[Coronavirus Mega-Thread.]

I've just been to the library to print something out. When I got there, they had erected a crash barrier at the entrance so that you can't gain entry without being admitted by staff. 

 

- Hello, I've booked a computer for 1pm.

- Have you been to the library since the lockdown happened?

- Yes.

- You're not wearing a mask.

- Correct.

- Have you brought a mask?

- No, I don't own a mask.

- You have to wear a mask.

- Will you give me a mask?

- We're not supposed to, they're supposed to be for staff only.

- Okay. Will you give me a mask?

 

Some cognition follows.

 

- Okay, then. But you need to bring your own mask next time.

 

There isn't going to be a next time.

 

Then I can't actually collect my own printout because the printer has been cordoned off. A member of staff has to collect it for me. And I wish I could show you how she passed it to me, but she honestly handled my one sheet of paper as if it was radioactive material.

 

Some people have lost their minds. But then can you lose your mind, if you didn't have a mind to begin with?

[Coronavirus Mega-Thread.]

For those of you that are concerned, angry, worried, particularly for your children, my very close friend has given birth in the last few days. She is absolutely 100% awake, which is primarily why she's my friend! And she's in a great frame of mind and looking forward to the future with positivity. I'm not in any way dismissing your concerns, but where there is life there is hope, and it's going to be unbelievably difficult to completely deny the human spirit.

 

While there may be limits to our freedoms going forward, look at how tough it's getting for TPTB already, and this has only been going on for six months. If there were years and years of really intense authoritarian restrictions then it would get harder and harder to contain the public reaction. And then, of course I am aware of the agenda, of Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030, and many related things, but it's not going to be easy to just completely decimate the existing culture, restrict people to an excessive degree, and so on.

 

They're having a hard time just convincing people that a second lockdown is necessary, so this ship has virtually sailed now. They're going to have to come up with something else going forward; notice that although terrorism remains part of the cultural lexicon and is still enshrined in the law, it's certainly not used as aggressively as it was in the past to advance any agendas, because its power has diminished.

 

I also don't think any vaccine will be made mandatory. Life will be made difficult for you if you don't comply with it, but life will be made difficult for you anyway. They don't have the resources to physically force people to take it in the numbers that will be required, and if they start effectively holding people at gunpoint to get vaccinated over a virus that people are already sceptical about then this could do them far more harm than good. So I just don't see this happening.

 

There is no doubt that this is an idiotic time, no doubt there is more idiocy ahead of us, but equally I have never seen so many people, from so many walks of life, question something before. I'm sure TPTB have noted this, I'm sure they're already preparing new and refined propaganda, but this is also a problem for them going forward. We should also remember that it's necessary for people to have distractions. This is required by the system. There has to be bread, and there needs to be circuses. If people are going to buy into the system, you have to give them something, so I just cannot see basic liberty being totally curtailed indefinitely.

[How do you keep your sanity?]

I just wake up every day and try to make that day the best day that I can. I try to appreciate little things. I enjoy spending time with my dog, and the few people that matter to me. I go for long walks in the countryside. I eat the best food that I can. I listen to music, I read, I play games. I made my house a pleasant and attractive environment to spend time in. If I get the chance to visit somewhere beautiful then I do so.

 

I'm always polite and kind to everyone that I encounter. But I accept that most people's perspective will always be defined by their social conditioning, and you won't ever be able to get through to them on any meaningful level.

 

We're all going to die one day, so I just try to take something positive out of every day. It is certainly easier to do this if you're in a pleasant environment, and if you don't have a job. So I worked hard to put myself in that in position.

[Coronavirus Mega-Thread.]

The government: we need to put strict regulations in place to deal with Covid.

 

The opposition: we need to put stricter regulations in place to deal with Covid.

 

Why is it that I don't vote again? I can't seem to remember.

 

 

 

[Coronavirus Mega-Thread.]

