidly spreading virus. Once upon a time, we would have held posies to our noses and prayed to be spared; now, while we hope for advances from medical science, we can also coolly evaluate the risks. Statistician David Spiegelhalter.

‘The Office for National Statistics is doing enormously valuable work that frankly nobody has ever taken notice of,’ he says, citing weekly death figures as an example. ‘Now we deeply appreciate it’ Statistician David Spiegelhalter. ‘The Office for National Statistics is doing enormously valuable work that frankly nobody has ever taken notice of,’ he says, citing weekly death figures as an example. ‘Now we deeply appreciate it’ © Richard Baker/Getty Images Without good data, for example, we would have no idea that this infection is 10,000 times deadlier for a 90-year-old than it is for a nine-year-old — even though we are far more likely to read about the deaths of young people than the elderly, simply because those deaths are surprising.

It takes a statistical perspective to make it clear who is at risk and who is not. Good statistics, too, can tell us about the prevalence of the virus — and identify hotspots for further activity. Huff may have viewed statistics as a vector for the dark arts of persuasion, but when it comes to understanding an epidemic, they are one of the few tools we possess. Don’t take the numbers for granted But while we can use statistics to calculate risks and highlight dangers, it is all too easy to fail to ask the question “Where do these numbers come from?” By that, I don’t mean the now-standard request to cite sources, I mean the deeper origin of the data. For all his faults, Huff did not fail to ask the question. He retells a cautionary tale that has become known as “Stamp’s Law” after the economist Josiah Stamp — warning that no matter how much a government may enjoy amassing statistics, “raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams”, it was all too easy to forget that the underlying numbers would always come from a local official, “who just puts down what he damn pleases”. The cynicism is palpable, but there is insight here too. Statistics are not simply downloaded from an internet database or pasted from a scientific report. Ultimately, they came from somewhere: somebody counted or measured something, ideally systematically and with care.

These efforts at systematic counting and measurement require money and expertise — they are not to be taken for granted. In my new book, How to Make the World Add Up, I introduce the idea of “statistical bedrock” — data sources such as the census and the national income accounts that are the results of painstaking data collection and analysis, often by official statisticians who get little thanks for their pains and are all too frequently the target of threats, smears or persecution. Recommended Hetan Shah How to save statistics from the threat of populism In Argentina, for example, long-serving statistician Graciela Bevacqua was ordered to “round down” inflation figures, then demoted in 2007 for producing a number that was too high. She was later fined $250,000 for false advertising — her crime being to have helped produce an independent estimate of inflation. In 2011, Andreas Georgiou was brought in to head Greece’s statistical agency at a time when it was regarded as being about as trustworthy as the country’s giant wooden horses.

When he started producing estimates of Greece’s deficit that international observers finally found credible, he was prosecuted for his “crimes” and threatened with life imprisonment. Honest statisticians are braver — and more invaluable — than we know. In the UK, we don’t habitually threaten our statisticians —

but we do underrate them. “The Office for National Statistics is doing enormously valuable work that frankly nobody has ever taken notice of,” says Spiegelhalter, pointing to weekly death figures as an example. “Now we deeply appreciate it.” Quite so. This statistical bedrock is essential, and when it is missing, we find ourselves sinking into a quagmire of confusion. The foundations of our statistical understanding of the world are often gathered in response to a crisis. For example, nowadays we take it for granted that there is such a thing as an “unemployment rate”, but a hundred years ago nobody could have told you how many people were searching for work. Severe recessions made the question politically pertinent, so governments began to collect the data.

More recently, the financial crisis hit. We discovered that our data about the banking system was patchy and slow, and regulators took steps to improve it. The Diamond Princess cruise ship at port in Japan in February, when tests of all the passengers provided an early insight into the virus The Diamond Princess cruise ship at port in Japan in February, when tests of all the passengers provided an early insight into the virus © Getty Images So it is with the Sars-Cov-2 virus. At first, we had little more than a few data points from Wuhan, showing an alarmingly high death rate of 15 per cent — six deaths in 41 cases. Quickly, epidemiologists started sorting through the data, trying to establish how exaggerated that case fatality rate was by the fact that the confirmed cases were mostly people in intensive care. Quirks of circumstance — such as the Diamond Princess cruise ship, in which almost everyone was tested — provided more insight. Johns Hopkins University in the US launched a dashboard of data resources, as did the Covid Tracking Project, an initiative from the Atlantic magazine.

An elusive and mysterious threat became legible through the power of this data. That is not to say that all is well. Nature recently reported on “a coronavirus data crisis” in the US, in which “political meddling, disorganization and years of neglect of public-health data management mean the country is flying blind”. Nor is the US alone. Spain simply stopped reporting certain Covid deaths in early June, making its figures unusable. And while the UK now has an impressively large capacity for viral testing, it was fatally slow to accelerate this in the critical early weeks of the pandemic.

Ministers repeatedly deceived the public about the number of tests being carried out by using misleading definitions of what was happening. For weeks during lockdown, the government was unable to say how many people were being tested each day. Huge improvements have been made since then.

The UK’s Office for National Statistics has been impressively flexible during the crisis, for example in organising systematic weekly testing of a representative sample of the population. This allows us to estimate the true prevalence of the virus. Several countries, particularly in east Asia, provide accessible, usable data about recent infections to allow people to avoid hotspots. These things do not happen by accident: they require us to invest in the infrastructure to collect and analyse the data. On the evidence of this pandemic, such investment is overdue, in the US, the UK and many other places.

Even the experts see what they expect to see Jonas Olofsson, a psychologist who studies our perceptions of smell, once told me of a classic experiment in the field. Researchers gave people a whiff of scent and asked them for their reactions to it. In some cases, the experimental subjects were told: “This is the aroma of a gourmet cheese.” Others were told: “This is the smell of armpits.” In truth, the scent was both: an aromatic molecule present both in runny cheese and in bodily crevices. But the reactions of delight or disgust were shaped dramatically by what people expected. Statistics should, one would hope, deliver a more objective view of the world than an ambiguous aroma. But while solid data offers us insights we cannot gain in any other way, the numbers never speak for themselves. They, too, are shaped by our emotions, our politics and, perhaps above all, our preconceptions.

There is great damage done to the integrity and trustworthiness of statistics when they’re under the control of the spin doctors David Spiegelhalter, author of ‘The Art of Statistics’ A striking example is the decision, on March 23 this year, to introduce a lockdown in the UK. In hindsight, that was too late. “Locking down a week earlier would have saved thousands of lives,” says Kit Yates, author of The Maths of Life and Death — a view now shared by influential epidemiologist Neil Ferguson and by David King, chair of the “Independent Sage” group of scientists.

The logic is straightforward enough: at the time, cases were doubling every three to four days. If a lockdown had stopped that process in its tracks a week earlier, it would have prevented two doublings and saved three-quarters of the 65,000 people who died in the first wave of the epidemic, as measured by the excess death toll. That might be an overestimate of the effect, since people were already voluntarily pulling back from social interactions.

Yet there is little doubt that if a lockdown was to happen at all, an earlier one would have been more effective. And, says Yates, since the infection rate took just days to double before lockdown but long weeks to halve once it started, “We would have got out of lockdown so much sooner . . . Every week before lockdown cost us five to eight weeks at the back end of the lockdown.”

Why, then, was the lockdown so late? No doubt there were political dimensions to that decision, but senior scientific advisers to the government seemed to believe that the UK still had plenty of time. On March 12, prime minister Boris Johnson was flanked by Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, and Patrick Vallance, chief scientific adviser, in the first big set-piece press conference. Italy had just suffered its 1,000th Covid death and Vallance noted that the UK was about four weeks behind Italy on the epidemic curve.

With hindsight, this was wrong: now that late-registered deaths have been tallied, we know that the UK passed the same landmark on lockdown day, March 23, just 11 days later. It seems that in early March the government did not realise how little time it had. As late as March 16, Johnson declared that infections were doubling every five to six days. The trouble, says Yates, is that UK data on cases and deaths suggested that things were moving much faster than that, doubling every three or four days — a huge difference.

What exactly went wrong is unclear — but my bet is that it was a cheese-or-armpit problem. Some influential epidemiologists had produced sophisticated models suggesting that a doubling time of five to six days seemed the best estimate, based on data from the early weeks of the epidemic in China. These models seemed persuasive to the government’s scientific advisers, says Yates: “If anything, they did too good a job.” Yates argues that the epidemiological models that influenced the government’s thinking about doubling times were sufficiently detailed and convincing that when the patchy, ambiguous, early UK data contradicted them, it was hard to readjust. We all see what we expect to see. The result, in this case, was a delay to lockdown: that led to a much longer lockdown, many thousands of preventable deaths and needless extra damage to people’s livelihoods. The data is invaluable but, unless we can overcome our own cognitive filters, the data is not enough. The best insights come from combining statistics with personal experience The expert who made the biggest impression on me during this crisis was not the one with the biggest name or the biggest ego.

It was Nathalie MacDermott, an infectious-disease specialist at King’s College London, who in mid-February calmly debunked the more lurid public fears about how deadly the new coronavirus was. Then, with equal calm, she explained to me that the virus was very likely to become a pandemic, that barring extraordinary measures we could expect it to infect more than half the world’s population, and that the true fatality rate was uncertain but seemed to be something between 0.5 and 1 per cent. In hindsight, she was broadly right about everything that mattered. MacDermott’s educated guesses pierced through the fog of complex modelling and data-poor speculation. I was curious as to how she did it, so I asked her. “People who have spent a lo

t of their time really closely studying the data sometimes struggle to pull their head out and look at what’s happening around them,” she said. “I trust data as well, but sometimes when we don’t have the data, we need to look around and interpret what’s happening.”

Nathalie MacDermott, a specialist in infectious diseases, says: ‘I trust data but sometimes, when we don’t have the data, we need to look around and interpret what’s happening’ Nathalie MacDermott, a specialist in infectious diseases, says: ‘I trust data but sometimes, when we don’t have the data, we need to look around and interpret what’s happening’

Kate Davey MacDermott worked in Liberia in 2014 on the front line of an Ebola outbreak that killed more than 11,000 people. At the time, international organisations were sanguine about the risks, while the local authorities were in crisis. When she arrived in Liberia, the treatment centres were overwhelmed, with patients lying on the floor, bleeding freely from multiple areas and dying by the hour. The horrendous experience has shaped her assessment of subsequent risks: on the one hand, Sars-Cov-2 is far less deadly than Ebola; on the other, she has seen the experts move too slowly while waiting for definitive proof of a risk. “From my background working with Ebola, I’d rather be overprepared than underprepared because I’m in a position of denial,” she said.

There is a broader lesson here. We can try to understand the world through statistics, which at their best provide a broad and representative overview that encompasses far more than we could personally perceive. Or we can try to understand the world up close, through individual experience. Both perspectives have their advantages and disadvantages. Muhammad Yunus, a microfinance pioneer and Nobel laureate, has praised the “worm’s eye view” over the “bird’s eye view”, which is a clever sound bite. But birds see a lot too. Ideally, we want both the rich detail of personal experience and the broader, low-resolution view that comes from the spreadsheet. Insight comes when we can combine the two — which is what MacDermott did.

Everything can be polarised Reporting on the numbers behind the Brexit referendum, the vote on Scottish independence, several general elections and the rise of Donald Trump, there was poison in the air: many claims were made in bad faith, indifferent to the truth or even embracing the most palpable lies in an effort to divert attention from the issues. Fact-checking in an environment where people didn’t care about the facts, only whether their side was winning, was a thankless experience.

For a while, one of the consolations of doing data-driven journalism during the pandemic was that it felt blessedly free of such political tribalism. People were eager to hear the facts after all; the truth mattered; data and expertise were seen to be helpful. The virus, after all, could not be distracted by a lie on a bus. When something is dragged into the political arena, partisans often prioritise tribal belonging over considerations of truth That did not last. America polarised quickly, with mask-wearing becoming a badge of political identity — and more generally the Democrats seeking to underline the threat posed by the virus, with Republicans following President Trump in dismissing it as overblown.

The prominent infectious-disease expert Anthony Fauci does not strike me as a partisan figure — but the US electorate thinks otherwise. He is trusted by 32 per cent of Republicans and 78 per cent of Democrats. The strangest illustration comes from the Twitter account of the Republican politician Herman Cain, which late in August tweeted: “It looks like the virus is not as deadly as the mainstream media first made it out to be.” Cain, sadly, died of Covid-19 in July — but it seems that political polarisation is a force stronger than death. Not every issue is politically polarised, but when something is dragged into the political arena, partisans often prioritise tribal belonging over considerations of truth. One can see this clearly, for example, in the way that highly educated Republicans and Democrats are further apart on the risks of climate change than less-educated Republicans and Democrats. Rather than bringing some kind of consensus, more years of education simply seem to provide people with the cognitive tools they require to reach the politically convenient conclusion.

From climate change to gun control to certain vaccines, there are questions for which the answer is not a matter of evidence but a matter of group identity. In this context, the strategy that the tobacco industry pioneered in the 1950s is especially powerful. Emphasise uncertainty, expert disagreement and doubt and you will find a willing audience. If nobody really knows the truth, then people can believe whatever they want. All of which brings us back to Darrell Huff, statistical sceptic and author of How to Lie with Statistics. While his incisive criticism of statistical trickery has made him a hero to many of my fellow nerds, his career took a darker turn, with scepticism providing the mask for disinformation. Huff worked on a tobacco-funded sequel, How to Lie with Smoking Statistics, casting doubt on the scientific evidence that cigarettes were dangerous. (Mercifully, it was not published.) Huff also appeared in front of a US Senate committee that was pondering mandating health warnings on cigarette packaging. He explained to the lawmakers that there was a statistical correlation between babies and storks (which, it turns out, there is) even though the true origin of babies is rather different.

The connection between smoking and cancer, he argued, was similarly tenuous. Huff’s statistical scepticism turned him into the ancestor of today’s contrarian trolls, spouting bullshit while claiming to be the straight-talking voice of common sense. It should be a warning to us all. There is a place in anyone’s cognitive toolkit for healthy scepticism, but that scepticism can all too easily turn into a refusal to look at any evidence at all. Latest coronavirus news Follow FT’s live coverage and analysis of the global pandemic and the rapidly evolving economic crisis here. This crisis has reminded us of the lure of partisanship, cynicism and manufactured doubt. But surely it has also demonstrated the power of honest statistics. Statisticians, epidemiologists and other scientists have been producing inspiring work in the footsteps of Doll and Hill. I suggest we set aside How to Lie with Statistics and pay attention.

Carefully gathering the data we need, analysing it openly and truthfully, sharing knowledge and unlocking the puzzles that nature throws at us — this is the only chance we have to defeat the virus and, more broadly, an essential tool for understanding a complex and fascinating world. Tim Harford’s new book “How to Make the World Add Up” (The Bridge Street Press) is due to be published on September 17 Follow @FTMag on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first. Letters in response to this article: Tunisia gives Europe a lesson on public health / From Francis Ghilès, Senior Research Fellow, CIDOB Barcelona, Spain Bringing to mind the drunk and the lamp post / From Margot Healy, Sixmilebridge, County Clare, Ireland How a top statistician saw no harm in smoking / From Ramiah Ramasubramanian, West Linn, OR, US Stamp was an economist attuned to data’s value / From Sam Stamp, London N4, UK

Her clique make the laws, so she should be jailed as an example. No mercy for women because they are ‘equal’ now, and primary decisions makers. She should be immediately fined and sacked if we are in it together. The basis of any claim to democracy is that the law applies equally to everyone. There should be no spcial treatement. They should be accountable and on their own. MPs are supposed to be examples. Like bent cops, they should feel the full force of the law. January 4th 2021

Coronavirus pandemic

Scottish MP Margaret Ferrier has been arrested by police after she admitted using public transport while infected with Covid-19.

