The National Audit Office has compiled a report on the procurement of PPE earlier this year.
The report is called ‘Investigation into government procurement during the COVID-19 pandemic’ and is linked HERE.
Fiasco or scandal?
The headline in the Daily Mail’s story is The £18bn coronavirus PPE scandal whereas the print edition (and the Mail’s url) was far too kind, describing it as a ‘fiasco’.
The NAO’s report considered 8,600 contracts awarded by the Government between January and July. They were worth £18 billion. £17.3 billion of the money went on brand new contracts. A staggering £12.3 billion of it went on PPE. Most of the remainder was spent on other equipment and virus testing, but some was splashed out on focus groups and a propaganda campaign. Hardly any of the contracts appear to have been placed after competitive tendering.
David Meller’s company was fast-tracked into a contract worth £163m
David Rose, commenting in the Mail, writes: ‘The mismanagement, the incompetence, the reckless waste – all of this is shocking. But worse, perhaps, is the brazen cronyism involved.’
Corruption
In fact, if the same thing happened in Africa, we should call it what it is: corruption.
For example, businessman David Meller co-owns Meller Designs, which supplies high street retailers such as M&S.
Michael Gove – in charge of PPE procurement. David Meller donated £3,250 to Michal Gove’s 2016 leadership campaign
Mr Meller has donated over £60,000 to the Conservatives since 2010.
He gave Michael Gove £3,250 for his leadership campaign in 2016. Mr Gove is minister for the Cabinet Office, in charge of PPE procurement for the NHS.
Meller Designs was awarded a contract for £163 million to supply protective equipment.
Joe Biden: Lobbyists are ‘corrosive’
U.S. Presidential candidate Joe Biden revealed how the system works
Mr Biden said: “Lobbyists aren’t bad people, special-interest groups are not bad people, but guess what? They’re corrosive.
“It’s human nature. If you, Lynn, bundle $250,000 for me, all legal, and then you call me after I’m elected and say, ‘Joe, I’d like to talk to you about something’. You didn’t buy me. But it’s human nature, you helped me, I’m going to say, ‘Sure, Lynn, come on in’,” he explained.
“The front of the line is always filled with people whose pockets are filled,” said Mr Biden.
The Bible commands: Deut 16:19 Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous.
‘High-Priority Lane’
What happened in the rush to source PPE was the Government set up a special fast-track channel. Ministers, MPs and civil servants could refer businesses to this ‘high-priority lane.’ It saw a huge amount of lucrative business going to firms with inside political contacts.
Contracts worth billions were awarded, as Mr Rose puts it, ‘not on the basis of quality or price, but in many cases – according to today’s damning report – on which firms had the best personal contacts in Westminster and Whitehall.’
Suppliers with such connections were 10 times more likely to be awarded contracts than those who applied directly to the Department of Health.
Cummings Connections
Dominic Cummings
A company called Faculty went on the high-priority lane because it worked with Dominic Cummings on the Vote Leave campaign in 2016 and worked for Cummings’ company Dynamic Maps under a commercial contract in 2018 and 2019. It was awarded three contracts for data analysis totaling £3,015,000. The firm also had Cabinet Office minister Lord Agnew as a shareholder.
The NAO said only the largest of the three contracts (with NHS Information) ‘has any documented consideration of conflicts of interest, and no potential conflicts of interest were identified’. However, the contract paperwork ‘does not have documentation for the basis of choice of supplier’.
Mr Cummings’ father-in-law Sir Humphrey Wakefield is a business associate of Angus Collingwood, a director of Admiral Public Relations. The firm went on the fast track and secured a contract worth £670,000.
Another pal of Dominic Cummings, James Frayne, who has also worked for Michael Gove, runs Public First, which provides focus group research. Mr Frayne’s wife Rachel Wolf co-wrote the Conservative Party 2019 manifesto. Public First gained a contract worth £840,000 after an initial emergency ‘informal arrangement’.
Again, the NAO is scathing: ‘We found a lack of documentation recording the process for choosing the supplier, the justification for using emergency procurement, or any considerations around potential conflicts of interest.’
Pro 15:27 He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house; but he that hateth gifts shall live.
‘Value for money’
Cabinet Office minister Julia Lopez said, ‘We have robust processes to ensure we get critical equipment to where it needs to go as quickly as possible, whilst also ensuring value for money for the taxpayer.’ But the minister is, shall we say, mistaken.
The NAO reports: ‘The Cabinet Office awarded a contract to Topham Guerin with an initial maximum value of £1.5 million for publicity campaign coordination services on 7 May 2020, with the contract effective from 17 March 2020. This contract was a direct award and we did not find evidence of documented requirements prior to the work beginning.’
As it happens, the firm ‘worked for the Conservative Party during the 2019 UK General Election campaign’. Their total Covid contract ended up at £3 million ‘for handling Government Coronavirus digital communications from March until September.’ The ‘ digital communications’ seems to have amounted to social media postings. The Guardian called Messrs Topham and Guerin the ‘Facebook propaganda pair’.
In a speech in May 2019, Ben Guerin told how his Facebook approach works to deliver election results. He recommended ‘highly repetitive messaging – what he calls “water dripping on a stone” with “crude,” poorly-produced memes (which) attract more engagement than slick, formulaic graphics. “You’ve got to surprise people. You’ve got to shock people. Unlock and arouse an emotion in people,” he said. “The particular emotions we’ve got to unlock are arousal emotions,” he continued. “We’re talking: anger, excitement, pride, fear. Your content should be relating to one of these emotions”.’
The ideal firm, then, to run Project Fear with its crude, repetitive messaging.
Facemasks were useless
Another company scrutinised in the report is Ayanda Capital. They were handed a £253 million contract to supply PPE to the NHS.
The deal was brokered by one Andrew Mills, a ‘senior board adviser’ to Ayanda Capital, who just happened to be one of 12 advisers to the Board of Trade which is chaired by International Trade Secretary Liz Truss.
Some 50 million masks, worth £155 million, delivered by the company were of the wrong specification and cannot be used.
Ayanda say: ‘Suggestions that the masks are not fit for purpose or are somehow unsafe to use by frontline NHS workers are simply untrue and we are advised defamatory.’
Millions went to testing firms
Serco gained a contract initially worth £214 million for test and trace. The firm went to the front of the queue because health minister Edward Argar used to be a senior executive and Rupert Soames, brother of former Tory MP Sir Nicholas, is its Chief Executive Officer.
Conservative MP Owen Paterson is paid £100,000 per year as a consultant to Randox, which ‘provides clinical diagnostic solutions to laboratories worldwide’. . The company was given a contract worth £479 million to provide Covid testing.
On Monday night Channel 4 Dispatches revealed lapses at the superlab run by Randox in Northern Ireland. The lab analyses COVID-19 tests from across Britain as part of its contract with HMG. An undercover reporter discovered serious failings, including cross-contamination of test samples.
Billions paid to superlab company
UK Biotec runs three ‘Lighthouse’ superlabs. Companies House lists its directors as highly-placed doctors including Professors Michael Pringle, Patrick Chinnery, Richard Trembath and Peter Weissberg, Dr Tim Peakman, Dr Philip Boyd and Dr Anne Phelan. Any one of them knows enough Conservative politicians to go straight onto the fast track.
The firm was awarded a rushed un-tendered contract in April. The Government says: ‘A direct award has been made due to extreme urgency pursuant to regulation 32(2)(c) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015.’
UK Biocentre was soon seeking a partner for ‘genotyping’ an ‘initial 60 000′ samples. Its tender invitation said ‘Budget is anticipated to be from 2 000 000 GBP to 5 000 000 GBP depending on funding applications.’
Lockdown Sceptics reveals the contract the UK government placed with UK Biotech was worth ‘billions’. Yet again, an ‘experienced virologist with a background in biosafety’, one Dr Harris, was ‘horrified by what he witnessed’ at the Lighthouse lab at Milton Keynes
PPE gravy train
My dear late mother used to say: ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.’
PPE Medpro won contracts worth £203 million just seven weeks after being set up by Anthony Page, who had worked for Tory peer and lingerie entrepreneur Baroness Mone.
Sreve Declan (left) campaigning for Siobhan Bailllie in 2019 with Sajid Javid (front).
P14 Medical Ltd secured contracts totaling £272 million despite being technically insolvent to the tune of £485,000. It is run by former Stroud Conservative councillor Steve Declan who campaigned for his MP colleague Siobhan Baillie who was elected to represent Stroud last year.
In the local paper Mr Declan denied any ‘favoritism’ after Shadow Health Minister Justin Madders said ‘This company’s connections to the Conservative Party appear to be stronger than their experience in delivering PPE’.
Dragontown Ltd is run by its director Xuelin, Lady Bates, wife of Tory peer and former minister Lord Bates. The company was awarded a £675,000 contract to supply PPE to London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’s hospitals.
Donations secured contract
Globus Shetland Ltd gained a £93 million contract to supply respirators. Its CEO Haraldur Agustsson has donated £365,668 to the Tories since 2016. He may well view that now as money well spent. But as Joe Biden said, donations are corrosive. The Bible expresses it even better:
Prov 18:16 A man’s gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men.
Staffing agency SG Recruitment won £50 million worth of PPE contracts despite concerns over its solvency. Tory peer Lord Chadlington sits on the board of its parent company Sumner Group Holdings. That alone would ensure the company’s elevation to the ‘high-priority lane.’ His Lordship is also past president of West Oxfordshire Conservative Association and a friend of David Cameron, who lives in that constituency.
Gavin, now Lord, Barwell
The former Chief of Staff to Mr Cameron’s successor, Theresa May is ex-MP Gavin, now Lord, Barwell.
The Consultancy UK website reveals he became a non-executive advisor to engineering consultancy firm Arcadis in June, one month after helping them to a £1.5 million business consultancy contract with the Ministry of Justice ‘during Covid 19′.
Prayer
Psalm 14:1 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. 4 Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the LORD.
Matt 10:26 Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.
We thank God for the National Audit Office and for journalists who first uncovered this story and thank God we have been able to build upon it and verify the facts. It reveals terrible incompetence and lack of any concern or ‘due diligence’ about spending public money wisely, despite what the Government may claim.