54 minutes ago, Foggy Dewhurst said:

It's all a bit Emperor's New Clothes....

 

Or like being told that if we all wear a top hat and walk backwards it will keep the tigers away.

 

When you point out there aren't any tigers you are told "See,it's working!"

 

 

 

Lisa, I want to buy your rock.

 

 

[Coronavirus Mega-Thread.]

2 hours ago, Velma said:

I purposely avoided watching any of the new (timely) 'Spitting Image' because they are using “comedy” to normalise the incompetence of our “leaders” in response to global affairs.

 

I couldn't agree more. It's the same as HIGNFY (not that I've seen it for decades, as I avoid it like the plague). All of these shows pretend - and I'm sure some people involved genuinely believe that they are - to be somehow rebellious or anti-establishment, but they completely legitimise TPTB by, as you say, pushing the 'it was all a big cock-up' angle relentlessly, while also trashing any semblance of any alternative.

 

Satire should mean challenging the status quo and actually talking about politics in a constructive way, but what it actually means in media terms is the equivalent of a comedy roast for politicians, where they're even seen as good sports for playing along. In fact, you could argue that one of the primary reasons that Boris Johnson is in his current position is that he made lots of media appearances, he was willing to allow himself to be mocked, and this raised his public profile.

[Coronavirus Mega-Thread.]

Here is a graph that I saw today on the BBC website:

What do you think the headline associated with this graph was?

 

It's funny, but I don't remember the headlines, fanfare and general state of furore when Covid hospital admissions fell by 99%, as the graph shows. Even now they're approximately 90% down from the peak of the virus, and even at the peak of the virus nothing particularly unexpected happened.

[Coronavirus Mega-Thread.]

This is something you can try to explain to people to open their eyes.

 

This is the total number of deaths that has occurred in the UK annually between 2000 and 2018:

 

 

The peak number of deaths is 616,000, and the smallest number is 552,000. There have officially been approximately 40,000 deaths due to Covid-19. So the number of deaths from Covid is less than the difference between a year in which a lot of people die, and a year in which a relatively small number of people die.

 

In fact, if the coronavirus had occurred in any of the years between 2005 and 2014, and 40,000 additional deaths were added to the figures for those years, there would still have been less deaths than there were in 2018, when there was no coronavirus.

 

Also, 20,000 of the 40,000 deaths occurred in care homes. That's confirmed by the Office for National Statistics and the Lancet. Arguably this occurred due to...let's be generous and call them 'misguided' policies. Probably this number of people didn't need to die. But it's obviously a disproportionate number of elderly people, which should obviously tell us something significant, particularly when you also look at the government's own demographic figures:

 

 

To give one example of the response to this, a Scottish doctor is suing the government, because she believes that its ill-thought out policy literally caused thousands of deaths.

 

Furthermore, it's not even known why people with Covid have died, or if they even had the virus. There can be false positives, plus most people dying with Covid are indeed dying 'with' the virus, not 'due to' the virus, as is always officially asserted. For example, this BBC report notes that "the number of people worldwide who have died with Covid-19 has passed one million". There are thus definitely question marks about the 40,000 figure, which effectively represents the worst possible case scenario, and even then there have only been 20,000 deaths in the general population, which is approximately 3% of the overall annual deaths that would be expected.

 

By comparison, there are 165,000 cancer deaths in the UK annually, and 170,000 deaths due to heart disease. In fact, there are nearly 50% as many deaths from these conditions as there are confirmed Covid cases, not deaths! In order for Covid to be as deadly as cancer and heart disease, it would need to have a 50% death rate, whereas The Pharmaceutical Journal notes that the Covid-19 death rate is 0.66%. This research also illustrates the reality of Covid for most people, which is that they contract it, they don't know that they've contracted it, they never experience any symptoms, their body fights it off, and they continue with their lives in blissful ignorance of this reality. Indeed, many of the assertions made about how dangerous Covid are derived from confirmed cases, and don't take into account the many unreported cases which inevitably exist.