Ms Ferrier apologised for what she called a “blip” in September.

She was suspended from the SNP group at Westminster and leaders, including First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, urged her to quit as an MP over the row.

Police Scotland said she had been charged in connection with “alleged culpable and reckless conduct”.

Ms Ferrier apologised in September after travelling from London to Glasgow having tested positive for coronavirus.

The Rutherglen and Hamilton West MP said she had experienced “mild symptoms” and taken a test, but had then decided to travel to Westminster because she was “feeling much better”.

She then travelled home again on a train after receiving the positive test result, and said she “deeply regretted” her actions.

A Police Scotland spokesman said: “We can confirm that officers today arrested and charged a 60-year-old woman in connection with alleged culpable and reckless conduct.

“This follows a thorough investigation by Police Scotland into an alleged breach of coronavirus regulations between 26 and 29 September 2020.

“A report will be sent to the procurator fiscal and we are unable to comment further.”

Will Lockdowns Ever End? Posted January 3rd 2021

May 21st, 2020|News, Microbiology, Public Health, Stupidity|147 Comments

As ‘lockdowns’ and other restrictions are starting to ease in many countries, an awful lot of people seem to think this marks the beginning of a gradual return to ‘normal’.

Think again. Biology doesn’t work like that. We haven’t ‘beaten’ this virus; far from it. Restrictions on movement don’t change an organism; it’s the same as it was at the start of all this. It’s still highly contagious and – for many – remains very dangerous.

Social distancing and other such restrictions do not make pandemic viruses go away, they just help ‘flatten the curve’ so that we don’t overwhelm health systems and so contribute to preventable excess deaths.

But flattening the curve has other benefits too. It gives us some space to learn more about the little bugger and, sure enough, we now have far more data showing what the risks are – and aren’t.

I’ll return to that in a minute, but just to stick with going back to ‘normal’ for a moment, the natural history of this organism (and the natural history of large-scale novel outbreaks) dictates that the risk of infection from this will persist for some considerable time. This means the likely ‘new normal’ involves society and industry repeatedly going in and out of lockdowns at a national, regional, or even a community level.

In many places the restrictions have been sufficiently effective at bringing R₀ down that – rather predictably – idiots are saying it was all an overreaction, there’s nothing to worry about and they ‘want their freedoms back‘. Incidentally, these are the same people who take an assault rifle to the grocery store in case the yoghurt looks at them funny.

Yes, we do have to accept that it’s not feasible to switch off global economic activity indefinitely but it’s not binary: it’s also not feasible to go straight back to ‘business as usual’.

To extend Boris Johnson’s analogy that “we can see light at the end of the tunnel – but we’re still in the tunnel”, the point is this is not the only tunnel.

It’s likely to be the first of several (if not many) and we’ll be in and out of them until well over half the population has developed immunity, either through exposure or vaccination. And that depends on a bunch of factors which is a whole other load of posts.

[It depends on the level of natural immunity that results from an infection, how long it will take to create a vaccine and how protective that vaccine will be and while the positive results from using convalescent sera as a treatment bode well, we’re a long way off yet. As I say, that’s a whole other can of worms I’m trying to resist in this post]

The nature of these things is the virus is likely to reappear in waves lasting many weeks at time, depending on the severity and the extent of any further lockdowns adopted.

Lessons About Spread

There is a bunch of stuff we’ve learned since this all started which can inform how we can manage risk both socially and in the workplace. It’s been clear for a while that – after accounting for age distribution and pre-existing health issues – risk of infection and mortality clearly splits between two groups: those in densely crowded areas – and everyone else.

Large, densely populated areas like London and New York saw nearly twice the rate of transmission in the first two weeks of their respective outbreaks compared with more sparsely populated areas.

Coronavirus numbers are looking MUCH better, going down almost everywhere. Big progress being made!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2020

New York is interesting in that the sheer scale of the outbreak hugely skews the US numbers. The graph above from this New York Times article shows the effect the NYC cases have on the overall US numbers and it’s dramatic. If you split the graph into two – NYC and everywhere else – it’s clear the trend is still upward in the rest of the US.

I’ll look at why calls by the Tangerine Shitgibbon to designate all places of worship – including churches, synagogues and mosques – as “essential,” and wanting them “open right now” is so mind-numbingly ill-informed and dangerous in a bit. First a brief crash-course in basic virology terms and numbers.

Virology in Numbers

There’s a couple of key terms and concepts to understand. I’ll keep it brief. It’s not complicated.

Infectious Dose This is the amount of virus it takes to establish an infection. It might be fewer than 10. It might be thousands. We don’t know precisely what that looks like for COVID-19 but we do know it’s very contagious, so it could be the infectious dose is very low – or that those infected shed lots into their environment.
Viral Load This is the amount of virus you can recover from someone with the illness. It might be lots, it might be very little. You might think the higher the viral load, the more severe the illness but that’s not necessarily the case. We aren’t sure with COVID-19 yet – the data is conflicting. But it is likely that someone carrying a high viral load will be coughing out more virus, and studies have shown viral load is highest in COVID-19 patients at the start of their illness. This is bad – it suggests asymptomatic carriage is more likely.
Risk of Infection This is a function of how much virus is present in an environment (and environmental factors like room size, ventilation etc) and the length of time you’re exposed to it. Think of it as how long you need to be in a particular area to pick up an infectious dose. To summarise: Chance of infection = [exposure to the virus] x [exposure time] Think of ‘exposure to the virus’ in terms of number of virus particles per unit volume of air. So if there’s lots of virus you need a shorter exposure time. Simples.

Where ‘Social’ Distancing Fails

So, if someone with it is sneezing into a small space and producing 40,000 droplets per sneeze, that’s more virus in the air than that person just breathing. Studies on flu have shown an infected person just breathing is releasing something like 25-50 virus particles per minute. Talking releases more, coughing releases more still, singing releases a lot too.

This is where we run into the limitations of social distancing. Social distancing only helps with brief or outdoor exposure to the virus, where there’s either insufficient time to take in an infectious dose, or where wind and space dilute any virus present (as well as the UV in sunlight zapping it).

Social distancing when applied to an office or a restaurant or a sports or entertainment venue doesn’t really work, as is now apparent in the data as you’ll see below.

Risk is Indoors, Not Outdoors

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that most if not all of the spread happens inside buildings. There have been ‘superspreader’ events in churches, auditoria and elsewhere and a recent paper out of China looking at 318 outbreaks across 120 cities involving over 7,000 cases found all identified outbreaks involving three or more cases occurred in an indoor environment.

That paper awaits peer review but it’s certainly not alone in suggesting sharing indoor space is a major contributor to infection risk: another paper out of Japan showed the chance of a primary case transmitting COVID-19 in a closed environment was nearly twenty times greater than in the open air.

One of the most interesting findings is from the CDC in South Korea – who are held in high regard given the way the outbreak was managed there. They recently investigated an outbreak in a call centre in Seoul and tested 1,143 people. They found 97 confirmed cases and of these 94 were working in an 11th-floor call centre. The blue colour shows where confirmed cases were sitting.

The paper makes interesting reading and shows the benefits of extensive contact tracing and testing – but for me, the really interesting aspect is it suggests the virus does not spread so easily via fomites (surfaces).

Were it spreading via high-touch surfaces, more people in that building would have been sickened by touching lift buttons, door handles etc. The outbreak was almost entirely limited to one call centre in one part of one floor where staff were in close proximity. It didn’t spread via high-touch surfaces or in lobbies, washrooms etc.

These are not the only examples. Careful contact tracing has shown there have been outbreaks originating in restaurants and many from religious events of all flavours – there have been examples in Korea, Israel, Iran, plus it seems communal singing is a culprit. There have been a number of choirs where it spread like wildfire with very high attack rates.

There are now sufficient studies showing this really is a droplet-borne ‘social’ virus that the US CDC changed its advice yesterday.

What does this mean for our social and working lives? It’s apparent physical distancing won’t be enough, especially indoors; it’s droplet control too.

The 3Cs Model

While it’s very difficult to compare countries as there are so many confounding factors the Japanese model or “Three Cs” (when translated from mitsu no mitsu) is interesting. The advice is to avoid closed spaces with poor ventilation, crowded places with many people nearby and close-contact settings such as close-range conversations.

But in Japan mask-wearing is far more widespread anyway and behaviours like shaking hands, embracing and other forms of physical contact are not part of traditional Japanese greetings. Also conversing on crowded commuter trains is considered poor etiquette – and using a mobile is even worse. These behaviours all help limit the possibility of droplet transmission; as I say comparisons are difficult but the 3Cs message fits in well with the emerging data.

AVOID

Closed Spaces

AVOID CLOSED SPACES WITH POOR VENTILATION

AVOID

Crowded Places

AVOID PLACES CROWDED WITH MANY PEOPLE

AVOID

Close Contact

AVOID CLOSE CONTACT SUCH AS CLOSE-RANGE CONVERSATIONS

Social Gatherings

I really can’t see a return to large-scale sports events, concerts or religious events anytime soon. At least not in countries that place the importance of public safety higher than that of collective acts of religious observance (be they of the sporting or god-bothering variety).

Here in the UK it’s been suggested almost twice as many people visit the theatre every year in London as watch Premier League football but I’m not hopeful for either. At least football matches could be played to empty stadia if the economics are viable – but the same really can’t be said of theatres. Ditto the 170 million cinema visits per year.

While considering the arts (rare for a philistine like me) I think it’s brighter for film and TV production though, pretty much all of which bar news is currently suspended and desperate to get back to work. And everyone on lockdown is relying on them for new content! Yes, these are complex workplaces but they are still workplaces. And in workplaces risks can be (and are required to be) assessed and managed.

This is an industry where every activity is risk-assessed, so this is another one to add to the list – but very much in the light of current data. It’s probably critical they take really good advice from experts in infection control rather than just Health and Safety too; I can’t think of many industries where you might be spending millions on a drama shoot and if the talent gets sick you’re finished. Will it require changes to the way things happen? Of course it will, especially if you need to produce content at anything like the same pace as before.

This is a good example of needing to understand where the risks actually are rather than guessing and for that you need microbiologists or infection control experts. H&S people are lovely but I’ve seen many examples recently of non-experts take ‘model’ procedures from elsewhere and try to turn them into a workplace policy. It’s seldom pretty.

Returning to Work

I’m parking issues of mental health, legal and safety requirements for employers – I’m a microbiologist, remember?

For businesses contemplating bringing staff back from remote working or furlough, the modelling above makes it clear it’s not so much common touchpoints, it’s common airspaces that presents the principal risk. I’m not suggesting we give up sanitising touchpoints – far from it – but workplaces need to recognise the level of risk now associated with people talking for hours in close proximity – often with inadequate ventilation.

At work it’s not so much about social distancing, it’s about physical barriers – screens and cubicles – rather than open offices and the 3Cs. Masks alone won’t cut it (see later).
Meetings will need to be the exception – and if they are absolutely necessary they need to be shorter and smaller.
Strategies for cohorting / separating teams could help.
Visibly sanitising touchpoints etc might not be the most critical intervention in the light of the above data – but make staff feel safer which is very important.

But if you get the airflow/ventilation part wrong, people will get sick no matter how often you wipe the door handles. It’s all in the data…

Care is required, though – when considering ventilation note that in the restaurant example earlier overenthusiastic aircon above one table blew respiratory droplets across multiple diners.

In some regards, the advice remains the same. Distancing, not touching your face, and washing / sanitising your hands are the key interventions at an individual level. Wearing gloves is not helpful; the virus does not get in through the skin and may increase your risk because you likely won’t wash or sanitise your hands when they are on plus you’ll be touching stuff.

But at an organisational level, it’s much more about managing air spaces and ventilation.

Answers

Overall, what this means is we all need to accept some level of risk – but that’s an individual as well as a collective decision. Someone who is aged and with poor lung health will likely make very different choices to someone who’s younger and otherwise healthy.

Irrespective of any future containment/lockdown strategy this is not going away any time soon.

We’re talking years, not months – so shutting down the economy, education and everything else until it goes away really isn’t an option. Because it’s not going away.

We have to learn to live with it and do whatever we can to mitigate risk. But individuals and organisations need to properly understand the risk or they can’t manage it.

Again, in a workplace social distancing in the sense most people understand it will not offer the protection you think it does. Anway, to sum up:

SARS-CoV-2 is highly contagious – but it’s not as contagious as measles, mumps, or even some flu strains.
It is spread by respiratory droplets and aerosols, not food or brief, incidental contact – so social distancing, trying not to touch our faces and good hand and respiratory hygiene are key to reducing the spread.
While food and brief or outdoors contact are very low risk and can be helped with socially distancing, close proximity in confined spaces especially for longer periods presents a far greater risk.
COVID-19 is more deadly than flu (5-10-fold) but nothing like as deadly as a viral haemorrhagic fever like Ebola and it is worse the older you are. It’s dangerous, but the vast majority of people who get it survive it. It seems 10-15% might get very ill but that’s a difficult one to properly assess until we have a handle on how many people have already had it. If anyone tells you it’s just / not as bad as / no worse than flu, they don’t understand this organism.

Where’s the Risk?

If you’re outside and you walk past someone, even if they have it for any likelihood of picking it up you’d likely need to be in close proximity for a number of minutes for any chance of an infection to spread. While joggers or cyclists may be releasing more virus due to deeper breathing, the exposure time is tiny as they zoom past. Yes, maintain a distance but don’t get paranoid; the risk is vanishingly small.

If you’re in a large supermarket or shopping mall you need to consider the volume of the space (large?), the number of other people (most likely restricted?), how long you’re spending there (half an hour?) and if you’re in a well-ventilated, large space with not too many people, the risk is low.

But if you’re working there the risk is higher – the extended time provides a greater chance of getting an infectious dose – risk = amount of virus exposure x exposure time, remember? Also in such environments staff are likely seeing many customers / others so the risk is higher. It’s a numbers game.

Basically you need to look at each environment you’re going to be in and make judgements. How many people? How much ventilation? How long will you be there? If you’re in an open office the assessment is more critical (volume of the space, people, and ventilation) – and if people are talking face-to-face the risk increases.

But most of all, your best strategy for mitigating risk is to listen to expert advice. And that advice WILL change as we discover more. Listen to infectious disease experts and reputable sources. And remember that reputable sources and proper scientists do not publish ‘research’ exclusively via YouTube videos.

Most of all, don’t listen to a science-denying serial lair who bribed a porn star in a conspiracy to conceal an affair they conducted while his third wife was giving birth to his child when he tells you how important it is for churches to reopen so YOU can all pray more.