Above all it reveals a level of corruption and cronyism which if it were to happen in the developing world would be the subject of condemnation from politicians in the UK. Yet this is the UK, and the monies involved in this scandal are of a proportion a corrupt African politician could only dream of.
Pray these people may be called to account:
Luke 16:1 And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. 2 And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward.
And pray for repentance in Her Majesty’s ministers and all our ruling class:
Isaiah 45:6 That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else.
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Shortly after Boris Johnson’s speech last night, the polling firm YouGov did a massive phone-round asking people for their opinion on it.
They reported their findings:
‘An overwhelming 78% of Britons support the new lockdown measures announced today, including 44% who “strongly support” them. Just 17% of Britons are opposed…’
There was no loaded question. They made no mention of ‘tackling’ Covid, in fact no mention of Covid at all.
Support or Oppose?
YouGov simply asked: ‘The Government has announced new lockdown measures including pubs and restaurants closing at 10pm, limits on attending weddings, limits on indoor sports, and office workers being advised to work from home if they can. In general, do you support or oppose these new measures?’
In response, 44% ‘srtrongly’ supported the measures. 34% showed ‘somewhat’ support. Those two added together give the 78% support figure.
In opposition were the ‘Somewhat oppose’ who came out at 9% while ‘strongly oppose’ were 8%. Those two added together come to 17%. 6% didn’t know.
Political party affiliation made hardly any difference. EU Leavers were more in opposition than were Remainers, but both were still in the minority.
Figures show only 5% of new infectuions were acquired in the hospitality trade.
Younger people were more opposed than older people, but a majority of those under 25 were still supportive of the Prime Minister’s announcement..
In vox pops, people were blaming pubs and restaurants, even though the figures show only 5% of infections are being acquired in those settings. 45% are being acquired in care homes.
It’s all your own fault
The general public are also blaming each other, following the lead of both the Prime Minister last night and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab this morning. Newspapers are reporting: ‘Dominic Raab today warned the UK ‘could end up in a national lockdown’ if Boris Johnson’s new coronavirus crackdown fails to get the disease under control.
‘The Foreign Secretary said a second shutdown ‘is what we want to avoid’ but the nuclear option remains in the Government’s ‘arsenal’ if all else fails.
‘Mr Raab said he hoped ‘if everyone plays by the rules’ then the nation will be able to go into the Christmas period without a national lockdown being imposed.’
‘It’s all your own fault’, the Mail sarcastically headlined their article.
Cases are not rising ‘exponentially’
On Monday, obviously co-ordinated with the Government, Prof Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance unveiled their sensationalist scaremongering graph. This predicted 50,000 ‘cases’ by mid-October ‘if’ they doubled every seven days.
Cases are not rising exponentially and if they follow France and Spain, nor will they.
The same experts were saying a week ago that they were terrified the UK would follow France and Spain.
Yet if the UK follows France and Spain, as the Mail’s graph shows, infections reach 10,000, not 50,000, while deaths remain in double figures, not in the 200 bracket.
Even in his broadcast, Boris Johnson said: ‘The virus has started to spread again, in an exponential way.’ It hasn’t. Surely a Classics scholar knows what ‘exponential’ means? ‘It’s no less fatal than it was in Spring’, he said. That too, is not true. It is only a third as fatal, say the doctors treating it, because treatments are now smarter..
My people love it so
The false prophets, Ferguson, Whitty, Vallance together with Covid Project Fear have done their job. People are terrified of a disease which is not even in the UK’s August top twenty as a cause of death. More people are dying of influenza at the moment than of Covid-19. Yet the facts make no difference. It is just as the Prophet Jeremiah said in his day:
Jer 5:31 The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests (or ‘officers’) bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?
What indeed will we do? The previous worst recession was at the time of Queen Anne’s War & the freezing of the Thames in 1709. We have only had a prime minister since Robert Walpole took that role in 1721. If we rate our Prime Ministers by economic success, Boris Johnson is not just the worst Prime Minister in 300 years. He is the worst Prime Minister in history.
All this will impact on health, well-being, family incomes, for generations to come. Forget a V-shaped recovery. If the threats of Mr Raab come to pass, the ‘recovery’, so to speak, will be pear-shaped.
Real experts write
Professor Carl Heneghan
On the bright side, a group of real experts have written to the Prime Minister calling for an end to the restrictions. The open letter was written by Oxford’s Professor Sunetra Gupta and Professor Carl Heneghan, Professor Karol Sikora, and by Sam Williams, director of the consultancy firm Economic Insight. Signatories include Professor Sucharit Bhakdi (JG University of Main) and Prof David Paton, both known to us already.
In the letter (text here) they say: ‘In summary, our view is that the existing policy path is inconsistent with the known risk-profile of Covid-19 and should be reconsidered.
In the US a ‘spike’ of infections or cases was not followed by a significant rise in deaths.
‘The unstated objective currently appears to be one of suppression of the virus, until such a time that a vaccine can be deployed. This objective is increasingly unfeasible (notwithstanding our more specific concerns regarding existing policies) and is leading to significant harm across all age groups, which likely offsets any benefits.’
They call for ‘targeted measures that protect the most vulnerable from Covid, whilst not adversely impacting those not at risk.’
‘Backlash’ among Tory MPs
And nor was it in Sweden.
The other hopeful sign is a claim in the Mail online, echoed in other outlets, that Conservative MPs are increasingly unhappy with the anti-Covid restrictions. There is a ‘furious backlash’, says the paper.
Telford MP Lucy Allan tweeted: ‘Measures to tackle #covid must be proportionate to the risk. The virus is a serious threat to certain vulnerable groups.
‘We must protect these groups with targeted measures. Shutting down society causes massive damage to health, lives, and livelihoods of the whole population.’
Sir Graham Brady, Chairman of the 1922 Committee
The Telegraph reports that Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the influential 1922 Committee of Tory MPs, has accused the Government of ‘ruling by decree’. Sir Graham, has tabled an amendment requiring ministers to put any new measures to a vote. He argues it was ‘entirely possible’ to push through emergency laws quickly through Parliament in the normal way.
‘The British people are not used to being treated like children,’ he added.
Let us hope and pray he is right. The polling seems to indicate they love it.
PRAY
Pray again for a complete return to normailty, for our respective governments to lift all restrictions, masks, social distancing and let us all get on with providing for our families, socialising, singing praise in church and generally rebuilding life, society and the economy.
2Sam 23:3 The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.
Pray for humility and the fear of God to descend on Her Majesty’s Government.
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The Kenyan senate has published a call for memoranda on the Reproductive Health Bill.
The Kenyan senate has published a call for memoranda on the Reproductive Health Bill.
The Senate in the Parliament of Kenya is calling for written memoranda by email on the Reproductive Healthcare Bill currently before it.
The deadline for responding is Monday 17th August. The published notice does not specify that only Kenyans can respond. Accordingly, we can guarantee that international abortionists and their NGO allies will be emailing in droves. There is a lot of money to be made:
Deut 27:25 Cursed be he that taketh reward to slay an innocent person. And all the people shall say, Amen.
It would be of immense value to the Republic of Kenya to hear from those with experience of how legalised abortion has operated in the UK and the Western world. They also need to know how it has opened the door to campaigns for complete decriminalisation of murder in the womb. The email address is at the bottom of this post.
There has been an outcry among Kenyan Christians over this Bill. It seeks to legalise abortion carried out by a doctor, nurse or midwife acting alone, a ‘trained health professional.’
Kenyans were already energised by the Summit in Nairobi held by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, UNFPA, in November 2019. See our report HERE. That called for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, SRHR, worldwide. SRHR is code for abortion on demand and legalised sodomy. It also wanted Comprehensive Sexuality Education, or CSE, to indoctrinate schoolchildren in immorality.
The grounds for an abortion in the the Kenya Reproductive Healthcare Bill bear an uncanny resemblance to those in the UK’s Abortion Act 1967. The authors even euphonise abortion as ‘termination of a pregnancy’,
UK Abortion Act
The UK Act also likes to speak in its text of ‘medical termination of pregnancy’ rather than ‘abortion’. Firstly, it allows it if ‘the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any existing children of her family.’ Secondly, it also allows abortion ‘to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman.’
We agree that an abortion could be carried out to save the life a pregnant woman, for instance, with an ectopic pregnancy, which is the third ground.
However, the fourth ground is ‘if the child … would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.’ In the UK we insist on ramps and special public toilets for the disabled, but try to kill them before they are born.
Kenya grounds
Similarly, in clause 26 of the Kenya Bill:
‘PART V – TERMINATION OF PREGNANCY
‘26. (1) A pregnancy may be terminated by a trained health professional where in the opinion of the trained health professional—
‘(a) there is need for emergency treatment;
‘(b) the pregnancy would endanger the life or health of the mother; or
‘(c) there exists a substantial risk that the foetus would suffer from a severe physical or mental abnormality that is incompatible with life outside the womb.’
Moreover, there is no definition of what constitutes ‘incompatible with life outside the womb.’ It should mean the child will immediately die upon birth, but who knows what lawyers are capable of arguing? And it’s a baby, by the way. People only use the Latin word ‘foetus’ for one reason. It’s when they are embarrassed about killing a child in what should be the safest place on God’s earth:
Psalm 139:13 For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. 14a I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made:
Post-abortion counselling
It is only when the Bill moves to post-abortion counselling and unsafe abortion that the ‘A’ word is used: Firstly:
‘29 A trained health professional shall provide postabortion care and counselling for cases of incomplete abrtion or complications arising out of the abortion procedure.’
And secondly, under clause 32, adolescents are to be told about the ‘consequences of unsafe abortion’.
The Bill also provides for access to ‘family planning’, ‘assisted reproduction’, sterilisation and – ‘reproductive health of adolescents’. The is not time to go into those right now. Please click on the link to the Bill and make representations on those to the Kenyan Senate if you have expertise.