 

It has also been well-documented that hospitals and the healthcare system generally are less able to screen for and treat serious conditions, such as cancer and heart disease, due to the disproportionate focus on Covid. Again, if you take the example of the United States, the country that has dealt with Covid arguably the least capably, and which has the most cases, even if we take the worst case-scenario and attribute Covid to having caused every death with which it has been linked, if we ignore all underlying health conditions, all demographics, all other indicators, and just assume that Covid killed all of these people, and they all would have survived otherwise, the virus has still only killed 25% of the people that died from cancer and heart disease in the same period:

 

 

 

Bear in mind that this is the scenario that would most benefit those that are tremulously terrified of Covid, and believe that it's the greatest threat to the human race ever. In reality, many of those people did die with underlying health conditions. Many died with the virus. Many would have died anyway.

 

Meanwhile, hospital admissions are currently around 10% of the level at the peak of the pandemic:

 

 

I'm willing to support the first lockdown to some extent, but the doomsday scenarios didn't happen. The health system didn't collapse, there were a relatively trivial number of deaths in statistical terms, and the number of deaths would have been way lower had it not been for the existence of care homes, which were subjected to a thoroughly bungled policy. 

 

There is nothing contentious about any of this. Everything here is based on official figures, official documents, and mainstream reporting. Continuing to lockdown large parts of the country at this time is poorly founded. I don't want to write extensively about the deleterious impact of the government's measures, because that would be speculative, but there is no doubt it will have a generational impact on the country as a whole, and that this will be felt particularly harshly by young people. It is not going to be possible to just turn the tap back on, and for everything to go back to normal.

 

There has already been vast economic damage caused, the consequences of which will be felt, conservatively, for many years. Some of this has been outlined in this article. Japan, for example, had a 'lost decade' after an 'asset price bubble'. Even then its economy continued to grow. The UK economy slumped by 20% during the previous quarter, which is about ten times more than it fell during the 'global financial crisis':

 

 

In short, Japan struggled massively for ten years after something considerably less serious than we're experiencing now.

 

The amount of UK debt has quadrupled since 2008, and the country now faces the prospect of attempting to service this debt with a massively reduced economy. Even entire industries could potentially disappear. Meanwhile, the authorities are still talking about locking regions down, or even the entire country, over a virus that has proved to be relatively trivial. This can be shown statistically, but even if this is not accepted, the consequences of continuing to neglect more serious health conditions, not to mention the ongoing economic damage, will cause far more suffering than the regrettable problems caused by Covid.

 

At this point, it has to be acknowledged that the policies related to Covid have profoundly failed. They haven't even prevented the spread of the virus because there are now officially more cases than at the peak of the lockdown! It has to similarly be acknowledged that these policies are doing more harm than good, and that simply isolating vulnerable people would have saved more lives than anything else. Simply by handling care homes better, more lives could have been saved than by all of the other onerous measures combined!

 

Yet we're still allowing the authority that made these decisions to impose further restrictions on our lives, to barricade students in their university dorms, not even allowing them to return home for Christmas seemingly, and to screw over the lives of everyone generally, and young people in particular. All decision-making should be made on a cost-benefit basis, and it's crystal clear that the cost of the lockdown, the restrictions, the mask wearing, and the general climate of fear has been significantly greater than any benefits gleaned from them.

 

Of course, it is sad when people die, but everybody dies. Risk cannot be eliminated from life. I would hope that young people in particular (not a term that applies to me any more, sadly!) would recognise that they're getting royally screwed over by these disastrous policies, and recognise that none of it is happening for their benefit.

[Coronavirus Mega-Thread.]

Something I've been reflecting on over the last few days is something that I've always suspected to be the case.