Just sayin’…

Masks Post Script

Just a final word on masks – which also deserve a whole post. There are many types of mask, many ways of measuring effectiveness and many conflicting studies. If you have a particular bias or preconception about whether to use a particular type of mask in a particular situation you will be able to find a study that supports your hunch quite easily – as well as an equal and opposite study showing your bias is wrong.

You could be forgiven for thinking the potential benefits of mask wearing are so face-palmingly obvious, the simple fact they have not been made mandatory is proof positive of Government incompetence. But this is biology. It’s complicated. Sorry. I know everyone wants it all to be simple but it’s not.

The evidence and utility in healthcare settings where N95 or similar masks are being used by people trained to wear them properly and not touch their faces, or by people actively shedding virus is a very different proposition to wearing a mask on public transport or in an office.

While I’ve not been a fan of people who aren’t showing symptoms wearing masks (especially the types of mask needed by healthcare workers that have been in short supply) my view is evolving. But slowly.

There was a recent paper in Nature about surgical (as opposed to N95) masks that said:

“surgical face masks could prevent transmission of human coronaviruses and influenza viruses from symptomatic individuals”

The results weren’t stellar (like most studies into this) hence the pretty wishy-washy conclusion. Most studies show masks may be of some benefit in terms of preventing wearers both spreading or receiving the virus – but the data says the benefit is likely to be very modest. They offer nothing near ‘full’ protection – far from it.

The biggest factor in terms of non-medical use of face masks is how people actually use them. The studies show that the modest decrease in risk of spread is only there if people use their masks consistently and properly. When they don’t, what little protection there is vanishes.

And most people don’t use masks properly: they don’t fit them correctly, they keep adjusting and touching them and there’s now good data showing the extent of virus deposition on the outside of face masks, so if you have it touching your mask is a really good way to spread it. There’s also the false sense of security issue (just as there is with gloves) – people may well not be as rigorous with social distancing when wearing a mask just as people get lax with hand hygiene when wearing gloves.

So don’t overestimate the benefits and stick to the stuff (like hand and respiratory hygiene) that’s proven to work. If you absolutely have to wear one make sure you’ve had training so it actually protects you and others. I’m still trying to get my head around what this will look like for mass transit when capacity returns. Leave that with me for now…

Another Smug BBC Ministry of Information report follows. lockdowns do not suppress the virus as the last nine months have demonstrated, but the super rich get even richer, public servants are still on full pay at lesser peoples’ expense, while the masses go mad, bankrupt and even kill themselves. We are not ‘all innit’ together. That is a sick lie. Protect ( sic ) only the old, BAME and worried well . Stop making the rest of us ill, stop pretending we live in a democracy when it should be obvious that we do not. January 2nd 2020. R.J Cook

Coronavirus pandemic

Police car — image captionArwel Morris said national park staff and police had been engaging with visitors

Beauty spots have been “disappointingly busy over the last few days” despite restrictions meaning all but essential travel should be avoided.

Snowdonia park warden Arwel Morris reiterated the message that people should not be driving to visit places.

On Saturday, police stopped people from Milton Keynes attempting to walk up Snowdon in breach of Covid rules.

Mr Morris blamed a “perfect storm” of good weather and people being off work for the number of visitors in the area.

“We try and enforce the fact that exercise should begin and end at home, meaning people should not try and drive to a location where they plan to exercise,” he told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast.

“And this has been really difficult over the last few days.

“We have dealt with people from London, Birmingham… numerous people from north Wales travelling to beauty spots.”

Mr Morris, a warden for Snowdonia National Park, said police had been doing their “absolute best” dealing with visitors despite other pressures, as wardens could not enforce breaches in lockdown rules.

A breach of Covid rules can incur a £60 fine, which rises to £120 for a second breach.

On Saturday, North Wales Police said officers had “turned away” people who wanted to walk up Snowdon in breach of stay-at-home rules, including some some from Milton Keynes and London.

On New Year’s Day, the force tweeted to say people had been reported for breaching travel restrictions.

Wales has been in a nationwide level four lockdown since 20 December.

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Global Struggle for Freedom Written by Sarah Repucci Amy Slipowitz Posted December 19th 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has fueled a crisis for democracy around the world. Since the coronavirus outbreak began, the condition of democracy and human rights has grown worse in 80 countries. Governments have responded by engaging in abuses of power, silencing their critics, and weakening or shuttering important institutions, often undermining the very systems of accountability needed to protect public health.

This is the conclusion of new Freedom House research on the impact of COVID-19 on democracy and human rights, produced in partnership with the survey firm GQR. Based on a survey of 398 journalists, civil society workers, activists, and other experts as well as research on 192 countries by Freedom House’s global network of analysts, this report is the first of its kind and the most in-depth effort to date to examine the condition of democracy during the pandemic (see full methodology).

The research strongly supports the hypothesis that the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating the 14 years of consecutive decline in freedom. Not only has democracy weakened in 80 countries, but the problem is particularly acute in struggling democracies and highly repressive states—in other words, settings that already had weak safeguards against abuse of power are suffering the most. The findings illustrate the breadth and depth of the assault on democracy. As one respondent on Cambodia put it, “The government [took] coronavirus as the opportunity to demolish democratic space.”

Sri Lanka’s experience illustrates the global trends. The government of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa accelerated its authoritarian agenda over the past six months, stepping up efforts to control independent reporting and unfavorable speech by ordering the arrest of anyone who criticizes or contradicts the official line on the coronavirus. Early elections were called but, as the outbreak accelerated, were postponed, leaving the national legislature out of session beyond the constitutional deadline and weakening checks on executive power. Health concerns were also exploited by authorities as a pretext for human rights abuses, especially against the minority Muslim population.

Global Democracy has grown weaker during the COVID-19 pandemic

The crisis of democratic governance, having begun long before the pandemic, is likely to continue after the health crisis recedes, as the laws and norms being put in place now will be difficult to reverse. Among the experts surveyed, 64 percent agreed that the impact of COVID-19 on democracy and human rights in their country of focus will be mostly negative over the next three to five years. China’s experience over the past nine months could prove a dystopian model for the future: increased nationalist and propagandistic rhetoric at home in an effort to drown out calls for transparency and accountability, enhanced and innovative technological surveillance, crackdowns on individuals within and outside the country who share information that contradicts regime messaging, and the persecution of potential critics among the domestic elite.

Yet even amid devastation and disruption, some have responded to the pandemic with hope and rejuvenation. Journalism has thrived in certain countries as people seek out factual information, and investigative reporting has persisted in several of the most hostile environments. As one expert on Cuba said, “Activists and independent journalists have been willing to risk fines and imprisonment to report accurately on what is taking place in the country.” Civil society organizations have also worked tirelessly to maintain accountability in face of new challenges. And the mishandling of the crisis by many governments has spurred demands for change, most notably in Belarus, where mass protests that began in August have blossomed into a major movement for political reform. Democracy is suffering around the world, but the public’s demand for it has not been extinguished. “Democracy is suffering around the world, but the public’s demand for it has not been extinguished.”

The following report summarizes the results of Freedom House’s research into the impact of COVID-19 on democracy and human rights from January to August 2020. It describes five aspects of accountability that have been weakened: checks against abuses of power, protection of vulnerable groups, transparency and anticorruption, free media and expression, and credible elections. It concludes with a summary of the reasons for hope and a set of recommendations, along with the report methodology.

Key Government Abuses During the COVID19 coronavirus pandemic

Abuse of Power

Among survey respondents, 27 percent reported government abuse of power as one of the three issues most affected by the coronavirus outbreak. Officials and security services perpetrated violence against civilians, detained people without justification, and overstepped their legal authority. Governments are also using the pandemic as a justification to grant themselves special powers beyond what is reasonably necessary to protect public health. They have then exploited these emergency powers to interfere in the justice system, impose unprecedented restrictions on political opponents, and undermine crucial legislative functions. As one respondent said of Turkey, “Coronavirus was used as an excuse for the already oppressive government to do things that it has long planned to do, but had not been able to.”

Freedom House research found evidence of police violence against civilians in at least 59 countries. Most of the violence occurred in less democratic settings, with 49 percent of Partly Free countries and 41 percent of Not Free countries under review experiencing such abuses.1 Detentions and arrests linked to the pandemic response were noted in at least 66 countries, including 49 percent of Partly Free countries and 54 percent of Not Free countries. In Egypt, classified as Not Free, one expert noted, “The military regime has used COVID-19 as an opportunity to further repress political activists, rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, and doctors, arresting dozens, denying them basic assistance in places of detention, and placing several on terrorist lists.”

The high rates of abuse by authorities in Partly Free countries likely indicate that governments with both a relatively active opposition and weak checks on their own power perceive a greater need and opportunity to resort to violence. One Partly Free country, Liberia, experienced “brutal and corrupt enforcement of curfew orders by security forces.” In another, Zimbabwe, “COVID-19 has also been used to arrest, abduct, rape, assault, and intimidate human rights activists, opposition party leaders/supporters, civil society leaders, journalists, and other dissenting voices on ‘allegations of violating lockdown conditions.’”

Surveillance has greatly increased during the pandemic, and broad monitoring can easily become excessive and intimidating. For example, a respondent on the Philippines reported that authorities have visited the homes of individuals who may have been exposed to the virus, and arrests are frequently carried out for violations as simple as not wearing a mask while crossing a border. In Sri Lanka, a survey respondent described the “house-to-house collection of household-level information by the police, accompanied by military intelligence.”

Many experts also detailed crackdowns on opposition figures or the judiciary. In Kazakhstan, “there is an increase in the persecution of civic activists and political opposition for expressing their critical opinions on social media or disseminating information about human rights violations, including through the initiation of criminal cases.” In Cambodia, “[Prime Minister] Hun Sen’s government has used COVID-19 to bolster its crackdown on the political opposition.” In Azerbaijan, “the government has used the pretext of breaking quarantine to crack down on opposition political activists.” In Guatemala, the “pandemic has been utilized to continue attacks against the rule of law. The country is in the process of electing magistrates to [the] highest courts and corrupt and criminal groups are looking to rig the process.” In Serbia, “the judiciary has become a puppet of the executive branch, trials are being…conducted via video link, without the presence of defense attorneys.”

At the same time, parliaments have been hamstrung by health restrictions and emergency laws, and at times manipulated for political purposes. One respondent on Singapore noted that the most disturbing development has been the “passage of laws that curb freedom but claim to curb the virus.” Almost 4 in 10 (39 percent) of the surveyed experts, representing 65 countries, said meetings of the national legislature were canceled for at least part of the pandemic.

Such abuses may reflect a government’s fear of losing power, rather than confidence in its own strength. Overall, 57 percent of respondents felt that governing parties in their country of focus have grown weaker since the start of the coronavirus outbreak, compared with only 27 percent who believe they are stronger. In the countries where democracy was seen as weakening this year, experts were likely—by a margin of 6 percentage points—to see governing parties in a stronger position, as in Bangladesh, Burundi, Poland, and Sri Lanka. However, this apparent “bump” for governing parties in democratically declining countries represents only a fraction of the gains enjoyed by governing parties in better-performing countries where there are high rates of approval for the national government’s response to the coronavirus, or where the economy is strong, such as Estonia.

The survey findings highlighted two countries that are not long-standing democracies yet have resisted imposing widely abusive measures in response to the coronavirus outbreak. The 10 experts who responded to the survey on Tunisia, which became a Free country in Freedom in the World 2015, all expressed approval of the national government’s handling of the outbreak. At the time of this writing, virus cases were on the rise, and there have been reports of police abuse and arbitrary enforcement of lockdown measures, but officials have refrained from serious infringements on fundamental freedoms. In Georgia, which remains a Partly Free country, the government has been widely commended among the population for imposing strict, but transparent, measures to tackle the pandemic. Georgia has had one of the lowest death rates globally, resulting in a significant popularity boost for the ruling Georgian Dream party ahead of October elections. These cases are a reminder that any country can take steps to manage health risks while respecting human rights.

COVID19 and democracy Undermining accountability around the world

Marginalized Communities

Abuses of power during the pandemic have had a disproportionate impact on communities that were already marginalized. Among the experts surveyed, 29 percent said a lack of protection for minorities and vulnerable populations was one of three issues most affected by the coronavirus response; 25 percent said new or increased restrictions on ethnic and religious minorities have been put in place as a result of the coronavirus outbreak in their countries of focus. In some cases, these groups suffered disproportionately because their status put them at greater risk. But the dearth of accountability precipitated by weakened independent media or acquiescent legislative and judicial branches has allowed both state and nonstate actors to discriminate against certain groups with impunity.

In some countries, lockdown measures have been applied in an openly discriminatory manner to specific segments of the population. In Bulgaria, Romany neighborhoods were placed under harsher movement restrictions than areas where Roma did not constitute a majority. In Kuwait, authorities put greater restrictions on noncitizen neighborhoods than on areas where mostly citizens live. Criminal and rebel groups have also used the pandemic as a pretext to prey on marginalized communities. In Colombia, according to a survey respondent, “ethnic minorities had to completely withdraw into their shelters to protect themselves from the virus and with that they found themselves at the mercy of…illegal armed groups.”

Marginalized groups have faced disproportionate sanctions. In the United Kingdom, news media have reported that Black people and people of Asian descent are detained at higher rates than white residents under new police powers. In Turkey, a respondent claimed that “police violence under the cover of COVID-19 audits and checks disproportionately targets minorities.” “The military has intensified attacks in ethnic areas related to less international scrutiny due to coronavirus.”

Governments and societies have continued to use marginalized groups as scapegoats, blaming them for spreading the virus. India’s Muslims were labeled “superspreaders” and subjected to “a vicious hate campaign” in response to news of an Islamic religious gathering in New Delhi that was linked to an outbreak of COVID-19. Similarly, in Sri Lanka, “Muslims were treated as superspreaders with some members of government blaming Muslims for people not being able to celebrate the Sinhala and Tamil New Year,” and “the media would highlight cases where the patients were of a minority community.” Moreover, against their religious customs and despite World Health Organization recommendations stating that burials were acceptable, Sri Lankan Muslims were ordered to cremate those in their community who died after contracting the virus. In Montenegro, “the government and its media used the opportunity to label any religious protest gatherings, especially those of the members of the Serbian Orthodox Church, as reckless if not outright intentional attempts to spread the coronavirus and undermine the ruling regime.”

In Costa Rica, already marginalized Nicaraguan migrants and refugees who work in the agricultural sector are reportedly viewed by many as contributing to the spread of COVID-19. In Serbia, “the anti-migrant atmosphere has grown…as migrants were portrayed as possible carriers of the virus.” A respondent on Turkey noted that “the declaration by [the] Directorate of Religious Affairs [said] that the LGBTI+ individuals are responsible for spreading the virus around the world as the damned group by God.”

Specific pandemic-related policies and practices have also targeted refugees who are already fleeing persecution. The Malaysian government “falsely promis[ed] no action on refugees for taking Covid tests, but later ended up arresting and detaining many to be deported.” Journalists attempting to expose conditions for refugees amid the pandemic have been muzzled in several countries.