Emailing
Written Memoranda should be emailed to the Office of the Clerk of the Senate on the address: csenate@parliament.go.ke to be received on or before Monday 17th August 2020 at 5.00pm (Kenya time)
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Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer for England
Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer for England wants ‘to close pubs if schools re-open
We are opposed to local lockdowns and taking away the jobs of people in the hospitality industry to allow schools to re-open, as if there is any need for such ‘trade-offs’, as Covid-19 peters out in the UK.
Firstly, The BBC reports the shocking news that ‘since the easing of lockdown restrictions, hundreds of young people have been gathering, drinking alcohol in large groups in Cardiff Bay.’
They were gathering out of doors last weekend because pubs and cafes have only been allowed to re-open indoors since Monday.
But it is good that young people are meeting, building up immunity in the population against the not-now-so-deadly Covid-19.
Rules ‘unclear and conflicting’
Meanwhile, in Manchester, The BBC says people are struggling to understand the new ‘lockdown lite’ rules, let alone observe them.
Their reporter asked: ‘so, after a weekend under the new measures, are people in Greater Manchester respecting or ignoring the new restrictions? And is it clear who you can meet in a beer garden but not in your back garden?’ After weeks of confining people to their homes, now they can meet up outside. But can they form a short-lived ‘bubble’ with another family? Who knows?
Abbie Chadd from Manchester: ‘rules unclear’
The BBC quoted Abbie Chadd, 35, an education consultant in South Manchester. She ‘said the rules are “so unclear and somewhat conflicting:
‘”I was gutted to see the new restrictions put in place but I fully understand the need to prevent the further spread of the virus.
‘”Having visited the same park nearly every day since the start of lockdown, this weekend it was by far the busiest it has been throughout.
‘”People were clearly trying to adhere to the guidelines about being outside of their homes when meeting others, but I am not sure how this situation is better than small groups meeting in private gardens”.’
In fact, Abbie is wrong. There is no ‘need to prevent the further spread of the virus.’
He wrote: ‘It was one of the more curious aspects of last week’s warnings that the government seemed so ready to embrace the concept that infection rates were on the up.
‘This is a government that all along the way has been trying to mount a vigorous defence of its record.
‘The surveillance programme – run by the Office for National Statistics – did suggest they were rising.
‘But there has to be heavy caveats around these findings – they are based on just 24 positive cases among nearly 30,000 people over the course of two weeks. Drawing conclusions from such smaller numbers is fraught with difficulties.
‘The other key source of data – the cases found by testing – shows numbers have started going up. They are now more than 40% higher than they were in the second week of July on a rolling-seven day average.
‘But that masks the fact the number of tests being carried out is increasing and being targeted at areas where infection rates are highest.
‘If you test more, you are likely to find more … so if you look at the percentage of tests that are positive, the rise is marginal once you iron out the daily fluctuations.’
More testing means more cases
Let us understand this. the Government are finding more cases because they are testing more people at random. And many of those who test positive are asympyomatic. They aren’t even ill. There is no increase in hospital admissions.
Professor Carl Heneghan
These points are also made by Professor Carl Heneghan. This man of sense heads the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University.
He says it is essential to adjust for tests being done and is concerned about what he calls ‘poor interpretation’ of data. Covid cases, he says, simply aren’t rising in any meaningful sense.
Common sense like that has not stopped Nicola Sturgeon closing all pubs in Aberdeen after what she thinks is a ‘significant outbreak’ of, wait for it, 54 cases.
That is fewer than the number of pubs of Aberdeen. People are being told not to travel to the city. Because of 54 cases, most likely among young people, and probably mainly asymptomatic, people may not socialise, travel, or earn a living. It is oppression.
ONS says deaths below average since June
Furthermore, the death rate in the UK is has been below average since mid-June. The NHS is currently distinctly under-whelmed. Nevertheless, The Mail reports on ‘The full health cost of lockdown: Doctors warn of a devastating toll on non-virus patients who still face delays in diagnosis and care’.
‘The number of deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 24 July 2020 (Week 30) … was 1.8% below the five-year average (161 deaths fewer). This is the sixth consecutive week that deaths have been below the five-year average.
‘The number of deaths in care homes, hospitals and other communal establishments remained below the five-year average in Week 30, while the number of deaths in private homes continued to be higher than the five-year average (727 more deaths).
‘Of the deaths registered in Week 30, 217 mentioned ‘novel coronavirus (COVID-19)‘, the lowest number of deaths involving COVID-19 in the last 18 weeks and a 26.4% decrease compared with Week 29 (295 deaths), accounting for 2.4% of all deaths in England and Wales.
‘In Wales, the total number of deaths was similar to the five-year average (one death fewer) for Week 30, while the number of deaths involving COVID-19 decreased to seven deaths registered (from 11 deaths in Week 29), the lowest number registered since Week 12 (16th – 22nd March – just before lockdown) when there were two deaths.‘
Limits and ‘trade-offs’
And yet we are still hearing Professor Christ Whitty drone on about ‘the limits of opening up‘. Meanwhile, the BBC’s One Show last night asked people in the street about the sort of ‘trade-offs‘ they would accept to allow schools to re-open. The reporter suggested closing pubs and restaurants.
Nick Gibb MP, Minister of State at the Department for Education
Even today, as the Express reports, Schools Minister Nick Gibb has confirmed all children will return to education in September including in areas under local lockdown. But he is ‘warning pubs and non-essential shops could be closed again as a result.‘
With Coronavirus in retreat, this Government minister still speaks of ‘keeping children in .. class-sized bubbles in primary schools, year-group bubbles in secondary schools – making sure children aren‘t unnecessarily mixing with other children in the school, staggered lunch breaks, staggered play times, doing everything that we can to minimise contact – one-way systems through schools and so on – so that children are safe in school.‘
‘Safe‘ from LGBT propaganda?
‘Bubbles‘ are dystopian. One-way systems are not practical. Nor are staggered lunch breaks and play times. As for ‘children are safe in school‘, it would be good if they were indeed safe from the homosexual and trans propaganda he still believes schools should be ramming down their throats. But if he means safe from Covid-19, Mr Gibb is a trained accountant. He must have enough familiarity with figures to know children are the lowest risk group. No child has died of Covid-19, virtually world-wide.
Moreover, Mr Gibb is clearly not on the same page as the Prime Minister. The Guardian reported just two days ago: ‘No 10 also argues that closing pubs or other parts of the hospitality industry would not necessarily be effective, given the importance of transmission between households in local outbreaks, such as those which prompted emergency restrictions for millions of people in the north of England.‘
We covered the unnecessary ‘restrictions‘ and the fictitious ‘local outbreaks‘ above.
Join Christian Voice!
In this month’s Christian Voice newsletter, I show that the Lord himself can and does send lying spirits into those who give advice and brings about stupid decisions from rulers. That appears to be what has happened with our Government.
They have not been rational since the day they announced lockdown back in March. Furthermore, they show no sign of adopting wisdom (which begins with fear of the Lord) any time soon. the Lord sends stupid decisions as judgment, and corrupting the young is right up there in terms of national sin.
Matt 18:6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
Join Christian Voice today and receive by post your free copy of the August newsletter. As well as Covid-19 and wrong decisions and Stupid decisions – from the Lord, we also have That Russian Report, with President Putin cast as a ‘Dangerous Man‘ (!), Belarus rejects IMF demands (with the Word Bank and IMF explained), Poland ditches the feminist propaganda of ‘Istanbul‘ and an in-depth look at Black Lives Matter.
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2Sam 1:27 How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!
David says ‘How are the mighty fallen’ three times in his lament for Saul and Jonathan, ‘the beauty of Israel’. But the expression has passed into our culture.
And none has been mightier in recent weeks than the false prophet of doom, Imperial College’s vaccine-modeller, Professor Neil Ferguson. It was his report dated 16th March 2020 which persuaded the Prime Minister to move away from his sensible ‘mitigation’ strategy towards ‘suppression’ or ‘lockdown’.
Sharpest recession on record
Thus it is that today the Bank of England has warned of the sharpest recession on record if lockdown measures last into June. To put that into context, it will be worse than the recessions after World War I and WWII when the economy shrank by 10%, aided and abetted by Spanish Flu, and 4%, respectively. It would be the sharpest downturn since the time of ‘Queen Anne’s War’. That lasted from 1702 – 1713 against the French for control of North America.
Britain was also dragged into the War of Spanish Succession in 1706. Three years later, Western Europe’s great frost set in and the river Thames froze over, bringing what trade still remained to a standstill.
The Bank’s analysis, published today, is based on the assumption that social distancing measures are gradually phased out between June and September.
More money could be printed
The Bank’s latest Monetary Policy Report showed the UK economy plunging into its first recession in more than a decade. The economy shrunk by 3% in the first quarter of 2020, as travelling fell by 80% during March and the lockdown on 23rd March did the rest. If lockdown continues, the Bank sees an unprecedented 25% decline in the three months to June.
This would push the UK into a technical recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of economic decline. The Bank said the housing market had come to a standstill, while consumer spending had dropped by 30% in recent weeks.
As the Chancellor borrows even more money to pay half the workforce, which again is unprecedented, two of the Bank’s nine members voted to increase the latest round of quantitative easing by £100bn to £300bn. It did not go through, but in the end, that money will have to come from somewhere. ‘Quantitative easing’, simply printing the stuff, will impoverish us all in inflation.
Neil Ferguson immune
So back to the learned Professor Lockdown, whose adulterous flame visited him on two recent occasions. According to The Sun, ‘the UK government scientist met with married Antonia Staats, 38, twice during the lockdown – despite leading the government advice to put the country into quarantine to stop the spread of coronavirus.’
Miss Staats (she is Mrs Chris Lucas) works for Avaaz, the ultra-woke clicktivist website with its petitions, money-raising and headlines like: ‘Just five days to save all the elephants in Africa,’ and ‘If Trump wins, the sky will fall down.’ Well, not quite, but they fanatically support environmentalism, Greta Thunberg and oppose ‘populism’. Here are their suggestions for petitions right now: Example: “Paid leave for parents during coronavirus pandemic”, Example: “Coronavirus: Shut down all schools in Manchester”, Example: “Commit vital funds to a green recovery”. You get the idea.