 

The police would ultimately do anything. Yes, okay, the British police are not as bad as the US police. But if it came down to it, they would do whatever they were told to do. There's nothing that they wouldn't be willing to do, if it was communicated through the media, and they were told that it was the law. 

 

I know this because of the situation with students right now. But that's just the start of it. There could be some extreme draconian measures, something Stasiesque (arguably what is going on now is already Stasiesque), and they'd just comply with it completely without question, and believe that they were doing the right thing. There is nothing that they wouldn't be willing to enforce, they would never, ever rebel, or have a crisis of conscience.

[Coronavirus Mega-Thread.]

14 minutes ago, SimonTV said:

 

Is that the best quality you can find of the letter?  Can hardly read it. 

 

 

The full letter is printed here:

 

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/boris-needs-to-rethink-his-covid-strategy

[Coronavirus Mega-Thread.]

Here is a new measure that has just been announced:

 

Quote

Covid: Pubs and restaurants in England to have 10pm closing times

 

Even the BBC immediately notes:

 

Quote

People are understandably asking what difference closing at 22:00 makes.

 

Yes, because it's going to make fuck all difference, apart from being an onerous and unnecessary imposition on people's lives and liberty.

[Coronavirus Mega-Thread.]

1 hour ago, EnigmaticWorld said:

 

Press X to doubt.

 

 

 

 

I started to wake up screaming and crying about nightmares that I had.

 

Oh no, wait a minute, I was screaming and crying about my actual life where I present 'Good Morning Britain' with Piers Morgan.

[Coronavirus Mega-Thread.]

I wanted to check out how many cases officially there have been where I live. This is easy to do, it can be looked up here:

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51768274

 

This is the result that I got for where I live:

 

 

So there were 7 cases this week, after last week where there were 4 cases. There haven't even been 300 cases in total. This is over a region of 71,000 people. 

 

This means in relation to the 'rule of six' that it would be practically impossible to assemble a group of people in the region who had all officially contracted the virus. You'd have to locate every single person, and get them all together. Last week, it would have been literally impossible.

 

I don't live in a town, but I live relatively near to one, and it's quite possible that literally no-one in that town has currently contracted the virus. Even if we highly exaggerated the threat statistically, there might be three people who officially have Covid. Your chances of bumping into them are virtually zero, let alone contracting the virus.

 

Yet people are social distancing, walking around with masks (even outside), and engaging in all manner of other ridiculous behaviour and paraphernalia, for what? Because of a virus that 7 people in the entire region have officially contracted. Even over the entire period of Covid, only 0.4% of the population has contracted the virus, and less than 0.1% of the population has died, even if we accept the official figures and don't question anything at all. Currently, 0.009% of the population has contracted this virus. Not exactly a frightening number!

 

Can blanket regulations possibly be justified when there is bordering on no risk whatsoever? Surely people should be able to see that regional variations are sensible. Frankly, where I live there is absolutely no justification whatsoever for any restrictions. I should be able to do anything that I could do before the pandemic. There is absolutely no logical reason why this can't happen today. Everything could be opened up. It would make absolutely no difference to anything, except it would be a blessed relief for business owners and the population in general. If cases significantly increased then this arrangement could be reviewed, I suppose.

 

I don't expect anything else from the authorities other than what I'm seeing, but I would hope at some point people would begin to question their reality, and wonder why they're being prevented from engaging in normal activities, in regions of the country where this cannot possibly be considered a serious health issue.

[Coronavirus Mega-Thread.]

I'm not sure if anyone else posted this, but I haven't seen it:
 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54010432

Quote

 

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has said it is "common sense to move in the direction of digital IDs" as part of efforts to fight coronavirus.

 

Mr Blair said there should be a record kept by the government of those vaccinated against the virus.

 

The government recently set out plans to change laws to enable the use of digital identity across the UK.

 

As prime minister, Mr Blair launched a compulsory ID card scheme, but it was scrapped by the coalition government.