As international attention remains focused on combatting the coronavirus, governments and other actors have been able to escalate ongoing abuses against vulnerable groups with little scrutiny. In Myanmar, where the International Court of Justice has ordered the government to prevent genocide against the Rohingya and mobile internet access has been largely restricted since June 2019, “The military has intensified attacks in ethnic areas, which can be related to less international scrutiny due to coronavirus. This has caused mass displacement and grave human rights violations, particularly in western Myanmar.” Local civil society groups and other stakeholders similarly have less capacity to hold perpetrators accountable for rights violations not directly linked to the pandemic response.

Despite these grave developments, some bright spots have appeared. The government in Portugal, for instance, granted migrants temporary citizenship rights so they could secure public services. A respondent for Tunisia said that the government and the people “provided aid to all needy minorities and refugees, especially [those] from Syria and Africans.” Sustained, inclusive measures have the potential to pave the way for greater equality after the health crisis has subsided, which in turn can foster better outcomes for future crises.

Under Assault Good information, transparency, vulnerable populations

Transparency and Anticorruption

Authoritarian and democratically elected leaders alike have failed to be candid about the impact of the coronavirus. Among the surveyed experts, 37 percent, representing 65 countries, named government transparency and information about coronavirus as one of the three issues most affected by the response to the pandemic. In fact, shortcomings in transparency and official information ranked highest among the 15 issues suggested to respondents. For experts focused on countries that Freedom in the World classifies as Not Free, the response was even stronger, with 46 percent citing transparency as a chief concern.

Experts from around the world expressed broad skepticism of government information on the coronavirus. A 62 percent majority of survey respondents said they distrust what they are hearing about the pandemic from the national government in their country of focus, and among Not Free countries, 77 percent distrust such information. Respondents expressed slightly more confidence about information from local governments, but a 53 percent majority distrusts these sources as well. About half (52 percent) of respondents, representing 66 countries, said the virus has “led to a proliferation of disinformation coming from the government.” For example, a respondent on Poland saw “politicians making unfounded statements not based on actual data, and when challenged, claiming they have never said such a thing and that their words have been taken out of context.” These attitudes toward government stand in contrast to opinions about the media: a 56 percent majority of respondents have confidence in what the media in their country are reporting about the virus.

In open-ended written responses to the survey, some experts referred to outright government denial of the virus, as in countries including Nicaragua and Turkmenistan, or promotion of unsafe or unproven treatments, in countries such as Brazil and Tanzania. In a chilling response to a question about the most disturbing practice they have seen, one expert said, “Dead bodies buried at night.”

The survey corroborates the idea that corruption thrives when transparency declines; 31 percent of respondents representing 45 countries included “corruption and money in politics” among the top three issues they see as most affected by the pandemic response. Massive government outlays to assist with public health and the economy, often distributed hastily with no meaningful mechanisms in place to monitor the funds, have provided opportunities for corruption. For example, in Mauritania, “the ministers of the ruling party used COVID funds to make donations on behalf of the prime minister.” Other experts shared stories about the disappearance of supplies, or suspicious contracts with uncertified medical providers. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, where a raspberry farm infamously won a state contract to acquire ventilators, “companies not registered for medical services were registered overnight to participate in embezzlement of huge funds for purchase of medical equipment of suspicious origin.”

As the pandemic drags on, public attention will inevitably turn elsewhere, permitting even further abuses to go unchecked. The burden of preventing degraded norms from taking hold will largely fall on democracy advocates and independent journalists, who must continue to place pressure on governments to remain transparent and adhere to the rule of law.

Media and Expression

Independent media have often been stifled during the pandemic, making accountability difficult and hampering the dissemination of vital information. Based on Freedom House research, at least 91 of 192 countries (47 percent) experienced restrictions on the news media as part of the response to the coronavirus outbreak. The media in 62 percent of Partly Free countries and 67 percent of Not Free countries under review experienced such constraints.

Journalists covering the crisis have been arrested and targeted with violence, harassment, and intimidation. Governments have exerted control over content, revoked outlets’ registrations, suspended printing of newspapers, denied press credentials, and limited independent questioning at press conferences. New legislation against spreading “fake news” about the virus has been passed, while websites have been blocked and online articles or social media posts removed. The increased public need for impartial information during a pandemic makes such varied methods of suppression particularly egregious. “I am more cautious in publicly criticising government responses on COVID-19.”

In addition to specific controls on the news media, government restrictions on free speech and criticism of the government have been imposed in at least 72 countries (38 percent); 56 percent of Partly Free and 57 percent of Not Free countries under review saw limits on free expression. As one respondent on Kyrgyzstan said, “Medical workers who openly spoke out about the problems they encountered were forced to apologize and recant their claims on video.” In response to how their work has been affected by the pandemic, a respondent on Bangladesh stated, “I am more cautious in publicly criticising government responses on COVID-19.”

Governments curtail media freedom during the pandemic

Freedom of expression and belief has precipitously deteriorated during the 14 consecutive years of decline in overall global freedom observed by Freedom in the World. The pandemic has aggravated this negative trajectory, particularly in countries where independent journalism was already under pressure. In Rwanda, where severe legal restrictions are in place and a journalist went missing last year, there has been “a lot of restriction in matters of independent reporting from non-government institutions. Some journalist[s] who were broadcasting via [YouTube] channels were arrested, and others have been reprimanded from covering issues of COVID-19.”

Several countries that experienced a large decline in freedom during 20192 have imposed new or increased restrictions on the media since the outbreak began. One of these countries is Tanzania, where the media has effectively been barred from covering the pandemic. Another is Nigeria, where a respondent wrote that there have been “increased cases of journalists detained for their opinions of government policies,” while the presidency has limited accreditations for press conferences.

These intentional restrictions help enable governments to act with impunity, sometimes with the assistance of a subservient legislature or judiciary. Even when governments seem to be providing accurate information, quarantines and restrictions on travel may hinder the ability of the media to monitor and question them. In the words of a Lebanon respondent, “during lock[down] the government at first did not allow the journalist[s]…to move freely, they had to get special permits.”

Governments and citizens must recognize that press freedoms and freedom of expression are essential tools for exposing misconduct and assessing the effectiveness of the pandemic response. Public health depends on the protection of these core democratic values.

Elections

Three women arrive at a polling station preparing to cast their votes during the parliamentary election in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on August 5, 2020. Credit: Ruwan Walpola/Shutterstock.com.

National elections in nine countries, and many more subnational votes, were disrupted in some way between January and August 2020, with frequent accusations that decisions on election administration had been politicized. Given the rapid onset of the pandemic and the acute health risks it posed to voters, postponements were not always unreasonable. Yet such moves frequently failed to meet democratic standards, either because new elections were not scheduled promptly or because officials set new dates without making adequate preparations for safe and secure voting.

Among the 24 countries that had a national election planned during the period under review, 22 nationwide votes took place. Seven countries moved an election date, including three that did not immediately plan for new elections, though they eventually set new dates. COVID-19 provoked changes in election rules in four countries, damaging the credibility of the elections in two cases. There were 13 countries that introduced alternative voting methods that minimized health risks.

In Sri Lanka, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa dissolved the opposition-controlled parliament in March in a bid to hold early parliamentary elections in April. Due to the health crisis, however, the country was unable to conduct the elections within the constitutional timeframe of three months. Five months ultimately passed before the balloting was held in August, during which the president ruled without a legislature. Rajapaksa’s party won the elections in a landslide, adding to fears that he and his brother, former president and current prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, would consolidate power and build an authoritarian regime.

Other votes also seemed designed to tighten an authoritarian grip. Burundi’s election went ahead on May 20 with few health precautions for the population, yet foreign observers were required to quarantine; conveniently for the ruling party, none showed up. According to an expert on Belarus, where a fraudulent election has led to ongoing mass protests, “The authorities, having done nothing to stop the spread of the coronavirus, used the epidemic solely to limit the rights of citizens during the election campaign,” including by restricting international and local observers.

Elections were postponed in Ethiopia and Bolivia, dashing hopes that voting would bring clarity to transitional situations. In Ethiopia, reformist prime minister Abiy Ahmed took power in 2018 through an internal party process, and Parliament’s term was set to expire in October 2020. The government decided this spring that the coronavirus necessitated an indefinite electoral delay. This has led to political unrest and fears of a return to authoritarian rule.

In Bolivia, the incumbent government was meant to serve on an interim basis after protests against a seriously flawed vote led former president Evo Morales to flee the country in November 2019. Yet the special election was postponed three times, ostensibly due to the coronavirus. (It was scheduled for October 18 at the time of writing.) Critics of the caretaker president—who is also a presidential candidate—see her handling of the health situation as politically motivated. As one respondent said of Bolivia, “The coronavirus arrived at a moment of democratic fragility, since our country was in the midst of a governmental transition pending new elections…this once again threw the country into a state of social upheaval.”

In Hong Kong, where prodemocracy protests against Beijing’s growing control have persisted for more than a year, legislative elections originally set for September, in which the opposition had hoped to make further gains after major successes in 2019 district council voting, have been postponed by 12 months. Although COVID-19 was the official justification, the relatively low infection and death rates in the territory, the June imposition of a draconian national security law, and the August banning of 12 prodemocracy candidates from running next year are among the many signs that have led experts to accuse the Chinese Communist Party of using the delay to complete its suffocation of Hong Kong’s freedom and autonomy.

COVID-19's impact on national elections graphic

Among the countries that held elections, two encouraging cases stand out. South Korean citizens voted for their National Assembly in April with high confidence in their government’s response to the pandemic. Protective measures were implemented at polling places and specific arrangements were made to avoid disenfranchising voters who were sick or quarantined. The ruling party was rewarded with a resounding victory amid the highest turnout in 28 years. In May, New Zealand officials announced a range of measures to help ensure that its September parliamentary elections could go forward, including more early voting, personal protective equipment for polling places, and various forms of remote voting. Although the elections were subsequently pushed to October, the government will remain within its mandate under the plan, and maintains high public trust.

South Korea and New Zealand are both rich, small, established democracies. Nevertheless, they prove that successful elections can go forward during a pandemic with proper planning and resources. COVID-19 cannot be considered a short-term disruption, and democracy cannot be deferred indefinitely. A case to watch is Georgia’s parliamentary elections, set for October, which survey respondents flagged as a possible positive example of international engagement in support of necessary electoral preparations.

Pandemic in the United States

COVID-19 has thrived amid the misinformation and scapegoating of democratically elected populists in countries like India and Brazil. It has also deepened the fractures in the democratic institutions of the United States. Not only have US death tolls been among the highest in the world, but the pandemic hit in a crucial election year, and public health has become politicized.

The Trump administration has been sharply criticized for creating a fog of misinformation around the pandemic. In his press conferences and social media posts, the president repeatedly downplayed the severity of the coronavirus, attacked state governors from the opposition Democratic Party for imposing social-distancing measures, promoted unproven treatments and false health statistics, asserted that the pathogen would soon disappear, and pushed for restrictions to be lifted even as the contagion spread, among other harmful statements. The Department of Health and Human Services ordered hospitals to redirect their COVID-19 data from an established reporting system at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to a new database controlled by the department, leading to concerns that the information could be manipulated or obfuscated for political reasons. Senior public health professionals who openly contradicted the president’s claims were marginalized, while others struggled to bridge the gap between the science and the administration’s political and economic priorities.

Many of the state-by-state primary elections leading up to the general elections in November were held after the first coronavirus cases were detected in February and March. Attempts to postpone the April voting in Wisconsin led to a mixed series of lower court decisions that culminated in a US Supreme Court ruling the night before election day. In the resulting confusion, thousands of voters who had requested absentee ballots never received them, and wait times for in-person voting reportedly reached up to four hours due to reductions in the number of polling places. Conditions were little better in June, when shortages of poll workers, voting-machine problems, and dysfunction surrounding absentee ballots wreaked havoc in the state of Georgia. Many experts have expressed doubt that local election authorities across the country are prepared for the November elections, citing increased demand for voting by mail, likely staffing shortfalls, and last-minute changes to electoral rules—all related to the pandemic.

In addition to its political reverberations, COVID-19 has underscored the country’s racial inequities, which put Black and Latino populations at a particular disadvantage. Households in these communities are more likely to have members who continued traveling to their workplaces during local lockdown periods because their jobs could not be done remotely, meaning they faced a greater risk of exposure to the virus. Members of these groups were also more likely to have preexisting health conditions—many of which can be linked to systemic bias in housing, health care, employment, and education—that exacerbated the severity of the disease among those who contracted it.

Separately, between March and July, US authorities used an emergency health directive to summarily expel more than 40,000 people who were apprehended for allegedly making unauthorized border crossings, including unaccompanied minors and those who sought to apply for asylum as permitted by US and international law. The policy raised concerns that the Trump administration was exploiting the pandemic as a pretext to set aside due process obligations and intensify its clampdown on asylum seekers and immigration in general.

Democracy and Human Rights Work Changes amid Pandemic

Individual democracy and human rights activists and journalists, who were already under tremendous pressure from undemocratic governments, have faced severe constraints during the coronavirus outbreak. In survey responses, restrictions on movement in particular were cited for creating obstacles to holding workshops, meeting with sources, providing support to vulnerable populations, and conducting advocacy work. A respondent on Poland explained, “As a journalist, my ability to contact information sources has been limited—most such contacts have to be made electronically…which significantly reduces the confidence of information sources and limits the amount of information I receive.” A respondent on Ghana said, “The quarantine and ban on social gatherings…made it difficult for us to reach the vulnerable during the lockdown, particularly women who suffered from gender-based violence.”

Technological alternatives have been useful for some organizations, for instance by allowing them to engage with more stakeholders, but others lament poor internet connectivity and a diminished ability to accomplish their aims. In Morocco, “project activities linked to human rights [were] either postponed or replaced by online activities which had less impact at the level of interaction and engagement.” In Turkey, an “inability to conduct physical meetings has affected advocacy and outreach work (especially when communities are unable to utilise technology for various reasons).” In contrast, a respondent speaking about activist work in Honduras said that “there is a larger audience that has the time to learn and mobilize as well as show dissent.” Additional work has also arisen as more people need assistance and new government abuses related to the pandemic require monitoring, straining civil society’s capacity.

Funding has become more difficult to obtain, and focus has shifted—among governments, donors, and other stakeholders—from democracy and human rights issues to more basic material needs. As a Philippines respondent said, “The coronavirus outbreak has forced us to adjust our operations,” adding that “the pandemic has also made it more difficult for us to reach the most vulnerable communities due to health and security risks. To adapt, we have mainly moved our legal services online and focused our attention to the urgent needs of Filipinos brought about by the crisis.”

Some experts reported fear of criticizing government policies around the pandemic in part due to crackdowns on the media, activists, and other critics; people were also wary of meeting with these actors. A respondent on Cambodia said, “We are not freely conduct[ing] our project activities…the government just uses [the] coronavirus outbreak as [an] excuse to crack down and criminalize us.”

Attention to urgent public health needs is crucial, but any successes will not be sustainable without support for human rights and strong democratic institutions, including an active and independent civil society.

Journalists more trusted than governments COVID19

Accountability Breaks Through

Activists, journalists, and citizens are working aggressively to overcome the obstacles they face. They are organizing to push back against government abuses in new ways, often utilizing online platforms to engage with expanded audiences and form new partnerships. For example, in Nigeria a respondent reported, “We have adopted the use of social media and USSD codes, which enables the use of simple or non-smart phones to conduct surveys instead of visiting communities to conduct physical surveys.” One organization in the Philippines has developed a “human rights chatbot,” with a respondent explaining that, “our online legal assistance and information campaign has garnered positive feedback from clients.”