Avaaz is also pro-vaccine, so long as they are not produced by ‘Big Pharma’. How else are they produced? One Avaaz petition is ‘demanding an affordable Coronavirus vaccine for all’. Meanwhile, Avaaz has taken down another petition, ‘We say “NO” to Coronavirus Vaccine in Africa’, because it ‘was found to contain false or misleading information’. However, this petition is a stunner and needs your support. It refers both to the lockdown and to a tonic from Madagascar. It urges: ‘Africa Purchase COVID ORGANICS And End Restrictions To Save Millions From Starvation’.
The Telegraph turned up tweets from Dr Ferguson himself, opposing Brexit and supporting the LibDems, so we can see Mrs Lucas and Dr Ferguson have a lot of politics in common. How such an avowed statist as Neil Ferguson came to be advising a Tory Government is a very good question. Professor Ferguson immediately resigned from the Government SAGE committee.
Catch the virus, don’t need the vaccine
The best reaction was from Health Secretary, Matt Hancock MP: ‘It’s extraordinary. I don’t understand.’
Well, I do. It’s called human nature, sin, arrogance, passion, even knowledge, all rolled into one.
Furthermore, the professor’s defence of his conduct reveals something else really important. He said:
‘I acted in the belief that I was immune, having tested positive for coronavirus, and completely isolated myself for almost two weeks after developing symptoms.’
You have it from the horse’s mouth. Despite all the gloomsters saying they don’t know if catching the virus makes you immune, it could go on infecting you for ever, you could pass it on, etc, etc, the vaccine-man at the heart of it all knows they are wrong. The truth seems to be, after you have had Covid-19, you are immune, you cannot catch it again, you cannot transmit it and, crucially, you don’t need a vaccine.
Leaks from the Bunker
Yesterday and today, the Daily Telegraph has been saying #StayHomeSaveLives is history. They claim that the Prime Minister will announce on Sunday that we can go out after all. We all knew already the truth of this word:
Psalm 121:8 The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.
And how much wiser would have been the Prime Minister decisions had he the fear of the Lord before his eyes, able to trust God for the truth of that word over the whole United Kingdom. But we are where we are. In need of prayer, hope, repentance and to lift the lockdown.
But today, we are being warned not to expect too much. The madness may continue, we hear. The Scottish and Welsh First Ministers are both opposed to any easing of the ruinous lockdown.
No ‘Second Peak’
The Prime Minister says he dare not risk a ‘Second Peak’. Even the CBI is wittering on about businesses opening ‘safely’.
The Covid-19 epidemic is following the standard curve.
Well, right here we shall pray and declare there will be no ‘Second Wave’ or ‘Second Peak’.
The epidemic is following the standard curve. It started with the first death on 6th March. It hit the peak on 8th April.
Moreover, the rolling seven-day average has slipped below the daily death-toll from abortion, 595, for four days in a row at this time of writing, looking at the figures for 6th May. In short, it’s over.
And even if there were a ‘Second Peak’, when would they like it? In June, July and August, at the height of summer, or in December, January and February, to coincide with the annual Influenza epidemic? Talking of which, I saw lockdown being touted as a counter-measure to that as well. It’s madness.
If you are down to receive the May Christian Voice newsletter, you will read about the worldwide collective insanity and where it has come from tomorrow, by God’s grace. And if you have not seen our May Newsletter, just email us your name and UK land address with postcode to info@christianvoice.org.uk. I’m not putting that email address as a hyperlink. Copy it and paste into your ‘To’ box.
Exodus 18:21 Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens:
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Damning evidence about the effects of the lockdown, how the lockdown is not itself evidence-based, how the Imperial College Professor Ferguson paper is not even science, not even speculation, but intended to elicit a particular response from governments, is now emerging.
But first, you need to watch a video. Greece was being held up as an early-lockdown success story last night by the BBC. Just more pro-lockdown propaganda, of course.
Here are the facts about Greece as presented on the amazing video below: On Sunday 22nd March 2020, the Greek governemnt under prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of the center/right wing party announced some of the most draconian social distancing measures in the world, even though only 15 Covid-19 deaths had occurred thus far. People have to carry a special signed form with them to leave their house. Walking alone at the parks, sitting by the beach, swimming, even scuba diving, were all banned.
John 9:4 I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.
Greek church told to shut
The initial announcement did not include the church because Mr Mitsotakis did not want to carry the political cost of pressing the church to close down. On that day, the Greek Orthodox church held a council and decided to bring services two hours earlier, so they would end before 8am. They hoped that would appease the government. However, 45 minutes later, Mr Mitsotakis issued a decree banning all church congregations.
So the Greek church, in common with churches everywhere, went along with it, issuing an internal order to all ministers to keep churches closed and perform the Sunday and Eastern Easter services without a congregation. The Traditional Good Friday processions were all banned.
Church ministers obeyed the directive. But this one, priest of a church in Athens, delivered this straight from the heart sermon to an online-only congregation slamming the lockdown and the ban on meeting for worship.
2Tim 1:7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
This will bless you (it’s a bit Greek Orthodox at the start!):
Ventilators ‘killing people’
Meanwhile, in the Daily Mirror and at more length in the Daily Mail, a Californian doctor, Cameron Kyle-Sidell, says that ventilators, rather than helping to heal Covid-19 patients, are killing them. Only one third survive being on a ventilator. Just give them oxygen in one of those CPAP masks like the ones being made by Mercedes Formula 1, he says. Don’t expect the medical establishment to change its treatment patterns any time soon …
Prov 18:17 He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him.
Meanwhile, another doctor from US, one Dr Erickson, has filmed this damning video showing the lockdown strategy is not ‘led by the science’ as ministers here like to claim.
P.S. This video has been taken down (aka censored) by YouTube for ‘violating’ their ‘terms of service’. You could not make that up. Watch it on Off-Guardian HERE.
Softening us up for more lockdown
Another 684 hospital patients are announced today to have died from or with Covid-19. That takes out UK total to 19,506. It will top 20,000 over the weekend. But these figures, while still above the daily death-toll of unborn children in the UK from abortion, are not rising any more.
I must just add that the UK Covid-19 daily deaths are not the true daily tally, they can include deaths from days, even weeks earlier. Furthermore, that Off-Guardian article above shows the mere mention of Covid-19 anywhere on a death certificate adds the death into the Covid-19 stats. For example: Patient with chronic coronary disease dies from heart failure while being treated for Covid-19 (possibly on one of those deadly ventilators): Covid-19 death.
Project Fear prepares us for more Lockdown against nebulous Second Wave
But just as we thought the end was in sight, we have that Professor Chris Whitty popping up in the last few days warning of a nebulous ‘Second Peak’ and that the lockdown might have to stay for weeks. Even if it doesn’t, it will be ‘social distancing’ and a ‘new normal.’ It is yet more Covid-19 Project Fear. If the people are to continue under house arrest, they must be made to feel afraid. Covid-19 is the enemy. Your neighbour, even your son or daughter, might be harbouring the enemy!
The BBC dutifully ran a piece on the ‘second wave’ on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido where quite liberal measures were relaxed further a few weeks ago and cases are now rising again. Not that the liberalisation helps Hokkaido much. The people rely on tourism for their income.
As does my part of West Wales, as it happens. Incidentally, if Chris Whitty, Prof Neil Ferguson or that nice Health Minister Nadine Dorries MP thinks we are all going to stay indoors for eighteen months until their vaccine has been tested and they can ‘safely’ let us out, they are in dream-world.
The good news is that more people are getting out, aware that sunlight tops up your Vitamin D, which is great for your immune system. For the same reason secure some 200mg Vitamin C tablets and some Zinc tablets from Wilko this weekend. Lastly, get your trainers on and start running. Half-an-hour’s cardio-vascular exercise a day really builds your immune system and your general fitness.
1Cor 3:16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
And I shall leave you with a question. How can NHS workers find the time to make all those videos of whole cohorts of them dancing in corridors. You know, with the crisis of being overwhelmed with patients and all?
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Professor Neil Ferguson models vaccines at Imperial College
Yesterday, the UK Government continued its unjust and irrational shutdown of major sectors of the economy and, incidentally, of large areas of the NHS. They intensified Covid-19 Project Fear. Why does the UK persist with a policy which the rest of Europe is now abandoning?
Social distancing ‘indefinitely’
A comment from the false prophet whose biased modelling spooked the Government into starting the lockdown gives us a clue. According to the BBC, Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College said we should expect a “significant level” of social distancing “indefinitely”. It would continue until a vaccine for Covid-19 is rolling off the production line. And that could be later this year, or maybe not until 2021.
Dr Ferguson went on: “And I should say, it’s not going to be going back to normal. We will have to maintain some level of social distancing, a significant level of social distancing, probably indefinitely until we have a vaccine available.”
Health Minister Nadine Dorries (@NadineDorries) tweeted last night: ‘Journalists should stop asking about an ‘exit strategy.’ There is only one way we can ‘exit’ full lockdown and that is when we have a vaccine. Until then, we need to find ways we can adapt society and strike a balance between the health of the nation and our economy. #COVID19’
Incidentally, Nadine Dorries is supposed to hold the brief for mental health and suicide prevention. Only this morning says the BBC the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were warning how stressful the lockdown is on mental health.
Vaccines save lives
Now, before you dismiss this article as yet another anti-vaccine tirade, let me make my position clear. I have evidence that vaccines save lives. Years ago, we used to lose young lambs every year on the farm. Just as they were starting to put on weight from the spring grass, they would keel over and die. It was always the best ones, the biggest.
What was going on? What was killing them? When I shared the problem with a neighbouring sheep farmer, he told me it was most likely pasteurellosis pneumonia or a clostridial disease such as pulpy kidney picked up with the spring grass. And what was the answer? Heptavac, he said. As the name suggests, the solution contains seven vaccines in one dose.
That very day, I started a vaccination programme for the whole flock. Subsequently, we vaccinate all new lambs and give the ewes a booster just before lambing, which they pass on in colostrum to the lamb before the lambs receive their own dose of Heptavac. The result? No more dead lambs. Vaccination works. World-wide, the return is said to be $44 dollars of productivity for every $1 spent on vaccines as people stay alive for longer.