 

Speaking to the BBC's Newscast podcast, he said that once a coronavirus vaccine is in use "you're going to want a record of the fact you've been vaccinated".

 

"You'll want a record kept by the government of who's been vaccinated - this will be essential, again, to restoring confidence," he added.

 

The former PM argued that improvements in technology meant privacy issues "can be dealt with".

 

"You don't need a large amount of information," he said adding: "People give a lot more information to their supermarkets than they do to the government."

 

Responding to Mr Blair's comments, Silkie Carlo, Director of Big Brother Watch - a civil liberties campaign group - said: "The idea of digital ID and vaccination checks could easily lead to a health apartheid that few would expect of a democratic country.

 

"Digital IDs would lead to sensitive records spanning medical, work, travel, and biometric data about each and every one of us being held at the fingertips of authorities and state bureaucrats.

 

"This dangerous plan would normalise identity checks, increase state control over law abiding citizens and create a honey pot for cybercriminals."

 

Mr Blair's comments come after the government announced plans to update existing laws on identity checking to allow digital identity "to be used as widely as possible".

 

It is does not propose resurrecting the ID card scheme, but is "exploring how secure checks could be made against government data," according to the government announcement.

 

Digital Infrastructure Minister Matt Warman said: "Digital technology is helping us through the pandemic and continues to improve the way we live, work and access vital services.

 

"We want to make it easier for people to prove their identity securely online so transactions can become even quicker - it has the potential to add billions to our economy."

 

Mr Blair was a keen advocate of ID cards for all UK citizens, as a way of combating terrorism after 9/11, but it was later billed as an "entitlement card" to combat benefit fraud and illegal workers.

 

The former PM has argued since leaving office that ID cards are the only way to combat illegal immigration.

 

The ID card scheme began its rollout in November 2009, under Gordon Brown's premiership, but was scrapped in 2010 by the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition government which saw it as an infringement of civil liberties.

 

 

It's common sense to do what we've always wanted to do, but knew we would encounter too much opposition.

[Trump warns if he disappears suspect very rich enemies he has upset]

Would this be like when he said he would audit the Federal Reserve? Eliminate the deficit (he tripled it before Covid)? When he told us he was a massive fan of Wikileaks? (Not that there was any point in this...) Build a US-Mexico wall?

 

I try to ignore him, but I've never heard so much BS come out of one person's mouth, since the previous US president! There is no hope in these people. Any energy invested in them is wasted energy.

[Coronavirus Mega-Thread.]

I'm sure he's got a pre-prepared answer, but I really wish a journalist would ask Bill Gates...why are you so fucking bothered about vaccines and public health anyway?

 

You've spent your whole life completely focused on getting as wealthy as possible, why are you so concerned about poor people all of a sudden?

 

Are we really sincerely expected to believe that you genuinely care? And if you do genuinely care, why have you spent most of your life trying to put every other computer company out of business?

 

If you're that fucking bothered, why don'y you give all of your money away? You too can be a poor person!

 

Or even give away absolutely everything other than $10 million, and scrape by on that for the rest of your life. 

 

Forget about your poxy foundation, give away all of your money. Put your money where your mouth is. Sell your house that is literally worth more than $100 million, move into a smaller house, worth merely $5 million, and give all the rest of the money away.

 

It would be impossible for me personally to make billions of dollars for many reasons! But the primary reason is...once I had enough to live off for the rest of my life, I wouldn't care about selling computers, or oil, or whatever it may be any more. I would sell my business, and enjoy my life. I wouldn't think: "well, I've got $50 million, but I really want 1,000 times that before I'm satisfied, and even then I won't be satisfied".

 

You can't go from that mindset, from hundreds of millions of dollars not being enough, to then your heart bleeding because there are poor people in the world. It makes zero sense. It's not remotely plausible. It's only sheer, unadulterated greed and egotism that gets you there in the first place, because any rational person would clearly see that they had enough once they were financially secure and could buy literally anything.