Journalism has received a boost in some locations as people seek out information related to the health situation. Many survey respondents described journalists risking their own freedom and safety in order to report on the coronavirus and subsequent government abuses. In the Philippines, where independent media is under assault by the Duterte government, “journalists covering the pandemic are pushing back through their enterprising methods of reporting despite the limitation in movement. They are also more indignant whenever restrictions are applied to the press, such as in the case of [the] ABS-CBN shutdown, wherein hundreds of journalists stood in support of the news network.”

Courts and legislators are also providing checks on excessive power and abuses in certain countries. Brazil’s Supreme Court, for instance, has restrained President Jair Bolsonaro’s antidemocratic tendencies: as Indigenous communities were struck particularly hard by the virus, and Bolsonaro vetoed part of a bill that would have provided them with assistance, the court ruled that the government must enact health measures in response. It also suspended a provisional measure that would have limited freedom of information requests. In Lesotho, a respondent reported, “the judiciary also ruled against the former prime minister’s decision to shut down Parliament using COVID-19 as the reason.” A respondent on Israel reported being inspired by “specific parliament members who stood for themselves against their own political parties.”

Despite quarantines, curfews, and lockdowns, many people are still taking to the streets to challenge their governments, revealing that the global pattern of mass protests that emerged in 2019 has continued. Although 158 countries have had new restrictions placed on protests, Freedom House researchers identified significant protests in at least 90 countries since the outbreak began. These demonstrations were held in 39 percent of Free countries, 60 percent of Partly Free countries, and 43 percent of Not Free countries under review. At least one third of the countries in each region experienced a significant protest, up to two thirds seeing protests in some regions. The sheer number of demonstrations across all types of regimes and in every region of the world demonstrates that even as governments look to take advantage of the crisis to strengthen their own positions, people will continue to challenge them.

Events in Belarus represent a powerful example of pushback in a country where freedom of assembly has long been severely restricted. Unprecedented mass protests against President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has led the country since 1994, erupted in August following his claim of victory in a vote marred by repression of opposition figures and allegations of widespread fraud. Resistance against Lukashenka was sparked at least in part by his denial of the pandemic, which contributed to a deadly outbreak of the virus. Thousands of protesters have been detained, and many have been subjected to extensive brutality by security forces, including torture. With Russian president Vladimir Putin threatening to intervene on Lukashenka’s behalf, it is vital that the international community support the protesters’ demands for government accountability and democratic change.

Belarusian people flocked to attend a pre-election rally for opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in Minsk in July 2020. Credit: Svetlana Turchenick/Shutterstock.com.

Yet for every noteworthy attempt to hold bad actors accountable and to respect political rights and civil liberties, there are numerous other measures that have chipped away at democratic norms and freedoms. Especially in struggling democracies and amid more recent reformers, freedom is fragile and requires constant cultivation. Proponents of democracy must support one another around the world to ensure that government failures lead to renewed demands for stronger institutions. Otherwise the deadly COVID-19 pandemic will result in lasting damage to global freedom.

COVID19 pandemic and human rights The state of democracy in their own words

Methodology

This report, designed and written by Freedom House in partnership with survey firm GQR, is based on a survey of experts conducted by GQR, combined with desk and field research Freedom House conducted between March and September 2020.

For the online survey portion of the report (referred to as the “survey” in the text), approximately 1,000 experts were invited to participate, selected from a list of activists and experts on democracy and human rights within the networks of Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy. In total, 398 experts from 105 countries completed the survey, which was conducted online by GQR from July 29 to August 15. Respondents were given the choice to respond in six different languages: Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. All individual responses are anonymous to protect the identity and security of the respondents and ensure open conversation. The survey respondents’ answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

Among the respondents, 68 percent have been working on issues of democracy and human rights for more than 10 years, while 23 percent have been doing so for more than 20 years. They mostly come from backgrounds in civil society (54 percent), journalism (15 percent), and academia (11 percent), and 98 percent have at least a university graduate degree. Just under 4 out of 10 (38 percent) identify as women.

Each expert was asked to provide their views on one country of focus. In total they reported on the state of democracy in 105 countries and territories, primarily from transitional democracies, and hybrid and authoritarian countries. The full list of countries and territories in the survey is: Afghanistan, Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Canada, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Ethiopia, France, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Moldova, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, North Macedonia, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovenia, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, The Bahamas, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, West Bank and Gaza, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
Desk and field research drew on Freedom House’s global network of analysts as well as Freedom House staff covering 192 countries (referred to as “Freedom House research” in the text). Freedom House conducted this research between March and September 2020. The full list of countries is: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, North Macedonia, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of the Congo, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Samoa, San Marino, São Tomé and Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, South Sudan, Spain, Sri Lanka, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Sudan, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, The Bahamas, The Gambia, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Acknowledgements

This report was made possible by the generous support of Free Press Unlimited and Facebook.

Freedom House is solely responsible for the report’s content.

The following people provided important assistance with this report: Guldastan Aidarbekova, Juliana Arevalos Bordão, Ever Bussey, Shefali Das, Sonya Guimet, Reema Saleh, Rebecca Shane, and Tessa Weal.

The survey portion of this report was led by Managing Partner Jeremy Rosner and Vice President Brian Paler of GQR.

Footnotes

1 Free, Partly Free, and Not Free statuses come from Freedom in the World 2020. “Countries under review” refers to the 192 countries covered by this report.
2 Three or more points in Freedom in the World 2020.

A protester wears a face mask at a political demonstration in Bolivia during the coronavirus pandemic. Credit: Aizar Raldes/AFP via Getty Images.

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Conspiracy ? December 18th 2020

Covid 19 antiboidies were first recorded in the U.S.A in November 2019. Just consider the obvious conspiracy to destroy Assange for revealing Anglo U.S war crimes and you will realise the reality of the real James Bond Anglo U.S spy world will do anything to protect the rich elite, including destroying Russia and China’s current regime. Hence it is highly probable that the virus was taken to Wuhan and released, probably by a business person or student dupe or fake from the U.S Neo Liberal Deep State – taking the view that China had outlived its usefulness.

Warren Buffet made a massive investment in a major Chinese face mask manufacturer in 2019, and Bill Gates put $20 million in BioNtech in November 2019. The Super rich have become super super rich. In spite of vaccine, the U.S fake scientist guesswork merchants scaremonger, based on dubious samples, that the R rate is massive so we have to have endless lockdown.

Of course there is no conspiracy as frightened females rush to back the authorities and rules that make no sense and a lockdwon that has no relevance to ‘controlling the viris.’ It is all about controlling and terrifying the masses, using female gullibility. I suspect there are laws about saying this, which says it all. R.J Cook

Continuing mass testing in Wales could be a “massive-scale of waste of resources”, a leading public health expert has said. December 13th 2020

Figures show less than 1.5% of people were testing positive as part of pilots in Merthyr Tydfil and the lower Cynon Valley.

Dr Angela Raffle said there was little evidence to suggest it helped cut transmission.

First Minister Mark Drakeford said mass testing “has a part to play”.

Dr Raffle, a senior lecturer in population sciences at Bristol University, said mass testing was “incredibly resource intensive”.

“We simply don’t know whether you’ll find enough cases who would have transmitted a lot, and who don’t [transmit Covid-19] simply because you found them,” she said.

“And we don’t know whether telling lots of people they’re negative could actually undermine any potential benefit.

“It could be the most massive scale of waste of resources.”

Dr Raffle said there were also concerns around the accuracy of the lateral flow tests, which are being used within mass testing schemes and produce results in as little as 20 minutes.

Queue of people outside Merthyr Tydfil Leisure Centre

Hypocrisy – Oh Kay, O.K Posted December 11th 2020

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Sunak is being passed off to the masses as a symbol of racial equality and poor boy made good, so we must accept his judgement that lunatic lockdown makes sense, as he thinks coming Draconian taxes on the masses will be needed to pay for it all.

***He has caused mass bankruptcies and unemployment among the self employed and hospitality sector from a virus with a death rate of less than 1% and an average age of death at 82..***

***The fact that he and his wife are merely dark skinned upper caste mega rich Caucasians is not meant to be noticed. There are only three basic races, Mongoloid, Caucasoid and Negroid.***
***Families like Sunaks worked with the British elite to exploit India’s masses using an army recruited from the desperately poor underclass.***
***R.J Cook***

There was elite media outrage and televised media inquisitiion when Dominic Cummings made a long distance family journey to the North Of England during lockdown. The ridicule of him continues, as seen when he was forced to quit his Downing St post – because he favours a no deal Brexit. But when it comes to media luvvie feminist media millionaire Kay Burley and colleagues seriously breaching lockdown, it is all O.K. It was her birthday.

Even Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden supports her excuses for not being sacked. She has been rewarded for breaching allegedly life saving restrictions by being given a 3 month paid suspension. Kay has suggested she might use the time to visit her beloved Africa. Great stuff for the working class girl from run down Wigan in Northern England. I love British Democrcy, it is the best comedy ever. It just runs and runs. R;J Cook

How did Covid REALLY spread around the world? New damning test results that show antibodies were in US in December – WEEKS before China raised the alarm – add to growing global evidence of a cover-up Posted December 2nd 2020

A US study has dealt a killer blow to claims that the coronavirus emerged from a livestock market in Wuhan last winter, as global evidence proves the virus had spread across the world before then. Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) this week published research showing antibodies specific to Covid-19 in blood samples taken in California, Oregon and Washington as early as December 13. It adds to research from Italy, Brazil, France, Spain and the UK that all proves the SARS-CoV-2 virus had already spread far across the Western world before Chinese officials told the World Health Organization it had found the disease on December 31.

This is just more evidence that we should not believe State officials, mainstream media and so called experts. R.J Cook

Science & Truth November 27th 2020

As previously written here, science is a methodology for the purposes of discovery, mamipulation and understanding of nature. Good science requires pure and good inspiration. Unfortunately it also requires money which is in the hands of a tiny political, military and business complex.

Hitler and the Nazis demonstrated how science can be used for evil purposes. World War Two’s victors were quick to employ the discoveries and inventions of the Nazi devils, who among other things gave us the ICBM. The British made a major contribution to nuclear, chemical and germ warfare.

Education in the dominant Anglo United States block favours rich kids. As somone who taught maths and science in a British seconday modern school, it is my view that the whole curriculum is the opposite of inspiring.. I have previously quoted that while teaching at Aylesbury’s Grange School, I was inspired to write the following punk song, after watching the headmaster berating a young boy for wearing trainers.

“They limit our horizons and fit us for a task

Dressed in blue overalls and carrying a flask

Left Right, left right the headmaster roars

And mind you don’t stand talking, blocking up the doors

He’s tellin’ them they’re wearing the wrong kind of shoes

Their little faces quiver, do they know they’re goin’ to lose

All runnin’ ’round in circles and marchin’ up and down

Preparing for a life driftin’ round the town.”

That was back in 1980. The country and the world has got worse. Peoples’ lives are boxed in – even if only a cardboard box on a cold dirty pavement.

Yesterday’s headlines warned British people that unemployment due to Covid restrictions will soon hit 2.6 million. The people dying because of this lockdown, not Covid, do not count for the well paid mainstream media, politicians and other authorities. We are warned of higher taxes to come, but no mention of higher taxes for the rich whose global economy created this situation and continues to make them ever more obscenely rich and powerful. BLM, which these people back and fund, is just another divide and fool smokescreen to keep them safe, justifying more arrests and sentences for dissidents .

So we read below about a wonderful vaccine coming out of so much scientific uncertainty – but we must still have social distancing. The good old Nazi abuse of science and psuedo science is alive and well. So called scientists care only for the pay, the grant money and status. Science created World War One’s mustard gass which blinded people. Science has for a long time been the elite’s weapon of choice for blinding people with. Education is very much part of that process. An old tutor of mine, Basil Bernstein, from my days as a post grad at London University produced a set of studies called ‘Knowledge & Control’. He hit the nail on the head. R.J Cook

The End of the Pandemic Is Now in Sight

A year of scientific uncertainty is over. Two vaccines look like they will work, and more should follow.Sarah ZhangNovember 18, 2020

A man holding syringes — Herb Snitzer / Getty

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here.

For all that scientists have done to tame the biological world, there are still things that lie outside the realm of human knowledge. The coronavirus was one such alarming reminder, when it emerged with murky origins in late 2019 and found naive, unwitting hosts in the human body. Even as science began to unravel many of the virus’s mysteries—how it spreads, how it tricks its way into cells, how it kills—a fundamental unknown about vaccines hung over the pandemic and our collective human fate: Vaccines can stop many, but not all, viruses. Could they stop this one?

The answer, we now know, is yes. A resounding yes. Pfizer and Moderna have separately released preliminary data that suggest their vaccines are both more than 90 percent effective, far more than many scientists expected. Neither company has publicly shared the full scope of their data, but independent clinical-trial monitoring boards have reviewed the results, and the FDA will soon scrutinize the vaccines for emergency use authorization. Unless the data take an unexpected turn, initial doses should be available in December.

The tasks that lie ahead—manufacturing vaccines at scale, distributing them via a cold or even ultracold chain, and persuading wary Americans to take them—are not trivial, but they are all within the realm of human knowledge. The most tenuous moment is over: The scientific uncertainty at the heart of COVID-19 vaccines is resolved. Vaccines work. And for that, we can breathe a collective sigh of relief. “It makes it now clear that vaccines will be our way out of this pandemic,” says Kanta Subbarao, a virologist at the Doherty Institute, who has studied emerging viruses.

The invention of vaccines against a virus identified only 10 months ago is an extraordinary scientific achievement. They are the fastest vaccines ever developed, by a margin of years. From virtually the day Chinese scientists shared the genetic sequence of a new coronavirus in January, researchers began designing vaccines that might train the immune system to recognize the still-unnamed virus. They needed to identify a suitable piece of the virus to turn into a vaccine, and one promising target was the spike-shaped proteins that decorate the new virus’s outer shell. Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines both rely on the spike protein, as do many vaccine candidates still in development. These initial successes suggest this strategy works; several more COVID-19 vaccines may soon cross the finish line. To vaccinate billions of people across the globe and bring the pandemic to a timely end, we will need all the vaccines we can get.

But it is no accident or surprise that Moderna and Pfizer are first out of the gate. They both bet on a new and hitherto unproven idea of using mRNA, which has the long-promised advantage of speed. This idea has now survived a trial by pandemic and emerged likely triumphant. If mRNA vaccines help end the pandemic and restore normal life, they may also usher in a new era for vaccine development.

The human immune system is awesome in its power, but an untrained one does not know how to aim its fire. That’s where vaccines come in. They present a harmless snapshot of a pathogen, a “wanted” poster, if you will, that primes the immune system to recognize the real virus when it comes along. Traditionally, this snapshot could be in the form of a weakened virus or an inactivated virus or a particularly distinctive viral molecule. But those approaches require vaccine makers to manufacture viruses and their molecules, which takes time and expertise. Both are lacking during a pandemic caused by a novel virus.

mRNA vaccines offer a clever shortcut. We humans don’t need to intellectually work out how to make viruses; our bodies are already very, very good at incubating them. When the coronavirus infects us, it hijacks our cellular machinery, turning our cells into miniature factories that churn out infectious viruses. The mRNA vaccine makes this vulnerability into a strength. What if we can trick our own cells into making just one individually harmless, though very recognizable, viral protein? The coronavirus’s spike protein fits this description, and the instructions for making it can be encoded into genetic material called mRNA.