Ferguson is vaccine modeller
But compulsory vaccination is another matter entirely. We also need to remember vaccination, particularly on a large human scale, makes pharmaceutical companies a lot of money. The vaccine market is worth more than $35 billion today, according to AB Bernstein. Four big players account for about 85% of the market — British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, French pharmaceutical company Sanofi, and U.S.-based Merck and Pfizer.
So is Professor Ferguson a mere dispassionate observer of human vaccines and vaccination programmes just like you and me?
The VIMC looks at ‘the impact of vaccination programmes worldwide’. It’s data helps ‘inform potential future investments and vaccine scale-up opportunities’.
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Imperial College London – taken from a page on which they advertise their ‘Master of Public Health (MPH) course.
Now who is the world’s biggest vaccine enthusiast? Step forward Bill Gates, late of Microsoft, now putting all his energy into vaccination programmes.
So it comes as no surprise, as this breakdown shows, to find the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have given Imperial College $184,872,226.99 (yes, nearly $185m) from 2006 to 2018. Only Wellcome Trust has given Imperial College more down the years.
If we narrow the money trail down only to Imperial College’s VIMC, its ‘About us’ page reveals ‘The Consortium is funded by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the data generated by the Consortium will support the evaluation of the two organisations’ existing vaccination programmes, and inform potential future investments and vaccine scale-up opportunities.’ There are those ‘scale-up opportunities’ again.
Exod 23:8 And thou shalt take no gift: for the gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous.
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance
Now we have an appearance of ‘Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance’. GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) apparently started up twenty years ago at the World Economic Forum with a $750m donation from Bill Gates. Bill and Melinda were looking at the time at projects in which to invest. The year 2000 Gavi donation started the Gates’ passion for vaccines. Today, Gavi claims to have vaccinated half the world’s children.
However, although Gavi boasts partners such as Unicef, the World Health Organisation (WHO), the World Bank, vaccine manufacturers (what a surprise) and donor country governments, its biggest contributor is now the UK Government, providing 23.44% of its income as against a mere 19.66% from Bill & Melinda.
This 2015 webpage from Gavi reveals their CEO, Dr Seth Berkley, seeking to ‘raise billions of dollars to ensure Gavi Is fully funded between 2016 and 2020’.
ID2020
Here is where it all becomes somewhat creepy. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is a founding partner of ID2020. This body ‘supports digital identity programs’. It claims ‘The Need for Good Digital ID is Universal’. The ID2020 ‘digital identity’ webpage even tries to enrol human rights as it tries to expand digital ID. ‘The ability to prove who you are is a fundamental and universal human right’, it says. Meanwhile, its manifesto begins by stating ‘identity is a human right and that individuals must have “ownership” over their own identity.’
Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of GAVI, seen here addressing the Davos forum, also sits on the board of ID2020
Other ‘Founding Partners’ of ID2020 include Microsoft and the Rockefeller Foundation. Gavi’s Dr. Seth Berkley sits on the Executive Board of ID2020.
Why? It is because, as the Biometric Update website reveals, immunization can be ‘leveraged’ as ‘an opportunity to establish digital identity’. A pilot programme in Bangladesh ‘was unveiled by ID2020 in partnership with the Bangladesh Government’s Access to Information (a2i) Program, the Directorate General of Health Services, and Gavi.’
Biometric Update go on, helpfully, to explain: ‘Digital identity is a computerized record of who a person is, stored in a registry. It is used, in this case, to keep track of who has received vaccination.’ Gavi want ‘to use biometrics to improve vaccine coverage in developing nations.’
It is not just in developing nations that ID2020 biometrics will be useful to the authorities. In the city of Austin, Texas, we read how homeless people will be ’empowered’ with ‘their own’ identity data. How good is that?
Rapid Vac
In September 2017, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation together with the Wellcome Trust and the governments of Norway and India launched The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Pronounce it as ‘Seppy’.
The CEPI website, ‘New vaccines for a safer world’, says CEPI is ‘a global alliance financing and coordinating the development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases.’ It has headquarters in Oslo. Its website lists its ‘investers and partners’ who include the UK and the EU. Charlotte Watts, Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Department for International Development sits on the CEPI board as does Jeremy Farrar of Wellcome Trust and Peter Piot of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. LSH&TM also provides CEPI’s Scientific Advisory Committee with Dr John Edmunds and Dr Peter Smith.
Charlotte Watts, Jeremy Farrar and John Edmunds also sit on the UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) as does Neil Ferguson. So don’t expect SAGE to come out strongly for ‘herd immunity’ as a preferred policy.
Professor Robin Shattock develops vaccines at Imperial College
CEPI is, as you will already have guessed, awash with money. In December 2018 it gave $8.4m to Imperial College London as this IC webpage shows to develop a rapid vaccine against new unknown pathogens, ‘Disease X’. It says: ‘Through this partnership, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Imperial aims to develop vaccines against new and unknown pathogens within 16 weeks from identification of antigen to product release for clinical trials.’ It is the latter stage which takes the time.
Professor Robin Shattock is the Head of Mucosal Infection and Immunity within the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London. He said ‘Vaccines are needed more than ever—essential to outbreak response, biosecurity, and the ever-present threat of a Disease X scenario.’ Professor Robin Shattock is a colleague of Professor Neil Ferguson. Professor Shattock develops the vaccines. Professor Ferguson models their impact. Both are funded by Gavi and Bill & Melinda Gates.
Bill Gates fears natural immunity
Bill Gates fears natural immunity
So why was Dr Neil Ferguson saying social distancing, for which read a version of lockdown, must stay until there is a vaccine? The answer lies in an interview Bill Gates gave on 24th March reported on the Off-Guardian website. In it:
‘Bill Gates outlined that, despite the comparatively small threat of Coronavirus, he and his colleagues “don’t want a lot of recovered people” who have acquired natural immunity. They instead are hoping we become reliant on vaccines and anti-viral medication.’
On the population developing their own immunity, Mr Gates said: ‘We don’t want to have a lot of recovered people […] To be clear, we’re trying – through the shut-down in the United States – to not get to one percent of the population infected.’
It is exactly the same approach as that of Neil Ferguson. Both want to ensure that as few of us as possible develop immunity, so as to maintain the market for the vaccine, when it eventually arrives.
Now we understand why Professor Ferguson had to produce a mathematical model, with the ludicrous half-a-million deaths, designed to scare the politicians away from Boris Johnson’s entirely sensible initial response, built on keeping calm, carrying on, isolating the vulnerable, taking health precautions and allowing ‘herd immunity’ to build up. It was nothing to do with public health. It was all about money. Nor did Professor Ferguson at any stage declare his conflict of interest. And make no mistake, this profile of a member of his Imperial College team confirms his Gavi funding and shows how deeply Neil Ferguson is embedded in the vaccine industry.
This may also account for the slow roll-out of antibody tests. If those show Covid-19 antibodies in half the population it really is game over for the vaccine.
Digital immunity proof
Off-Guardian says: ‘Shockingly, Gates also suggests people be made to have a digital ID showing their vaccination status, and that people without this “digital immunity proof” would not be allowed to travel. Such an approach would mean very big money for vaccine producers.’
So now the link to ID2020 and biometric data comes closer to home. Mr Gates said: ‘Eventually what we’ll have to have is certificates of who’s a recovered person, who’s a vaccinated person […] Because you don’t want people moving around the world where you’ll have some countries that won’t have it under control, sadly. You don’t want to completely block off the ability for people to go there and come back and move around. So eventually there will be this digital immunity proof that will help facilitate the global reopening up.’
Email your MP right now
Dr Neil Ferguson has been exposed already as a false prophet. Now we know what is driving him. And the Government have bought it hook, line and sinker.
Bear in mind also how the UK Government has shown from its funding programmes how wedded it is in any case to vaccine programmes.
EMAIL your MP from this Parliament link; you have to click on their name twice to reach their email address. Witness to your MP using the material here. Note we say people should take obvious health precautions, and those at risk can remain in isolation. But the general economy must now return to normal, if it is not already too late.
In particular, ask your MP to ask the Government to confirm Professor Neil Ferguson works for the vaccine industry, ask them why he has never disclosed that conflict of interest and demand getting us all back to work must not depend on some vaccine.
I said to my MP: ‘I am shocked by the comments from Nadine Dorries and Professor Neil Ferguson that your constituents have to wait for a vaccine against Covid-19 before we can all return to work.
‘That is an unreasonable and unjust demand. And may I ask you to ask the Government to what extent Professor Ferguson has disclosed his financial links to the vaccine industry?’
Amos 5:12 For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.
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NHS Nightingale Hospital at Excel Centre in London is virtually unoccupied.
NHS Nightingale Hospital at Excel Centre in London is virtually unoccupied.
So UK lockdown continues. Does anyone recall any public consultation over it? Any public discussion? Any publication of a measured analysis of the economic, social and health effects? I don’t remember voting to be part of some vast dystopia.
The Bible says: Prov 20:18 Every purpose is established by counsel: and with good advice make war.
The only advice the UK Government took was from the false prophet of doom, Dr Neil Ferguson of Imperial College.
Government took a rash decision
The Daily Express reports that only now is the Health Secretary getting together with the Chancellor of the Exchequer to calculate the impact of the lockdown that is putting millions of jobs and businesses at risk. In an extraordinary admission, Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP said: “We do not yet have an established estimate of the impact of the huge problems in the economy on to the health of the nation.
“But it is a piece of work that I am working on jointly with the Chancellor to make sure that when we make the big policy decisions, especially around social distancing, we take into account the impact on the health and wellbeing of everyone in the country.
“Not just on the highly visible impact on the deaths from coronavirus but right across the board including indirectly from the economic impact of the crisis.”
They brought in the shutdown on 23rd March. Three full weeks later, they are getting around to assessing the damage it will do. They have been thoroughly irresponsible. We talk of ‘economics’ and so on, but that word is made up of real people trying to provide for their families.