 

The first question that an 8 year-old would ask someone that greedy is...why did you suddenly change? Somehow this never occurs to any 'professional journalist'; they're happy to automatically assume that Gates' heart is in the right place. 

[What the UK population will look like in 2030]

2 hours ago, Smokestack Lightnin' said:

"No one says that 'WW1 and WW2 were initiated between Britian and Germany .... but it wasn't all Germans' do they'? No one says 'America went to war with Vietnam .....but it wasn't all Americans'. When the IRA blew up Hyde Park, no one said 'It was the IRA .....but it wasn't all the Irish!

 

Yes, they do! That's precisely what sensible people do say!

[Coronavirus Mega-Thread.]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53346750

 

Quote

 

Coronavirus: Catalonia makes masks mandatory in public

 

Spain's autonomous region of Catalonia has made face masks mandatory in public for all those aged over five after a surge in new cases of coronavirus.

 

Anyone caught without a mask - even when social distancing can be observed - faces a €100 ($113; £90) fine.

 

It comes amid an outbreak of the virus in Segrià, an agricultural area.

 

Officials already imposed a lockdown on 210,000 residents on Saturday, banning anyone from entering or leaving except for work.

 

 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/travel/12072186/face-masks-ibiza-majorca-when/

 

Quote

 

Tourists in Majorca and Ibiza now have to wear face masks at all times in public – or risk 100 euro fine

 

BRITISH holidaymakers jetting to Majorca and Ibiza this weekend will have to wear face masks whenever they leave their hotel rooms, it emerged today.

 

The Balearic islands announced they were tightening the rules on the use of masks just hours after Catalonia revealed it was making them obligatory at virtually all times in public.

 

 

[Coronavirus Mega-Thread.]

6 minutes ago, Jack said:

yeah i think you have to paste as plain text,

Thanks for the advice, I managed to post it now, I had to take out all of the links, but people can look up any of the information for themselves, it is all 100% accurate.

[Coronavirus Mega-Thread.]

So today, the UK's national academy of science has stated that everyone should wear masks "whenever you are in crowded public spaces".

If this recommendation is followed, and introduced as government guidance, it will mean that to a very great extent I won't be able to go out any more, except to take my dog for a walk in the woods, as I very fortunately live in the countryside and can just walk out of my front door straight into the woods. Although half the time when I encounter someone, on my own in the open air, they're backing away in terror.

There is a pub down the road from me, probably I will be able to walk down there, be served by someone wearing a mask, and have a quiet pint and some lunch. Beyond that, I won't be able to go anywhere else. My life will be limited to my house, taking my dog for a walk, and going to the one pub within walking distance, although that's not a certainty. And I'll be better off than a lot of people!

Because I won't wear a mask in public. I won't do things that don't make sense. Unless you put a gun to my head and make me do them. If I have no choice legally, then at some point I would have to wear a mask, but if I can swerve it then I will. Even if this isn't enacted legally, it's likely that you will be increasingly ostracised if you don't wear one publicly. 

This is being recommended despite the fact that Deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries stated that there is “probably a very, very small potential beneficial effect” of wearing masks, and that “the evidence is really very, very difficult to tease out”. And that was in relation to "some enclosed environments"; ie. not public spaces that are outdoors! Harries also stated that "the fact that there is a lot of debate means that the evidence either isn’t clear or is weak", and that "for the average member of the public, and it may be for example if you’re walking out in an open space, you’re practising good social distancing measures, you are neither going to be a risk to anybody else or to yourself".

Downing Street chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance noted that evidence for face masks is "variable, quite weak and difficult to know", and Peter Horby, chairman of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG), having investigated the benefits of face masks, described the data as “weak”. Horby himself stated that he does not wear a mask outside, and went on to explain the following:

"The data are difficult and the reason that you’re seeing different policies is because the data are weak. [In field conditions], their effectiveness is much, much lower. There’s also the problem of wearing the mask properly, they’re very difficult to wear properly for a long time, and so for prolonged exposures their effectiveness is really quite low".