Both vaccines, from Moderna and from Pfizer’s collaboration with the smaller German company BioNTech, package slightly modified spike-protein mRNA inside a tiny protective bubble of fat. Human cells take up this bubble and simply follow the directions to make spike protein. The cells then display these spike proteins, presenting them as strange baubles to the immune system. Recognizing these viral proteins as foreign, the immune system begins building an arsenal to prepare for the moment a virus bearing this spike protein appears.

This overall process mimics the steps of infection better than some traditional vaccines, which suggests that mRNA vaccines may provoke a better immune response for certain diseases. When you inject vaccines made of inactivated viruses or viral pieces, they can’t get inside the cell, and the cell can’t present those viral pieces to the immune system. Those vaccines can still elicit proteins called antibodies, which neutralize the virus, but they have a harder time stimulating T cells, which make up another important part of the immune response. (Weakened viruses used in vaccines can get inside cells, but risk causing an actual infection if something goes awry. mRNA vaccines cannot cause infection because they do not contain the whole virus.) Moreover, inactivated viruses or viral pieces tend to disappear from the body within a day, but mRNA vaccines can continue to produce spike protein for two weeks, says Drew Weissman, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania, whose mRNA vaccine research has been licensed by both BioNTech and Moderna. The longer the spike protein is around, the better for an immune response.

All of this is how mRNA vaccines should work in theory. But no one on Earth, until last week, knew whether mRNA vaccines actually do work in humans for COVID-19. Although scientists had prototyped other mRNA vaccines before the pandemic, the technology was still new. None had been put through the paces of a large clinical trial. And the human immune system is notoriously complicated and unpredictable. Immunology is, as my colleague Ed Yong has written, where intuition goes to die. Vaccines can even make diseases more severe, rather than less. The data from these large clinical trials from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are the first, real-world proof that mRNA vaccines protect against disease as expected. The hope, in the many years when mRNA vaccine research flew under the radar, was that the technology would deliver results quickly in a pandemic. And now it has.

“What a relief,” says Barney Graham, a virologist at the National Institutes of Health, who helped design the spike protein for the Moderna vaccine. “You can make thousands of decisions, and thousands of things have to go right for this to actually come out and work. You’re just worried that you have made some wrong turns along the way.” For Graham, this vaccine is a culmination of years of such decisions, long predating the discovery of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. He and his collaborators had homed in on the importance of spike protein in another virus, called respiratory syncytial virus, and figured out how to make the protein more stable and thus suitable for vaccines. This modification appears in both Pfizer/BioNTech’s and Moderna’s vaccines, as well as other leading vaccine candidates.

The spectacular efficacy of these vaccines, should the preliminary data hold, likely also has to do with the choice of spike protein as vaccine target. On one hand, scientists were prepared for the spike protein, thanks to research like Graham’s. On the other hand, the coronavirus’s spike protein offered an opening. Three separate components of the immune system—antibodies, helper cells, and killer T cells—all respond to the spike protein, which isn’t the case with most viruses.

In this, we were lucky. “It’s the three punches,” says Alessandro Sette. Working with Shane Crotty, his fellow immunologist at the La Jolla Institute, Sette found that COVID-19 patients whose immune systems can marshal all three responses against the spike protein tend to fare the best. The fact that most people can recover from COVID-19 was always encouraging news; it meant a vaccine simply needed to jump-start the immune system, which could then take on the virus itself. But no definitive piece of evidence existed that proved COVID-19 vaccines would be a slam dunk. “There’s nothing like a Phase 3 clinical trial,” Crotty says. “You don’t know what’s gonna happen with a vaccine until it happens, because the virus is complicated and the immune system is complicated.”

Experts anticipate that the ongoing trials will clarify still-unanswered questions about the COVID-19 vaccines. For example, Ruth Karron, the director of the Center for Immunization Research at Johns Hopkins University, asks, does the vaccine prevent only a patient’s symptoms? Or does it keep them from spreading the virus? How long will immunity last? How well does it protect the elderly, many of whom have a weaker response to the flu vaccine? So far, Pfizer has noted that its vaccine seems to protect the elderly just as well, which is good news because they are especially vulnerable to COVID-19.

Several more vaccines using the spike protein are in clinical trials too. They rely on a suite of different vaccine technologies, including weakened viruses, inactivated viruses, viral proteins, and another fairly new concept called DNA vaccines. Never before have companies tested so many different types of vaccines against the same virus, which might end up revealing something new about vaccines in general. You now have the same spike protein delivered in many different ways, Sette points out. How will the vaccines behave differently? Will they each stimulate different parts of the immune system? And which parts are best for protecting against the coronavirus? The pandemic is an opportunity to compare different types of vaccines head-on.

If the two mRNA vaccines continue to be as good as they initially seem, their success will likely crack open a whole new world of mRNA vaccines. Scientists are already testing them against currently un-vaccinable viruses such as Zika and cytomegalovirus and trying to make improved versions of existing vaccines, such as for the flu. Another possibility lies in personalized mRNA vaccines that can stimulate the immune system to fight cancer.

But the next few months will be a test of one potential downside of mRNA vaccines: their extreme fragility. mRNA is an inherently unstable molecule, which is why it needs that protective bubble of fat, called a lipid nanoparticle. But the lipid nanoparticle itself is exquisitely sensitive to temperature. For longer-term storage, Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine has to be stored at –70 degrees Celsius and Moderna’s at –20 Celsius, though they can be kept at higher temperatures for a shorter amount of time. Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna have said they can collectively supply enough doses for 22.5 million people in the United States by the end of the year.

Distributing the limited vaccines fairly and smoothly will be a massive political and logistical challenge, especially as it begins during a bitter transition of power in Washington. The vaccine is a scientific triumph, but the past eight months have made clear how much pandemic preparedness is not only about scientific research. Ensuring adequate supplies of tests and personal protective equipment, providing economic relief, and communicating the known risks of COVID-19 transmission are all well within the realm of human knowledge, yet the U.S. government has failed at all of that.

The vaccine by itself cannot slow the dangerous trajectory of COVID-19 hospitalizations this fall or save the many people who may die by Christmas. But it can give us hope that the pandemic will end. Every infection we prevent now—through masking and social distancing—is an infection that can, eventually, be prevented forever through vaccines.

Sarah Zhang is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Leaders of the four UK nations have warned people to be cautious of the risk of spreading coronavirus when rules are relaxed over Christmas. November 25th 2020

Up to three households will be allowed to stay together and form a “Christmas bubble” from 23 to 27 December.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson told people to use “personal judgement” on whether to visit elderly relatives.

A scientific adviser to the government said the relaxation of rules amounted to “throwing fuel on the Covid fire”.

The measures will see travel restrictions across the four nations, and between tiers and levels, lifted to allow people to visit families in other parts of the UK.

Anyone travelling to or from Northern Ireland may travel on the 22 and 28 December, but otherwise travel to and from bubbles should be done between the 23 and 27.

People will not be able to get together with others from more than two other households, and once a bubble is formed, it must not be changed or be extended further.

The guidance says a bubble of three households would be able to stay overnight at each other’s home but would not be able to visit hospitality, theatres or retail settings.

In a video message from Downing Street, the prime minister described the agreement as a “special, time-limited dispensation”, saying: “This year means Christmas will be different.”

Mr Johnson said people must consider the risks of who to form a bubble with and whether or not to visit elderly or vulnerable relatives, adding: “Many of us are longing to spend time with family and friends… And yet we can’t afford to throw caution to the wind.”

He added: “‘Tis the season to be jolly but ’tis also the season to be jolly careful.”

The leaders of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland agreed the rules at a meeting on Tuesday.

First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford said the UK leaders agreed they had to ease the rules because people would have flouted restrictions – creating further risk – if they were told Christmas had been “cancelled”.

Ministers were shown behavioural science evidence that “too many people simply would not have been prepared to have gone along with such an instruction”, he told BBC Breakfast on Wednesday.

Mr Drakeford also said a UK-wide approach to coronavirus rules after Christmas was needed.

Call for UK-wide Covid rules after Christmas

Published guidance for England gives further details of the Christmas rules:

People can continue to meet others who are not in their Christmas bubble, outside their home, according to the rules in the tier where they are staying
Children under the age of 18 whose parents do not live together may be part of both parents’ Christmas bubbles
Existing support bubbles count as one household towards the three household limit
People are allowed to form a different Christmas bubble from the people they live with normally – they can choose to stay with different people for this period
If a care home resident is able to leave their home, they can form a bubble with one other household – but should not form a three-household bubble. However, visits out of care homes should only be considered for residents of working age because of the risks
Students are considered to be part of the household to which they have returned

Areas will find out which tier of England’s strengthened three-tier system they are in on Thursday. The decision will be based on a number of factors including case numbers, the reproduction rate – or R number – and pressure on local NHS services.

The guidance also advises people to take precautions when meeting their Christmas bubble such as washing hands frequently and opening windows to clear potential virus particles.

Some scientists have warned that the relaxation of Covid restrictions could spark another wave of infections and further deaths.

Third wave warning

Prof Andrew Hayward, director of the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care, and a member of the government’s Sage committee, told BBC Newsnight that allowing families to meet up over Christmas amounted to “throwing fuel on the Covid fire”.

He said it would “definitely lead to increase[d] transmission and likely lead to third wave of infections with hospitals being overrun, and more unnecessary deaths.”

Prof Hayward said while you cannot ban Christmas, he called for clearer messaging to families about the “dangers” of socialising and inter-generational mixing.

Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, said the relaxation of restrictions at Christmas will “almost inevitably” lead to an increase in transmission but that the increase could be “relatively short-lived” if England’s new tier system is better managed than in October”.

Gavin Terry, head of policy at the Alzheimer’s Society, said thousands of relatives would be in “complete despair” at government guidance which says only care home residents of working age should be allowed to leave their care homes to visit family, due to the increased risk of exposure to the virus.

“After eight harrowing months filled with devastation and tragic loss of life, the announcement that many care home residents will be facing Christmas alone is just heartbreaking,” he said, calling for further testing to allow for more visits to care homes.

Meanwhile, leaders of the hospitality sector said the relaxed rules made a “mockery” of the “economic devastation” pubs and restaurants will face as a result of the ban on Christmas bubbles eating out together.

Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, called on ministers to publish evidence for its decision, which would “inflict unnecessary pain and irreversible damage on our sector”.

Kate Nicholls, chief executive of the UKHospitality lobby group, said there was “muddled thinking” over the Christmas rules which would cause the sector more economic harm.

“It is also surely better for hotels to be open and providing a place to stay than multiple households being cramped in a single house.”

The coronavirus pandemic ‘great reset’ theory and a false vaccine claim debunked November 22nd 2020

By Jack Goodman and Flora Carmichael
BBC Reality CheckPublished18 hours agoRelated Topics

Reality Check

Silver grey keyboard close up with world global great reset enter- button - stock photo

Misinformation about a Covid-19 vaccine and pandemic conspiracy theories continue to thrive on social media.

Here’s what we’ve been fact-checking this week.

Justin Trudeau and the ‘Great Reset’

We start with the revival of the baseless conspiracy theory, known as the ‘Great Reset’, which claims a group of world leaders orchestrated the pandemic to take control of the global economy.

The conspiracy theory has its origins in a genuine plan entitled ‘The Great Reset’, drawn up by the World Economic Forum (WEF), the organisers of an annual conference for high-profile figures from politics and business, The plan explores how countries might recover from the economic damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Screenshot of a tweet that says "The Great Reset = The New World Order..." We added a "no evidence" label.

The WEF recovery plan has been interpreted as sinister, first by fringe conspiracy theory groups on social media, and then by prominent conservative commentators – prompting tens of thousands of interactions across Facebook and Twitter.

It started trending globally on Twitter last week, when a video of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a UN meeting, saying the pandemic provided an opportunity for a “reset”, went viral.

This sparked fresh claims from people, within Canada and further afield, that a cabal of global leaders is using the pandemic to introduce a range of damaging socialist and environmental policies.

When asked about conspiracy theories at the end of the week, Mr Trudeau said: “I think we’re in a time of anxiety, where people are looking for reasons for things that are happening to them… we’re seeing a lot of people fall prey to disinformation.”

A video from August, which now has close to three million views on YouTube, believes only Donald Trump can thwart this secret plot, which uses Covid-19 to bring the US economy to its knees so the “reset” can begin and people will be “begging” for vaccines.

But the suggestion that politicians planned the virus, or are using it to destroy capitalism is wholly without evidence.

So too is the notion that the World Economic Forum has the authority to tell other countries what to do, or that it is coordinating a secret cabal of world leaders.

The ‘French Plandemic’

Similarly, a French documentary which also refers to a secret global plot has gone viral on YouTube and other social networks this week. The same video promotes unfounded medical advice, misinformation and conspiracy theories about coronavirus.

A poster for a film called "HOLD-UP" with an image of the masked faces of a man and a woman with germs coming out their masks.

Over more than two and a half hours, the film – entitled Hold Up – promises to reveal “the truth” about Covid-19.

Instead, it promotes a slew of previously debunked claims – including allegations that wearing masks is dangerous and global elites somehow planned the pandemic

The film has already been dubbed a French “plandemic” – referencing a similar English-language conspiracy video that was debunked earlier this year.

Like its predecessor, Hold Up is gathering momentum on social media – it has been watched more than a million times in the past few days.

YouTube says the video does not violate its misinformation policies, although it says it has limited its spread in accordance with its rules on tackling content that could misinform users in harmful ways.

Links to it have also been shared hundreds of times on Facebook, Instagram and Reddit.

Fake WHO advice

In India, we’ve found examples of a message circulating on WhatsApp in Hindi, making false claims concerning World Health Organization (WHO) advice.

A screenshot of a message in Hindi and below a second screenshot showing five people talking at the World Doctors Alliance conference. We labelled "false".

The message falsely claims the WHO has updated its website to say coronavirus is no more of a threat than seasonal flu, and doesn’t require lockdowns and masks.

The WHO has made clear the message does not represent its views, and that its advice on the wearing of masks and social distancing has not changed.

Official figures released in October reveal that in England and Wales around three times as many people had died from Covid-19 than from flu and pneumonia this year.

The WhatsApp message is accompanied by a shortened version of a video posted in English on YouTube last month. The video made various false claims about treatments for coronavirus and was subsequently taken down by YouTube for violating its policies.

Fetus tissue claims

A video first posted on an anti-vaccination Facebook page has generated thousands of shares, and clips from it have been circulated on WhatsApp and Instagram Stories.

Screenshot from a video titled 'CONFIRMED- aborted Male fetus in Covid 19 vaccine' showing a packet for the AstraZeneca vaccine candidate. We added a "false" label

In the video, a woman narrates over images of what is apparently packaging for AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, which is still undergoing tests.

She encourages people to share the video if they don’t want “aborted fetal tissue fragments put into them or their DNA changed”.

Both of these claims are false. The vaccine does not contain any fetal tissue and it won’t change your DNA.