Our Lord himself gave his followers an illustration in which it is clearly expected that leaders will weigh everything up and not make rash decisions:
Luke 14:31 Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?
Decision week – email your MP!
This is the week in which the UK Government must by law decide whether to continue their shutdown, or allow people back to work. The Daily Express reports on one page that we shall have to wait until 25th May, And on another page that is could be as early as this week. It’s just conjecture. We need to pray:
Jer 29:7 And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.
Email your MP from this link; you have to click on their name twice to reach their email address. Witness to your MP using the material here. Note we say people should take obvious health precautions, and those at risk can remain in isolation. But the general economy must now return to normal, if it is not already too late.
Economic disaster
According to the Express, a leaked Treasury reports the UK already faces economic disaster. The same paper says ‘Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) manufacturers in England are being hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic with 87 percent of companies seeing a big drop in output, a new report suggests.’
The Guardian reports on the failure of a flagship Government scheme: ‘The government has admitted that just 1.4% of businesses that enquired about its coronavirus business interruption loan scheme (CBILS) have so far been successful.’ But yet again, businesses do not need taxpayer money, they need the Government to allow them to work.
Eccl 2:24 There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God.
Furthermore, just this morning, reports the BBC, the Office for Budget Responsibility says if the current lockdown lasts for three months, the UK economy ‘should shrink’ by a record 35% by June. It said ‘a three-month lockdown followed by three months of partial restrictions would push up Britain’s borrowing bill to an estimated £273bn this financial year, or 14% of gross domestic product (GDP).
‘This would represent the largest deficit as a share of GDP since World War II.
False sense of insecurity
Yet still the fear of the virus is being talked up, as both Government and Mass Media try to lull the people into a false sense of insecurity. Exactly why is there a Covid-19 Project Fear? Any ideas? Leave your comment below!
Then ex-MP and Brexiteer Douglas Carswell said in a tweet that that the purpose has changed. (Remember regime- change wars, where the purpose also changes over time?): ‘Initially we were told that the purpose of lockdown was to slow the rate at which infection spread – not necessarily reducing total infections – so as to allow health care capacity to be put in place. Media pundits now report as though its to reduce total infections.’
NHS beds unoccupied
Statistics coming out only this morning show how the Government has over-reacted in connection with the NHS.
Health Check website HSJ reveals NHS hospitals have four times more empty beds than normal. They say: ‘Figures from the national NHS operational dashboard, seen by HSJ, show that 40.9 per cent of NHS general acute beds were unoccupied as of the weekend — 37,500 of the total 91,600 relevant beds recorded in the data. That is 4,500 more than the 33,000 the NHS said had been freed up on 27 March, and nearly four times the normal amount of free acute beds at this time of year.’
On yet another page, they show the much-vaunted ‘Nightingale Hospital’ in London’s Excel Centre is ‘largely empty as ICUs handle surge’. They go on: ‘just 19 patients (were) being treated at the facility over the Easter weekend, HSJ understands.’ That is 0.5% of capacity: ‘According to draft plans, the temporary hospital in the Docklands was designed to have 2,900 intensive care beds, along with 750 further beds.’
Deaths rise across (some of) Europe
Oh yes, and while the BBC headline is ‘Coronavirus pushes England and Wales death rate to record high’, their article admits ‘coronavirus deaths only contribute under 60% of these (additional) deaths.’ So what has driven the other 40%?
The latest EuroMomo map for Week 14 of 2020 shows no excess of deaths in most of Europe, including Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, all down from ‘above expected’ the week before. Belgium is ‘above expected’ now. England, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland are all at ‘very high’. But geographers are now suggesting that population density affects the spread of Covid-19 more than anything else. It would follow that shutdowns achieve no more than destroying the economy.
Sweden – no lockdown, no panic
Graph comparing Covid-19 cases in European countries. Look for Sweden.
Sweden has no lockdown and no panic. Gatherings of more than 50 people are banned, so there is no organised sport, drama or music. But restaurants and primary schools are still open. The prime minister joked that Swedes are genetically predisposed to social distancing. The prophets of doom would expect Sweden to be adversely affected by Covid-19.
In fact, Worldometer shows their cases of Covid-19 and deaths with Covid-19 are per head of population currently half of the UK’s.
Graph showing Covid-19 deaths across Europe. Once again, Sweden is nowhere near the top.
‘Dr Cecilia Soderberg Naucler, an expert in microbial pathogenesis at the Karolinska Institute, believes this trust (in Swedish good sense) is unfounded and will soon break.
‘“I’m a scientist, I only trust data and the data says we are heading for catastrophe. We are now part of an experiment without informed consent”.’
With respect, ‘heading for catastrophe’ is not data, it’s prophecy. And if she thinks Sweden is carrying out an experiment ‘without informed consent’ she should come to the UK.
Meanwhile, graphs showing Covid-19 cases and deaths across Europe reveal Sweden is doing no worse than any other nation and better than most. The geographers and the Swedish PM could well be right. Go HERE for the deaths graph and HERE for the cases graph on a larger scale.
Police excesses
Following a South Yorkshire Police woman constable telling a family (wrongly) they were not allowed in their own front garden, on video, Northamptonshire’s Chief Constable threatened to inspect people’s shopping baskets, and others warned Easter eggs were not essential. Whatever we might think of Easter eggs, or even the word ‘Easter’, people give them as gifts as they cheer ordinary folk up. And if chocolate in general is ‘essential’ …
Eager to be in on the act, the Central Community Team of Bedfordshire Police tweeted on Saturday: ‘@CentralBedsCPT · Apr 11: If you think that by going for a picnic in a rural location no one will find you, don’t be surprised if an officer appears from the shadows! We are covering the whole county #urbanandrural #StayHomeSaveLifes #ProtectTheNHS.’
I tweeted back: ‘What a disgrace. People putting themselves and others at no risk at all, yet Bedfordshire Police are lurking in the shadows to nick them, and no doubt getting within 2m to do so. #PoliceStateUK’
Finally, Breitbart reported Northern Ireland Police setting up a website so people can report on their neighbours breakjing the lockdown. I suppose with lockdown, people and the police have little else to do.
The Bible says: Lev 19:16 Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people: neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour: I am the LORD.
Prov 11:13 A talebearer revealeth secrets: but he that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter.
On this day
It is chastening to remember that on 14th April in history:
In 1759, George Frederic Handel died aged 74,
At the theatre in 1865, Abraham Lincoln was shot,
In 1912, Titanic sank with the loss of over 1,500 lives.
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Health Minister Adward Argar wants the UK lockdown to stay , oblivious of the wider economic and social oppression it is causing
Health Minister Adward Argar wants the UK lockdown to stay , oblivious of the wider economic and social oppression it is causing
The UK Government COBRA committee was meeting as we went to press. We do not expect any relaxation of their lockdown measures next week, but we shall keep praying. Deaths in the UK rose to 7,988 with known cases yesterday at 60,733. Those tested stands at 232,708. As more universal testing is rolled out, with drive-in centres, the true figure of those infected by Covid-19 in the population will be less influenced by those who were only tested because they had symptoms. At the moment 26% of those seen tested positive for Covid-19.
Meanwhile, in answer to prayer, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, continues to recover in Intensive Care at St Thomas’s Hospital. Right at the bottom of this post we dismiss a bit of fake news circulating about an alleged aspiration of the ‘Chief Consultant’. Nevertheless, pray that Mr Johnson may find faith in Jesus while he recovers.
Lift the Lockdown!
We continue to urge the immediate lifting of the lockdown so that people can salvage the wreckage of their jobs and businesses and get back to providing for their families. Remember, the entire travel, leisure, hospitality, High Street and educational sectors have been shut down, with knock-on effects all over the United Kingdom. The millions affected do not want tax-payer-funded bail-outs. They want their jobs and businesses back.
It remains that the Government are oppressing the population by denying folk the ability to earn and the freedom to go out of doors.
Lev 25:17 Ye shall not therefore oppress one another; but thou shalt fear thy God: for I am the LORD your God.
And depriving men of their wages is a sin which cries to heaven:
James 5:4 Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.
Chastise you with scorpions
Fear of God has been replaced by an unreasoning fear of the effects of a virus. They took the wrong advice, from Dr Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, just as much as did king Rehoboam when they people asked him to reduce their tax burden:
1Kings 12:13 And the king answered the people roughly, and forsook the old men’s counsel that they gave him; 14 And spake to them after the counsel of the young men, saying, My father made your yoke heavy, and I will add to your yoke: my father also chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.
The Government have prioritised a hypothetical problem, that the NHS would be overwhelmed, over a real disaster, the loss of millions of jobs and businesses coupled with a HM Treasury debt which makes Jeremy Corbyn’s famous ‘Magic Money Tree’ look like the epitome of frugal spending plans.
They did it without any public consultation at all. What did the public think of the balance between possible problems for the NHS and predictable real economic hardship for the population? We weren’t asked, and we couldn’t be, because the Government neither prepared nor requistioned any economic or social assessment of the impact of ‘lockdown’ measures at all. They were completely fixated, even terrified, by what might happen in the NHS.
Scientific ‘advice’
And they still haven’t ‘got it’. The Evening Standard reports Health Minister Edward Argar setting out his stall over any relaxation of the rules next week. He told Sky on Wednesday morning: ‘Now is not the time to let up.’ Mr Argar said ministers will ‘wait for scientific advice that the time was right.’
On the one hand, one might expect a Health Minister to be concerned about the NHS. But on the other hand, surely the ‘Health’ of the nation is bigger than the NHS. What about mental health? What about the effects of poverty and an ability to eat properly? It is clear from Mr Argar’s remarks that the Government still have not assessed the economic damage they are doing. Or if they have, they are not admitting to it. That is why I put in a Freedom of Information Request almost two weeks ago now, asking for the economic modelling they have done on the economic and social effects of their lockdown measures.
And it is also becoming clear from this report that there is now no threat of the NHS being overwhelmed, or if it is, it is solely the result of lack of Government foresight. That is not just over the last ten years, or twenty years, but over the last four months.