Dr April Baller, a public health specialist for the WHO, previously stated that "masks should only be used by healthcare workers, caregivers or by people who are sick with symptoms of fever and cough", and in the government's own report entitled: "Keeping workers and customers safe during COVID-19 in restaurants, pubs, bars and takeaway services", the following is stated on page 35:

 

"When managing the risk of COVID-19, additional PPE beyond what you usually wear is not beneficial. This is because COVID-19 is a different type of risk to the risks you normally face in a workplace, and needs to be managed through social distancing, hygiene and fixed teams or partnering, not through the use of PPE.
It is important to know that the evidence of the benefit of using a face covering to protect others is weak and the effect is likely to be small, therefore face coverings are not a replacement for the other ways of managing risk, including minimizing time spent in contact, using fixed teams and partnering for close-up work, and increasing hand and surface washing.

These other measures remain the best ways of managing risk in the workplace and government would therefore not expect to see employers relying on face coverings as risk management for the purpose of their health and safety assessments".

Bear in mind that again deals with enclosed spaces, not open-air environments.

And I heard a BBC Radio 5Live report on when masks were first required on public transport, during which a government medical advisor (who advocated in favour of face masks) conceded that the benefit of them is "extremely marginal". And after he'd said this, the reporter from 5Live stated that he had spoken to government representatives, they had equally stated that any benefits are extremely marginal, and that the policy was only being implemented to provide "psychological comfort" to people, so that they will be willing to use public transport again.

So we already have a situation where it's legally required to wear masks, and it's admitted that this actually has virtually no medical benefit, that the policy isn't being implemented for any medical benefit anyway, and this is only in relation to enclosed spaces, where viruses are far more likely to be transmitted.

This last point is blindingly obvious anyway. Quite clearly, any virus is more likely to be passed on from one person to another indoors than outdoors. But a study in April already concluded that "the odds that a primary case transmitted COVID-19 in a closed environment was 18.7 times greater compared to an open-air environment".

That's just my little bit of research that I carried out while writing this post, which took about 5-10 minutes. It's all mainstream sources, it's not in any way contentious or controversial.

Yet already the president of the UK's Royal Society, Venki Ramakrishnan, has not only called for everyone to wear face coverings in public spaces, but has also stated that "it used to be quite normal to have quite a few drinks and drive home, and it also used to be normal to drive without seatbelts. Today both of those would be considered antisocial, and not wearing face coverings in public should be regarded in the same way". 

So we're comparing drink-driving, in relation to which alcohol is known to impede reaction time, impair your reflexes, and effectively make you a worse driver, while driving is already dangerous anyway, with not wearing a mask in public, which is known to be ineffective even in enclosed spaces, which will have bordering on zero impact in outdoor environments, where there is little evidence that the virus can be passed on outdoors anyway and studies have shown that this hardly ever happens statistically, which is a response to a virus that 95% of people in the UK have yet to contract, and which it is now admitted that many will never contract, which only really kills old people, according to the government's own figures, which has killed very few people proportionately who don't have underlying health conditions, for which most deaths haven't been proven to be related to the virus, and for which 45% of even those deaths linked with Covid-19 have occurred in care homes (20,000 of 44,000 deaths).

I don't really think it's quite the same, do you? But I'm sure the government will roll over and force everyone to wear face masks in due course. As an example, you're already required to wear face masks on beaches in Spain. 

If we're now asked to wear masks in public, or even if people start doing this voluntarily en masse, it's a complete joke. There's just no evidence that this is necessary, or even beneficial. If this became law, it could then go on for months, or even years. If it does become law, congratulations TPTB, you will have confined me to the immediate vicinity of my home. Because there's no way I'm playing ball with this, it's fucking stupid.