The woman claims the vaccine contains the lung tissue of a 14-week-old aborted male fetus. This is false.

“There are no fetal cells used in any vaccine production process,” says Dr Michael, of the University of Southampton.

The video refers to a study which the narrator claims is evidence of what goes into the vaccine. But the narrator’s interpretation is wrong – the study in question explored how the vaccine reacted when introduced to human cells in a lab.

Confusion may have arisen because there is a step in the process of developing a vaccine that uses cells grown in a lab, which are the descendants of embryonic cells that would otherwise have been destroyed. The technique was developed in the ’60s, and no fetuses were aborted for the purposes of this research.

Many virus vaccines are made in this way, explains Dr David Matthews, from Bristol University, adding that any traces of the cells are comprehensively removed from the vaccine “to exceptionally high standards”.

The developers of the vaccine at Oxford University say they worked with cloned cells, but these cells “are not themselves the cells of aborted babies”.

The cells work like a factory to manufacture a greatly weakened form of the virus that has been adapted to function as a vaccine.

But even though the weakened virus is created using these cells, this cellular material is removed when the virus is purified and not used in the vaccine.

Additional reporting by Laura Gozzi, Shruti Menon, Olga Robinson and Shayan Sardarizadeh

Reality Check branding — This is an absurd and patronising claim. The BBC is a tapayer funded State propagand outlet and has no right to be taken seriously with this claim. The whole Covid origins, response, ongoing lockdown and goal post shifting rightly raises suspicions, as does the State and mainstream media’s noisy ubiquitous ridicule of conspiracy theories. Cut these fat cats pay, or make them redundant, then they would taste reality.

Clearly the rich are getting richer, the poor poorer, from Covid and lockdown while so called science ignores at risk groups, calls deaths with Covod 28 days after diagnosis a Covid deat,, also expects us to believe that non symptomatcic positive tests are actually Covid cases. rather a lot of guesswork and dodgy maths here, along the immigration door still being wide open.
***R.J Cook.***

New Normal Now Even More Normal, Lifting Lockdown by making it even tougher. Orwell’s ‘Double speak’ has nothing on the new now. November 22nd 2020

Covid-19: Strengthened tier system for England after lockdown

Published6 hours agoRelated Topics

Coronavirus pandemic

A man wearing a mask walks past a Christmas display

A tougher three-tiered system of local restrictions will come into force in England when the lockdown ends on 2 December, Downing Street has said.

Boris Johnson is expected to set out his plan – including details of how families can see different households at Christmas – to MPs on Monday.

More areas are set to be placed into the higher tiers to keep the virus under control, No 10 said.

And some tiers will be strengthened to safeguard lockdown progress.

Some local measures will be the same as those in the previous three-tier system, which was in place in England until the current lockdown began.

But the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) is expected to publish research on Monday saying the previous restrictions were not strong enough.

The government will identify the tiers that each area will be placed into on Thursday.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak told the BBC’s Andrew Marr the 10pm closing time for pubs and restaurants was one of the things it was looking to “refine”.

It is understood rules will be relaxed to give people an extra hour to finish their food and drinks after last orders at 10pm.

Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UK Hospitality, said this would help businesses – but would be “meaningless” unless people were allowed to socialise with friends and family, particularly over the crucial Christmas period.

English tier system – at a glance

Pre-lockdown, there were three tiers of restrictions – medium, high, and very high:

Medium / Tier 1: Rule of six if meeting indoors or outdoors; pubs and restaurants shut at 10pm
High / Tier 2: No household mixing indoors; rule of six applies outdoors; pubs and restaurants shut at 10pm
Very high / Tier 3: No household mixing indoors or in some outdoor spaces; pubs and bars not serving meals are closed

Newspaper reports suggest rules could be temporarily relaxed UK-wide over Christmas. Several families could be allowed to join in one “bubble” and mix between 22 and 28 December, according to the Daily Telegraph.

Ministers have made clear the festive season will be different to normal – with some restrictions expected to remain in place.

BBC political correspondent Nick Eardley said conversations about Christmas between the different nations of the UK were ongoing.

Sources believe a deal is probable later next week – but it is unlikely to be signed off before the prime minister’s announcement on Monday.

The four nations have different Covid rules but ministers are hoping to agree a joint approach for the festive period.

Analysis box by Nick Triggle, health correspondent

Cruel Britannia Britannia Rules The Graves, Britons always always will be slaves. Posted NoveNew Normal Gets mber 19th 2020

***Philosophers Rob Cook and Mick Birrell, Burscough Lancs, 2020, two of Prof Tim O’Hagan’s finest.***
***Image Appledene Photographics/KCC***

***Kieran Cook with Mick Birrell, Burscough Lancs, 2020. . Mick is terminally ill but not allowed visitors or a cigarette in his care home. He is lonely and depressed.***
***Image Appledene Phptographics/RJC***

Today’s Daily Mail informed me that up to 4 families may congregate this Christmas, but the price will be a 25 day lockdown in January. There is a vaccine, apparently but that will not mean an end to lockdown. The fight must go on. A rapper in Indonesia has got a 14 month prison sentence for criticising lockdown and saying we are slaves to the World Health Organisation ( WHO ).

**Mick Birrell University of East Anglia, Norwich, 1973.**
**Image Appledene Photographics Archi**ve

Today I learned that my old friend Mick Birrell from the early 1970s, suffering from terminal cancer, is back in the care home. He is not allowed visitors, is lonely, depressed and not allowed to have a cigarette. We worked together on the buidings after leaving university, finding time to discuss Wittgenstein who was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.

Sadly, social and political Covid 19 tyranny has no room for logic or maths. This nasty elite run country has always had contempt for the masses, which is why Wellington called his troops the scum of the earth, Churchill wanted to shoot striking coal miners in 1911 and bomb the Soviet Union after World War Two. Talk about delusional the British elite know how to create that state of mind. So we will see and hear more conjouring tricks to keep lockdown going, bankruptcies with unemployment rising.

***R.J Cook, Aylesbury 2010*** ***Image Appledene Photographics***

***U.K SAGE Deputy wants harsher lockdown. For every day of easing, she and her fellow eperts calcuclate there will be need for another 3 day total lockdown.***

Can’t people see there is no formula here ? It is total bull-hit taking advantage of mass ignorance. We are not supposed to link the Covid ( exaggerated ) related deaths with old age, dirty profiteering care homes and BAME high density large family ‘communities – and the fact that the average age of Covid related deaths is 82. R.J Cook

Guardian Sept 4th 2020

How coronavirus has brought together conspiracy theorists and the far right Posted November 18th 2020

*Far Right Protesters Image Appledene Photographics/RJC*

On Saturday in London, more than 10,000 people gathered – bare-faced and packed perilously close – in Trafalgar Square to protest against what event posters branded the “new normal” under coronavirus: masks, lockdown restrictions, and the spectre of mandatory vaccination and privacy-obliterating health passports.

The messaging leaned towards US-style libertarianism, asking marchers to “Unite for Freedom” from state control, but the mood was decidedly conspiratorial. Headline speakers included doctors and nurses suspended by their governing bodies for claiming coronavirus was a globalist hoax, Piers Corbyn, a long-time anti-vaxxer and climate-change denier, and the last-minute addition of David Icke, a fabulist famous for his books rejigging classic antisemitic conspiracy theories to include reptile people originating from the fourth dimension.

Among the marchers were a similarly random assortment of endorsements. There were anti-vax and anti-5G placards. Several T-shirts and signs alluded to QAnon, a recent US conspiracy movement already too baroque to neatly summarise, but whose central premise is that Donald Trump is waging a clandestine war against an all-knowing globalist paedophile conspiracy from hibel stronghold in the White House. Much was made of men unfurling a British Union of Fascists flag at the crowd’s edge. At a similar protest in Berlin the same day, drawing nearly 20,000 people, a far-right contingent attempted to storm the Reichstag.

It would be easy to dismiss these events as a random mishmash of the merely selfish with assorted cranks, pushed together under the pressure of lockdown. But this is not the case. If you’ll indulge a bit of conspiratorial thinking of my own, these protests are more calculated than they appear, and aren’t just a symptom of understandable-but-misguided public frustration with the events of the past few months. Rather they represent the continuing abstention of large swathes of the public from what could be termed our shared reality, or public sphere, and suggest that the recent tendency of fringe and conspiracist positions to rapidly seed and burst into mainstream politics won’t be ending any time soon.

The seemingly disparate groups that attend these protests are part of a shifting coalition of conspiracist and far-right groups. One of the primary organisers of Saturday’s protest is a UK-based anti-5G movement known as Stand Up X (or by the unbeatable acronym “SUX”). According to Hope Not Hate, the group has previously backed smaller protests by a US-linked, QAnon-friendly outfit in Manchester and other UK cities. They say the groups are part of a growing number of conspiracy outfits “willing to sideline differences in belief” in order to collaborate. And previous investigations by journalists in the US have found far-right organisations behind Facebook groups arranging lockdown protests. Advertisement

All of this is part of a recent blending of multiple strands of conspiratorial thinking and far-right politics. Conspiracies have always had points of overlap, but over the past few years the anti-vax movement has become more pointedly right wing, while mainstream far-right and right-populist parties have become more conspiratorial.

The Italian Five Star Movement and Northern League have recently questioned vaccine effectiveness, as has France’s Front National. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán regularly suggests the Jewish financier George Soros is about to swamp the country with migrants. And Trump this week claimed his opponent Joe Biden was “controlled” by “people that you’ve never heard of. People that are in the dark shadows.”

Conspiracy theories generally have an anti-authority component: they are against the state, or the illuminati that control the state, or the lizards who control the illuminati. But in these cases they might best be understood as part of what the academic Mark Davis has termed “anti-public” discourse. The public means the public sphere, and in the case of the far right, right populists and conspiracists, their cause is helped, Davis says, by anything “radically flouting the ethical and rational norms that underpin democratic discourse”, in effect undermining rational debate, and trust in the institutions and elite expert knowledge that used to go a long way towards determining our consensus reality.

For some, this anti-public discourse comes from a sense of alienation from traditional institutions. In recent years rising inequality and crises have shaken the system. The direct causality implied by shadowy actors pulling strings to determine global events is easier to grasp than the complex financial and political systems that determine our lives.

For those in power, such as Trump, conspiratorial thinking allows them to obfuscate, shift blame and sow disorder, and further erode the authority of the institutions meant to constrain them. When what remains of the traditional order faces these crises of confidence – financial, political or viral – the amplification of theories that bypass scientific argument or democratic debate further exacerbates the decline of whatever trust was left.

In this way it doesn’t matter so much that it’s unlikely the large contingent of anti-vaxxers out last week will make much headway against a coronavirus vaccine. (An Ipsos-Mori poll out this week showed that 85% of Britons “agreed or strongly agreed” that they would take a potential Covid-19 vaccine, one of the highest acceptance rates in the world.) They have still taken their shot in a larger salvo against the establishment, and provided a scaffold for other movements to climb.

There’s no telling which theory will next make a leap to the newly porous centre. I wouldn’t have bet on QAnon, but earlier this month Trump offered encouragement to QAnon followers, saying he “heard these are people that love our country”, and this week the Telegraph published a stupefyingly credulous account of a favourite QAnon claim – that pizza emojis are used as a secret paedophile code on social media to abuse children. It was hoped that the coronavirus crisis had strengthened the state and traditional institutions – political extremes seemed to be in decline – but as long as a vibrant anti-public discourse is still thriving on the fringes, it will continue to crash into the mainstream.

• Stephen Buranyi is a writer specialising in science and the environment

Comment The average age of people dying from Covid related illness in the west is 82. Cancer and heart attack deaths have risen exponentially and in direct relation to the fixation with ‘protecting the NHS’. Anyone arguing that there is a global elite reset conspiracy is added to the growing list of allegedly mentally ill.

Mental health is an issue, worsening through Covid which causes so much stress as to generate an ongoing and massive problem, especially affecting the young – who don’t seem to matter as much as we geriatrics. To speculate as to why is again to be labelled a conspiracy nutcase theorist. For conspiracies to be taken seriously they have to threaten the elite and be defined by them R.J Cook

Scaremongering in Winslow Bucks Olde Englande November 16th 2020

Let’s cut to the chase, this is a risk of death warning next to the old ‘Nag’s Head ‘ pub – which has seen little business since last March- in Sheep Street Winslow. I was born in this street and played in the pub grounds and out buildings with landlord’s son, and frIend Tony in the 1950s.

Kids were at risk of all sorts of illness in those times. Tony also had access to beer and cigarettes. Since then this old farming and market town has turned into a haven for the patronising rich, I have only heard of two dying of Covid related illness in this snobbish affluent ( effluent ) town, both around 90, heavy drinkers and smokers. Covid has cost me a fortune and delayed publication of my two latest books because 95 % of the publisher’s customers are shut down, with staff furloughed or redundant.
R.J Cook. Image Appledene Photographics November 15th 2020.

No Exit November 13th 2020

The following article is more British pseudo science fear mongering. Mentioning that this comes from Oxford University is intended to impress the poorly educated British masses.

It is in fact more of the same, either more guesswork or out right propaganda. At the very best it is more of the usual inductive logic to suggest that catching the virus will leave you mentally ill. Firstly, the data on this page makes it clear that Covid 19 overwhelmingly affects the over 65s. I realise that there are some very nasty over 65s, as there are in any age group – no offence meant to OAPs, I am 70 and many of my generation were revolting hypocritical money grabbing self centred arse-oles, point of view I established at infant school.

People don’t get nicer with age. They do become more prone to dementia and senility. So even if they have had Covid and appear mentally ill, it doesn’t mean Covid caused it. However, if some arrogant well paid Oxford University academic wants to say it does, as a man named Malek has done, it doesn’t mean it is true. However, it gives these people more grist to their mills arguing we need more lockdown for longer.

The reality that lockdown is driving people mad because of money worries, unemployment, bankruptcy. lack of social contact and state induced fear, must not be considered. There is no boost to academic egos, no prolongation of the elite’s virtual war profiteering , and above all nothing must undermine this massive project for mass brain training toward building the ruling elite’s new normal – which includes smashing the Russian and Chinese economies with the fall out from their bio weapion, Covid 19. .

The funniest thing I heard today was that GPS ( doctors in general practice ) are gathering to block the mass immunisation programme because it will mean hiring extra staff, working long hours and weekends and will cost them money. So they want us locked into this, clapping them for greed and stupidity. With the whore like psychiatrists on board this will go on for years, save the NHS from work, justify pay claims and all hell to follow.

Idiots in Britain are so badly educated that they do not know that these well paid doctors refused to join the much loved ( sic ) NHS in 1948, continuing as private state subsidised private contractors, their numbers controlled by restrictive training practices making medicine a haven for the mediocre upper middle class careerists – hence their use of Third World locums. Tony Blair guaranteed them a basic £100,000 p.a for a 5 day week. This created the expensive out of hours system in which I have worked in recent years, well paid, as an emergency driver – having lots of time to read and sleep all night at the hospital.