Beds, staff, kit and oxygen
One consultant in critical care being interviewed on BBC said he needs four things. He needs beds, he needs staff, he needs kit, medical & protective equipment, and he needs supplies of oxygen. Frankly, the beds are up and running. We have pop-up hospitals awaiting the predicted deluge of patients. There are reports of A&E staff twiddling their thumbs. 250,00 volunteers, many of them retired and fully-trained, have come forward. Oxygen is a simple matter of procurement.
That leaves medical and protective equipment, and testing. The Government should have started to source these as soon as the outbreak started in Wuhan. But stories about the lack of them are drying up, so we assume they have made progress.
We are constantly trying here to put things into perspective. To date, worldwide, 82,000 people have died from or with Covid-19. However, in just one week, twice as many die in the world from malnutrition.
5 additional deaths per hospital
Almost 8,000 deaths to date in the UK sounds scary, until you realise there are 1,600 hospitals in England alone. So over the past two months there have been less than an average of 5 additional deaths per hospital, or taking a 50% mortality rate in ICU, ten extra patients in each ICU unit, if each fatality occurred in ICU (which they didn’t).
The Kings Fund reports ‘the UK has fewer acute beds relative to its population than many comparable health systems.’ Talking of critical care beds, ‘by 2019/20 this had risen to 5,900,’ of which 4129 are available to adults.
According to this informative (as opposed to propagandist) page on the BBC, men are most at risk from death associated with Covid-19. This confirms what we already knew, that women fight coronavruses better than men. Our immune systems are apparently different. men outnumber women as Covid-19 deaths in every age bracket, and by two to one in those aged 65-84.
“Towards a flat curve”
But Angela McLean, chief scientific adviser at the Ministry of Defence, said new UK cases of the virus are “not accelerating out of control.” But she still says a “longer run” of infections data will be needed to see when schools can reopen, adding “so much depends” on the trends.
She adds that the UK data is getting “towards a flat curve”. Angela McLean says there has been just a 4% increase in patients in critical care over the 24 hours from Tuesday to Wednesday.
NHS England’s medical director Stephen Powis says there are the “first signs of a plateauing” in the infections data
He maintains this is “not the time to become complacent”, noting that without social distancing measures cases would otherwise be “steeply rising” on an “exponential curve”.
But he is completely complacent about the effects on peoples livelihoods.
Financial downturn
The BBC Reports that yet another leading economic think tank believes the lockdown (not ‘the pandemic’, BBC!) will have far-reaching consequences for people’s health in the UK because of the impact on the NHS and the likely financial downturn.
A briefing note from the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests that wide-scale job losses could deepen inequalities, while the knock-on effects of cancelling non-urgent operations may take years to reverse. The paper is called: ‘Recessions and health: The long-term health consequences of responses to coronavirus.’ In its introduction it says: ‘Existing literature on the health impacts of business-cycle fluctuations and recessions shows that the resulting economic downturn will have significant consequences on people’s health outcomes in the short and longer term.’ Did anyone tell the Government that?
“The health impacts of the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic will be felt long after the social distancing measures come to an end,” said Heidi Karjalainen, one of the authors.
‘Mortality associated with suicide…’
The rate of viral transmission will be lower in the resulting economic downturn, says the report. Moreover, the downturn ‘will hit some industries more than others, and consequently some regions more than others’. It goes on: ‘ Those areas that are hit hardest are those that are the most deprived … which are precisely the kind of areas least able to withstand negative shocks.’ A study from the US showed how industrial decline affects males particularly. ‘Changes in economic fortunes can lead to ‘deaths of despair’, the term coined by Case and Deaton (2015 and 2017) who documented strikingly large rises in mortality associated with suicide, alcohol and drug abuse amongst low-educated white American males.’ Did the Government take any of that into account? I think we know the answer.
And just let us remind ourselves that ‘Love thy neighbour’ means being concerned with the whole of life.
We read: Prov 2:6 For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.
We need wisdom so we do not fall for every aspect of Government and mass media propaganda.
No gay lessons
It may be clutching at straws, for although we maintain schools and universities should reopen as usual after Easter, at least during the closures children have not been indoctrinated with pro-sodomy propaganda in their schools. The pressure for both secondary and primary children to decide they are in ‘the wrong body’ has also receded. Opportunities for ‘Mermaids’ and other transgender lobbyists, as well as ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ have been much reduced, thank God.
On the downside, the new RSE guidelines take effect in September this year. We are losing valuable time to hold meetings and make parents aware. ‘Gay lessons’ are right at the heart of Government plans.
Furthermore, the wickedness of transgenderism, together with the child abuse of anti-puberty hormone blockers can be affecting every school across the kingdom.
Learning from the UK
Asked about comments from the chief medical officer Tuesday on the high level of testing in Germany lowering death rates, Mr Powis says it is “one of many factors and there are a range of things”.
He says the CMO was “also making clear it is important that all countries learn from each other”, adding: “No doubt other countries want to learn from our work on modelling and predicting what the epidemic might do.”
They will certainly want to learn from the UK how not to rely on heartless scientific false prophets like Dr Neil Ferguson and how not to trash an entire economy as the UK has done.
Reading the debate in the House of Commons on Covid-19 on 16th March, it is startling how every comment ab out the economic effects of lockdown measures focussed entirely on how much taxpayers support there could and should be for those losing their jobs. Not one MP, with the sole exception of Jeremy Hunt, wondered, let alone suggested, it might be better if the electorate did not lose their jobs in the first place.
Wales jumps the gun
Even now, speaking about the Chancellor’s offer of taxpayer support for some charities, shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds said: “While this announcement is welcome, it falls far short of filling the financial black hole many organisations are facing. Ministers should continue to look at what additional measures can be made available.” There was not a word of recognition that it is the lockdown which is causing all the problems.
In Wales, the lockdown will be extended into next week, the first minister has confirmed. Mark Drakeford said Wales must “not throw away gains” made against coronavirus “by abandoning our efforts just as they begin to bear fruit”. He expects other parts of the UK to do the same. For a nation so dependent on tourism and farming his remarks are irresponsible. But he will not be among those wondering where the next meal is coming from.
But Chancellor Rishi Sunak declined to say whether the UK government will follow the Welsh Government in extending the coronavirus lockdown. They will not now decide whether or not to extend the lockdown on Easter Monday, but have to decide before Thursday 16th April, just a week today.
Germany: economy will fall 9.8%
The Daily Express has reported: ‘GERMANY’S economy is forecast to plummet by a massive 9.8 percent in the April to June quarter in what would be its biggest fall since records began in 1970, as Angela Merkel faces up to a disastrous recession triggered by the coronavirus crisis.’ Or, rather, by the various lockdown measures in Germany. In fact the Express report is wrong in one statistic. They say, ‘ Germany has reported nearly 110,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and almost 11,000 deaths – fifth only behind the US, Spain, Italy and France.’
Worldometer puts the figures yesterday at Cases: 110,698 Deaths: 2,192. Today it is 114,257 and 2,349. Interestingly, the state with the most server lockdown, Bavaria, also has the highest number of deaths, at 564 to date. But if Germany is looking at a 9.8% fall in its economy, what is the UK going to resemble?
Who benefits?
We continue to speculate who benefits from the absurd measures government have introduced all over the world. At the moment, it seems bankers, medical equipment manufactureres and pharmaceuticals. We intend to take a look at Mr Bill Gates and Melinda’s Foundation next week.
We do not view the Covid-19 virus as the judgment of God. Nevertheless, the reaction of all the world elites might well be. The Bible says:
2Thess 2:11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
US Martial Law threat
Cheyenne Mountain Complex
But here’s strange. In the US, ‘Northern Command’ (NORTHCOM) oversees the US, Canada, Mexico and Peurto Rico.
Off-Guardian suggests its head, Air Force General Terrence O’Shaughnessy, is ready to assume de facto presidency in martial law.
RT reports the general and several other top brass are now holed up deep underground in the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. They say it is ‘a warren of tunnels buried under 2,000 feet (610m) of granite, and sealed behind blast doors designed to withstand a 30 megaton nuclear explosion.’
Off-Guardian also shows that the UK Coronavirus Act will not necessarily expire in two years. Many worrying provisions will not expire at all, including government legal indemnity for any harm done when a patient is being treated for Covid19 or ôsuspected Covid19ö. In addition, section 89(3) says: ‘A Minister of the Crown may by regulations make transitional, transitory or saving provision in connection with the expiry of any provision of this Act.’ In other words, a government minister may simply over-ride the expiry of any ‘temporary’ part of the Act.
Wuhan propaganda video
Meanwhile, the BBC is airing a video entitled “Coronavirus: ‘Please learn from Wuhan’s mistakes’.” It is worth watching as a master-class in propaganda.
In fact, there is nothing about any mistakes made in Wuhan, except perhaps that medical supplies were late in arriving.
Otherwise, well, would you expect any nice decent-looking middle-class Chinese person to go on video and say their government was wrong? “I hope people can learn from Wuhan,” says a girl wearing a mask at the end, “so that others don’t have to sacrifice as much and fewer mistakes are made”.
Some hope here, barring a miracle.
Ignoring the lockdown!
In Manchester, the BBC reportthe Police shut down 660 parties last weekend.
Meanwhile, Harrogate is ‘disregarding’ stay at home advice. Police say the spa town residents are showing a ‘blatant disregard’ for ‘stay at home’ advice. The BBC reports: ‘North Yorkshire Police said it was disappointing and meant the force would be stepping up patrols in the area.’
If the Government left it all to people’s good sense, none of this police heavy-handed approach would be needed. How much better it would be to have the consent of the people:
Neh 11:2 And the people blessed all the men, that willingly offered themselves to dwell at Jerusalem.
Doctor Fake News
Finally, a story about ‘Christian Doctor Overseeing Boris Johnson Asks For Prayer’ is almost certainly fake news. Unnamed doctor, no verifiable source, there actually isn’t a ‘Chief Consultant in Critical Care at St Thomas’s Hospital’ (https://www.guysandstthomas.nhs.uk/our-services/critical-care/team.aspx), and above all no doctor would blast all over the internet that he is trying to lead a named patient to the Lord!