[Tips on preserving your own forum contributions]

I'm just testing posting on here, as I received a message stating that I was blocked from posting on the Covid thread. Which I'm quite sure is nothing to do with the forum itself.

 

Well, that worked, so I'll retry the Covid thread.

[Leicester Lockdown Extension what town city will be next ?]

In the entire county in which I live, there had been just over 2,000 cases in May, and over 25% of those were in the only major city. There had been 52 deaths, and nearly 40% of those had been in care homes. 

 

So you're looking at 32 deaths outside of care homes, across a surface area of 2,600 square kilometres, and a population of 800,000. There may have been a few more deaths since then, I'm not sure. Who cares? 

[Coronavirus Mega-Thread.]

This is an actual quote:

 

"Freedom of speech can only be upheld if the structural inequalities that hinder equal opportunities for underrepresented groups are challenged and changed."

 

Freedom of speech can only be upheld if we castigate and even punish people for exercising their freedom of speech. Even when they're saying something that isn't remotely controversial.

 

It's only during the lockdown that I truly realised what a decaying, moribund, intellectually bereft society we have become. Of course, I had a strong impression of this before! But it's been impossible to ignore the coronavirus situation. And it's been impossible to ignore the general public. And the reality of having their behaviour dangled before me has succinctly illustrated the frightening extent to which many people are literally trained like puppies by the authorities and the media.

 

People cannot think for themselves. You could, no exaggeration, make the majority of the population think, say, or do virtually anything. It would be challenging to completely dissociate the sexual act from procreation (although this has been achieved to a large extent), and have babies taken away from their mothers, as Huxley depicted in Brave New World. But if it was really deemed necessary or desirable then I would wager that you could eventually convince people to give up their newborn babies. It might take a couple of generations. But eventually people would accept follow the social programming and authoritarian diktats.

 

Because I've witnessed with my own eyes the most ridiculous behaviour. Every time I take my dog for a walk, people on their own are backing away from me so that they can obey the social distancing regulations. I mean, for fuck's sake, we're in the open air, there's only two of us, we're just passing by one another, only 5% of people in Britain have even contracted Covid-19 in the first place - the chances of transmitting a virus in these circumstances are so infinitesimal as to be basically non-existent. 

 

I was talking to my neighbour the other day, and she won't let her child play with the other kids in the estate around our houses, where they usually play all of the time, as it would be in breach of social distancing guidelines. And both of these examples would have been unthinkable three months ago. Around 12 weeks ago, both of these people would have behaved in the completely opposite fashion, but it's taken just a few weeks to train them to completely reverse their customary practices.  

 

When I witness this sort of behaviour, the future seems completely hopeless. We're already entering a massive economic depression, which is going to be far worse than anything in living memory. It's already estimated that it will result in the worst economic conditions since 1870. And what are people saying? We can't go back to work because it's too dangerous! We can't send our kids back to school because it's too dangerous!

 

The admitted government debt is now greater than the UK's annual GDP, but let's just keep everyone at home, and whack on a few hundred billion more. And then the same people will complain when there is more austerity, when there are cuts to government spending, when services are terminated. And they'll blame it on the Tories. It's not the fault of the system, it's not an overarching super-structure of elitists and plutocrats dictating conditions for the entire planet. It's Boris Johnson's fault that my local library has closed down.

 

We've already had the golden years of our lives. Now we're going to be steadily ground down with a combination of sustainability, snooping, monitoring, impositions on our lives, and micromanagement. The EU vaccination card and passport plans are already on the table. And people will actually welcome this, just as they've now been trained to celebrate the abolition of free speech. The most onerous conditions will be imposed on us, yet people will applaud like performing seals because we're addressing climate change, controlling the virus, and interviewing a black person for every job. There will be no need for a sheepdog; the sheep will police the sheep.

 

Don't worry, though, because the World Economic Forum has already decided that the future will be "fair, sustainable and resilient".