But remember who I am, I am the person the British Police State has judged and labelled paranoid schizophrenic who , according to them, has admitted hearing voices. In the words of lying State psychiatrist Dr C.R Ramsay, their files on me are so serious that it would upset me to see them, and I am more likely to die from misadventure than suicide – which I last attempted after being locked in a police cell for 16 hours ( for stuff I had written and published, following another frightening raid – the previous one being after my remote home being secretly observed for 4 monthss in order to frame me with malicious allegations of for prostitution – , being taken away in handcuffs , not even being allowed to say goodbye to my son and verbal intimidation during interview ) before transport to a mental hospital with a view to me being sectioned on August 24th this year. Come off it, I am not a Muslim. To my knowledge God has never spoken to me – but who knows ? Meanwhile, isn’t British democracy wonderful ? R.J Cook

Oxford study links COVID-19 with increased rates of mental illness Posted November 13^{^th} 2020

By Rich Hardy

November 10, 2020

Twenty percent of confirmed COVID-19 cases were diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder within 90 days of infection

A new large-scale analysis of US patient data has found nearly one in five people are diagnosed with a psychiatric illness within three months of a positive COVID-19 test. The Oxford University led study suggests recovered COVID patients are twice as likely to suffer from anxiety, depression, or insomnia compared to patients with other diseases.

“People have been worried that COVID-19 survivors will be at greater risk of mental health problems, and our findings in a large and detailed study show this to be likely,” explains Paul Harrison, lead author on the new study.

Analyzing around 70 million US electronic health records, the Oxford team homed in on more than 62,000 COVID-19 patients. In the 90 days following a positive COVID-19 test 18.1 percent of patients were diagnosed with some kind of psychiatric illness. These mental health conditions included anxiety disorders, insomnia and dementia.

To quantify the specific association between COVID-19 and the psychiatric conditions, the researchers created a cohort of matched controls. These were groups of patients recently diagnosed with other conditions such as influenza, skin infections, kidney stones and bone fractures.

Obviously battling with any kind of illness presents mental health challenges, so the goal here was to understand whether COVID-19 specifically increases a person’s risk of these psychiatric conditions compared to other health problems. The results affirmed that compared to a variety of other medical events, COVID-19 patients are at a notably higher risk of suffering from mental health issues.

David Curtis, from University College London, calls the results “broadly plausible” but notes it is unclear exactly what they mean.

“It’s difficult to judge the importance of these findings,” says Curtis, who did not work on the new study. “These psychiatric diagnoses get made quite commonly when people present to doctors and it may be unsurprising that this happens a bit more often in people with COVID-19, who may understandably have been worried that they might become seriously unwell and who will also have had to endure a period of isolation.”

Simon Wessely, an expert in emergency preparedness and response from King’s College London, suggests these findings do fit with observations seen in previous pandemics. However, he also says it is possible the viral infection may be somewhat causally connected to these mental health conditions.

“COVID-19 affects the central nervous system, and so might directly increase subsequent disorders,” says Wessely. “But this research confirms that is not the whole story, and that this risk is increased by previous ill health.”

In the new study, published in The Lancet, the researchers note there currently is no known physiological mechanism to causally connect COVID-19 with an increased risk of psychiatric disorders. But, the researchers also clearly state the effects detected in the study are large enough to demand urgent investigation.

Regardless of the cause it seems clear COVID-19 will inevitably trigger higher rates of mental illness in the coming months and years, and healthcare services must be prepared

“Since our severity and contextual factors hypotheses cannot explain most of the associations, it is necessary to explore the cause of the particular effect of COVID-19 on the risk of psychiatric disorder,” the Oxford team writes in the new study. “Despite various speculations, the underlying mechanisms are unknown and require urgent investigation. The relationship between the severity of illness (as proxied by inpatient admission) and psychiatric outcomes, albeit modest, might represent a dose-response relationship, suggesting that the association might at least partly be mediated by biological factors directly related to COVID-19 (eg. viral load, breathlessness, or the nature of the immune response).”

Ultimately, Harrison suggests the new study can be primarily interpreted as a call to action for healthcare professionals around the world. Regardless of the cause it seems clear COVID-19 will inevitably trigger higher rates of mental illness in the coming months and years, and healthcare services must be prepared.

“Services need to be ready to provide care, especially since our results are likely to be underestimates of the actual number of cases,” says Harrison. “We urgently need research to investigate the causes and identify new treatments.”

The new study was published in The Lancet.

Source: University of Oxford

***The media goes out of its way to frighten the masses and wonders why they go mad in lockdown, especially when they can’t pay the bills and live in tiny flats.***

Bed Sit Girl By R.J Cook

Bed Sit Girl

Bed sit girl now must work as a hooker.

She lives in a room with a small cooker.

Her clients arrive by the light of the moon.

She hates them all and will give up soon.

All she needs is a lot more money.

Then life can be just milk & honey.

Before the plague she worked in an office.

Now this poor girl must work an orifice.

A girl must live, there’s rent to be paid.

So bed sit girl gets laid and laid.

Up the stairs they come to her creaky bed.

They use her face with her lips so red.

Her life is a dream, a hopeful past.

The future’s gone, it didn’t last.

One day there will be nothing left,

Just a corpse but she did her best.

R.J Cook September 6^{^th} 2020

Covid Police State November 12th 2020

Equality in Desperation November 12th 2020

Brunel Shopping Centre Bletchley Milton Keynes, November 11th 2020, deserted, with some shops closed down. At the end of this tunnel, just on the corner is the appositely and very modern named ‘equality centre’ in a dying town, in a world where 80 % of an expanding world population fight over 5 % of the wealth, while the elite have the rest, tell us what to do, what is right and wrong and make the laws to control us. Covid lockdown is a step beyond law. It is dictatorship based on pseudo science and with an agenda that will never be dislcosed. R.J Cook

A Multi Agency Approach R.J Cook

The information below raises questions concerning the sanity and or hidden agenda regarding the country’s attitude to Covid and lockdown for which there is no evidence of being effective in destroying the virus.

The outcome of this includes mental health, finanicial ruin for many, neglect of real threats to life ( e.g cancer ) among the under 65s, further racial tension, domestic violence and , above all increases the power and enrichment of the elite. The fate of objectors like the man fined £10,000 for organising an anti lockdown demonstration says much about the British Police State.

Add to that GCHQ monitoring the internet to pinpoint and erase those concerned about the possible hidden intentions behind vaccination and side effects and it appears to me that there are very strange things happening.

But don’t forget, the police advsied the NHS that I am mentally ill. So a psychiatrist came round to judge me as a paranoid schizophrenic who doesn’t need hospital yet, just a ‘multi agency approach ! The reason we hear so much about threats to ‘our democracy ‘ is because every semblance of whatever existed has gone. R.J Cook.

The little people who survive the Covid Lockdown and related propaganda will pay the taxes long term for their contribution to lockdown and the great ‘global re set’ which the elite prefer to call ‘the new normal.’

Most of the deaths in Britain have been among older people November 12th 2020

The average age of people who have died with Covid is above 80 with more than nine in 10 of the deaths among the over 65s, according to Office for National Statistics analyses of the pandemic.

Deaths among the under 45s have been low – only a few hundred have been seen, including six children under the age of 14.

The north has been hit harder than the rest of England during the coronavirus pandemic, “exacerbating” regional inequalities, according to a study. Posted Novemeber 11th 2020

The Northern Health Science Alliance also found the mortality rate, even after factoring in deprivation, ages and ethnicity, was worst in the north.

It said in the “Northern Powerhouse” area an extra 57.7 people per 100,000 population died between March and July.

A renewal of efforts to tackle child poverty was among its recommendations.

The report by the northern health partnership said 12.4 more people per 100,000 population died with Covid-19 in the area of the Northern Powerhouse from March to July than elsewhere in the country, with 57.7 more people per 100,000 dying of all causes.

The Northern Powerhouse dates back to the 2010-15 coalition government which began an initiative to boost economic growth in the north of England, particularly in the “Core Cities” of Hull, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle.

This study, led by scientists from the universities of Newcastle, Manchester, York and Liverpool, put a conservative estimate on the economic cost of the increased mortality in northern England at £6.86bn and estimated the impact on the region’s mental health would cost about £5bn a year.

Closing down sale in Brunel Shopping Centre Bletchley, November 5th 2020
Image Appledene Photographics/RJC

Covid Lockdown for half dead Bletechley, Milton Keynes.
Image Appledene Photographics/RJC

Health

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Now 42 mental health experts warn that lockdown will trigger a spike in suicide, self-harm, alcoholism and domestic abuse

Open letter said longer the lockdown goes on worse ‘collateral damage’ will be
Consultant psychologist Dr Keri Nixon, expert in trauma helped write the letter
Since first lockdown, ‘psychological health of the UK population has suffered’

By David Rose For The Daily Mail

Published: 22:00, 1 November 2020 | Updated: 07:31, 2 November 2020

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3.9k shares 713 View comments

Leading mental health experts have warned today that this lockdown will trigger spikes in suicide, self-harm, alcoholism and domestic abuse.

In an open letter to the Government, obtained exclusively by the Daily Mail, the 42 signatories said the longer the lockdown lasts, the worse this ‘collateral damage’ will be.

Consultant psychologist Dr Keri Nixon, an expert in trauma and domestic abuse who helped write the letter, last night said: ‘The lockdown is supposed to prevent deaths from Covid. Leading mental health experts have warned today that this lockdown will trigger spikes in suicide, self-harm, alcoholism and domestic abuse (stock image used) +2

Leading mental health experts have warned today that this lockdown will trigger spikes in suicide, self-harm, alcoholism and domestic abuse (stock image used)

‘But it’s also certain to cause further deaths, not only from other physical diseases like cancer but from alcoholism, addiction and suicide – which have already been soaring this year.

‘It will also lead to intense loneliness and depression and in older people these are killers, closely linked to poor physical health.

‘Ironically, this will make them all the more vulnerable to Covid.’

The letter, which will be shared today, is modelled on the Great Barrington Declaration which calls for the replacement of lockdowns with ‘focused protection’ of the vulnerable.

Each of the letter’s claims are backed by peer-reviewed academic studies. In an open letter to the Government, the 42 signatories said the longer the lockdown lasts, the worse this 'collateral damage' will be (stock image used) +2

In an open letter to the Government, the 42 signatories said the longer the lockdown lasts, the worse this ‘collateral damage’ will be (stock image used)

It said that since the first lockdown, ‘the psychological health of the UK population has suffered greatly, with significant increases in reported stress, anxiety, depression; escalating alcohol consumption and domestic abuse; and increases in suicidal thoughts, especially among young adults.

‘One in six children in England are now likely to meet criteria for a mental health problem, with reported increases in self-harm, and abuse… and a concerning suggestion of increased child suicide.’

It said news coverage has ‘centred on extreme fear and threat’ and when fear is sustained over a long period of time, it can become damaging and lower the body’s immunity.

UK announces 23,254 more Covid cases and 162 deaths – the… Boris Johnson signals ‘immediate prospect’ of 10-minute…

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Consequences of this fear include increasing phobias and obsessive compulsive disorders.

It explained: ‘Some children will develop beliefs, such as ‘the world is dangerous, infectious and scary’, which have severely negative psychological outcomes.

The top specialists calling for change

The 42 signatories to the open letter include some of Britain’s best-known mental health experts and practitioners. Among them are:

Emma Kenny, registered psychotherapist, and prolific TV and radio broadcaster
Professor Ellen Townsend of Nottingham University, teaches psychology and is an expert in preventing suicide and self-harm
Dr Sheetal Gopal, principal counselling psychologist at the Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust
Professor Laurence Alison, chairman of forensic psychology at Liverpool University
Dr Keri Nixon, consultant psychologist, expert in domestic abuse and trauma
Dr Sara Kutereba, highly specialist clinical psychologist with the child and adolescent mental health service at Maudsley Hospital, London

‘Social connection and human touch are essential for psychological stability.’ And isolation can lead to loneliness and is a predictor of suicidal thoughts, it said.

Some of the worst affected include new parents and the bereaved, as the letter adds: ‘The suffering caused by restricting the presence of loved ones during births and end of life is unimaginable, with psychological trauma to the individual, their family and staff.’

One of the signatories, psychologist and broadcaster Emma Kenny, revealed that last week she had received a letter from a young woman who had taken her life because of the virus.

She left the letter for a friend to forward it to the This Morning presenter after her death.

It said: ‘I’d have been dead weeks ago but I saw on my phone the ‘Emma Kenny is live’ notification one evening at 8.30pm as I sat beside train tracks, waiting to step in front of the 8.41pm train.

‘Instead I listened to you for an hour and went home. Now it is my time.’ She said her depression was caused by everything she had lost because of the virus.

She added: ‘The weight has lay on my chest for months. Suffocating me and every day living with more threats and fear.

‘I needed it to ease, not get harder. Please keep trying to help ease things for those stronger than me.’

The scientists cited 42 papers in the letter, including a Lancet article which said the incidence of mental illness increased by 60 per cent in the first lockdown.

And Cambridge and Exeter universities found the number of children with a ‘probable mental disorder’ increased from one in nine to one in six.

The letter said Covid deaths must be considered in a broader context and added: ‘We urgently call for a review of current measures. It is time to reconsider our approach.’

For confidential support call the Samaritans on 116123, visit a branch or go to www.samaritans.org

I can’t accept the world we’re being offered…

At 1.30am last Thursday, Sarah’s husband saved her life.

Faced with a looming national lockdown, she tried to take her own life.

Sarah said: ‘I knew we were heading for another lockdown and I didn’t want to live.

‘My mother-in-law had left behind her medication –strong pain relief tablets.

‘I was sitting on the bathroom floor and starting to shovel them in. There were enough for an overdose.

‘My partner found me and stopped me. Otherwise, I’d be gone.’

Sarah – who asked us not to publish her real name – is 28 and is mother to four boys aged five to ten.

She knew how devastating her death would have been but said: ‘The way we’ve handled this virus has ruined my life.

‘I see no way out and I can’t see the world I wanted for my kids.’

She is not alone as many have experienced mental

illness because of the lockdowns. Their stories were shared by the top experts behind today’s open letter.

Her family live on the Welsh borders and until the pandemic, Sarah said life was ‘busy but sweet’.

She was studying forensic science at university and had ‘never been mentally ill before’.

But in the first lockdown, depression and anxiety set in.

She said: ‘I’m normally a strong person but I do need social interaction.’

And to make matters worse, she has asthma and although this didn’t make her scared of the virus, it meant she could not wear a mask. As a result, she didn’t leave the house.

She said: ‘I’ve struggled to get out of bed. My emotions are all over the place and there’s a deep sense of hopelessness I can’t overcome.

‘I find myself thinking everyone would be better without me because I can’t accept the world we’re being offered.’

‘If my husband wasn’t there to talk me out of my depression, I wouldn’t be here,’ Sarah said.

Sunday, Nov 8th 2020 6PM 11°C 9PM 11°C 5-Day Forecast Advertisement

Now 42 mental health experts warn that lockdown will trigger a spike in suicide, self-harm, alcoholism and domestic abuse

Open letter said longer the lockdown goes on worse ‘collateral damage’ will be
Consultant psychologist Dr Keri Nixon, expert in trauma helped write the letter
Since first lockdown, ‘psychological health of the UK population has suffered’

By David Rose For The Daily Mail

Published: 22:00, 1 November 2020 | Updated: 07:31, 2 November 2020

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