Let alone the clinical director of pulmonary medicine, Dr Richard Leach, who is the real doctor overseeing Mr Johnson’s care. I should not be surprised if Dr Leach is a Christian, as many doctors are, but there is no record of him being attached to Metropolitan Tabernacle, even if he is washed in the precious blood. Please do not forward such a message if you receive it.
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Marie Stopes abortion ‘clinic' in south London – we killed 595 unborn children, legally, every day in 2018 in GB. In America, they murder 3,700 each day.
Marie Stopes abortion ‘clinic’ in south London – we killed 595 unborn children, legally, every day in 2018 in GB. In America, they murder 3,700 each day.
A significant milestone was reached over the weekend, but it was not the ‘thousand deaths a day’ from Covid-19 predicted by Dr Paul Hunter, Professor of Medicine at the University of East Anglia as reported by the Sun. It was that deaths attributed to Covid-19 in the UK exceeded the number of children killed daily by abortion in Great Britain based on 2018 figures, the latest available.
Abortion milestone
On average, 595 children died every single day during 2018 in what should be the safest place on earth. Many of these infanticides were at the hands of NHS staff applauded on their way to work. We should be repenting of such legalised slaughter, which can only bring the judgment of Almighty God. The church in Russia has urged repentance and prayer for deliverance.
Zech 1:3 Therefore say thou unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Turn ye unto me, saith the LORD of hosts, and I will turn unto you, saith the LORD of hosts.
Deaths from, or with, Covid-19 passed the abortion death milestone with 684 deaths reported on Friday, 708 on Saturday, 621 on Sunday before falling to 432 reported on Monday. Pray this marks the start of a decline in deaths. NHS England tells us 52% of all Covid-19 deaths have been among people aged 80 and above. Just 15 of the 5,000-odd fatalities had no underlying health condition. It is chastening to remember that when Covid-19 is a mere memory, children in the womb will continue to be massacred at the same rate, legally, across our land.
Jer 32:35 And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.
Pray for our leaders
The Guardian reports scientists struggling to understand why some apparently fit and healthy young people with no underlying health conditions have died. In addition, why do the majority of people exposed to the virus not even contract Covid-19, half have no symptoms, half do, some shake it off while others have real problems?
At the moment they have two theories. One is that some people have somehow taken in a lot of virus particles, causing ‘viral overload’. The other is that there is a genetic component to how we fight infections.
The Bible tells us: 1Tim 2:2 (Pray) For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.
So we pray for Boris Johnson who appears to have developed pneumonia and is at this time of writing in hospital.
STOP PRESS Tuesday 7th April 2020
Last night the Prime Minister was rushed into intensive care. No 10 say he does not have pneumonia for which the British Lung Foundation says treatment would be antibiotics with supportive care. He is not on a ventilator but receiving oxygen. It is good to remember people also recover after ICU treatment so we are praying and fasting for the Lord to restore the PM with miraculous speed. It just takes one word from the Lord for healing, and for salvation:
Matt 8:8 The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.
We also pray for safety for the royal family, especially for the Queen, and for all her ministers.
Even some republicans agree Her Majesty the Queen struck the right note in her broadcast on Sunday evening. For me, a mention of those who have lost their jobs or businesses would have shown compassion. It seemed to me to be a little bit along the government line. But what could one expect?
Effects on the economy and long-term health
It seems positive cases of Covid-19 are slowing. This might mean the shutdown is having some effect or it might have happened anyway. Intuitively, if you lock up virtually the whole population as France and the UK have done, transmission rates between families should decrease, even if they increase within families. But at what economic, social and long-term health cost?
Jer 7:34 Then will I cause to cease from the cities of Judah, and from the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride: for the land shall be desolate.
Indeed, the effects on the economy, with all the implications for long-term health, are turning out just as bad as we predicted, according to this must-read report in the Mailonline. The Centre for Economics and Business Research says the UK economy is losing a staggering £2.4bn per day as a result of the shutdown of construction, schools, hospitality and general retail. The loss of these activities is also affecting manufacturing and all the small businesses which serve them. The country’s output has been slashed by 31%. Moreover, it is not ‘the coronavirus’ causing the economic impact, but the Government lockdown measures.
STOP PRESS Tuesday 7th April 2020
Both the BBC HERE and the Guardian HERE are now reporting on a study from University College London published in The Lancet.
The academics say ‘school closures have little impact on spread of coronavirus’. The ‘small benefits’ should be ‘weighed against profound economic and social costs’.
One of the research authors, Professor Russell Viner, said: “Data on the benefit of school closures in the coronavirus outbreak is limited, but what we know shows that their impact is likely to be only small.
“Additionally, the costs of national school closures are high – children’s education is damaged and their mental health may suffer, family finances are affected.
“Policymakers need to be aware of the equivocal evidence.”
He says policymakers must weigh up the possible harms and reopen schools at the earliest opportunity – and not necessarily wait until September if it can be done safely sooner.
Naturally, Dr Neil Ferguson of Imperial College disagrees, so it looks like these two London seats of learning are at daggers drawn. We can but pray University College prevails and schools reopen after Easter as normal. We understand a Government review of the lockdown measures will take place on Easter Monday, 13th April. Pray for reason to prevail.
Let us not forget, king Ahab relied on false prophets, prompting king Jehoshaphat to call for a true prophet:
2Chron 18:6 But Jehoshaphat said, Is there not here a prophet of the LORD besides, that we might enquire of him?
People could lose their lives
The Guardian is reporting that ‘millions could slip through’ what it calls ‘the virus safety net’, the financial aid available from the UK taxpayer. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says many self-employed workers would still get no support. Others, it says, could be left financially better off than they would have been.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith warned the economy could only take a few more weeks of lockdown before it was damaged beyond repair. He said: ‘If the economy tanks, then that affects people’s quality of life, their jobs and their mental health – and significant numbers of people could lose their lives.’ But it is beginning to look as if no-one in the corridors of power bothered to consider those sort of effects at all.
Professor Graham Medley, a top government advisor, is now warning that the lockdown is harming ‘the incomes of people who rely on a continuous stream of money and their children’. Who knows where that will lead?
Prov 6:30 Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry;
More deadly than the virus
Younger workers are particularly affected, as many work in the hospitality sector. Just today, Simon Kempton from the Police Federation told the Home Affairs Select Committee that the police are seeing ‘the very, very early indications of an increase in suicide attempts and suicides, far too early to say that that’s a real trend, but there’s very early indications of that.’
A Sky News host maintains Australia is making the same wrong decisions resulting in the same dire outcomes.
Mervyn King, who was governor of the Bank of England during the 2008 financial crisis, has warned a prolonged lockdown is unrealistic. ‘If we have a lockdown for too long there will be a rebellion against it.’ People will begin to realise that the government is oppressing the workers by forbidding them to work. This word shows how God regards such a sin. I should say someone putting hard work into starting a small business only to see their reward kept back by ministerial order, is also entitled to cry to heaven:
Jas 5:4 Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.
‘Irrational horror of death’
Taxes and borrowings are also certain to rise for generations as a result of the incompetence of the Government. God said through the Prophet Ezekiel: Ezek 45:9 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Let it suffice you, O princes of Israel: remove violence and spoil, and execute judgment and justice, take away your exactions from my people, saith the Lord GOD.
Former Supreme Court Justice Jonathon Sumption said the public’s ‘irrational horror of death’ has led to unnecessarily ‘costly’ measures. Writing in The Sunday Times, Lord Sumption, 71, said the strict governmental measures will bring ‘even greater misfortunes of a different kind’. He wrote: ‘We have acquired an irrational horror of death. Today death is the great obscenity, inevitable but somehow unnatural. In the midst of life, our ancestors lived with death, an everpresent fact that they understood and accommodated.’
The Bible says: Eccl 9:3 This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.
Buy a book in Berlin but not read it
EuroMomo’s latest map for Week 13 of 2020 now shows England and Switzerland in ‘High’ excess deaths while Spain and Italy are now ‘Very High’. Belgium is ‘Above Expected’. However, the rest of Europe is still in ‘No Excess’.
Germany is doing far better than the UK according to Worldometer, with only 1,612 deaths at this time of writing (18:00hrs 06/04/2020) and 101,178 cases. The UK was correspondingly 5,373 deaths and 51,608 cases. So we see how Germany’s emphasis on mass testing has paid dividends. (Ours is only in hospitals for those who arrive with symptoms.)
As to social measures against virus spread, this can be very liberal in Germany, but varies from state to state, often amusingly.
In Berlin, for example, buying a book from a shop is still allowed but having a picnic in the park is not. In Baden-Württemberg, it’s the other way around. Having purchased your book, you cannot then read it alone on a park bench in Berlin. But you could in Baden-Württemberg, or even go and visit a few friends. This chart illustrates – it’s in German, but those of us not skilled in their language can get the drift. (There is also a glossary right at the bottom of this post).
‘Nightingale Hospital’ not yet needed
The BBC reports how leaden-footed the UK Government was about issuing proper advice which could have protected the vulnerable, and rolling out testing.
Meanwhile we hear the much-vaunted ‘Nightingale Hospital’ in London’s Excel Exhibition Centre will be late opening because of lack of demand for beds. The Unredacted website reports “London hospitals are currently coping with their case numbers.” Average weekly death rates are not that different from previous years. Remember that apart from abortion deaths, the average number of deaths in the UK is 1,640 per day, more in the colder months, fewer in summer.
Indeed, the London Evening Standard reports that total deaths in England and Wales in the week ending 27th March were 11,141. That’s 1,011 more than the five-year average. Nevertheless, only 539 mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate, which was fewer than 5% of the total. The week ending 3rd April should show 2,800 Covid-19-related deaths, but that will still only be some 17% of the total.
And remember that ‘Protect the NHS’ always really meant ‘Protect the Conservative Governments’ reputation’. I am sorry to say it, but even applauding NHS workers was dreamed up by some bright spark in a cynical move to divert attention away from the Department of Health’s shortcomings. Why does the number of hospital beds and ICU places fall so far short of those in Japan and Germany? We have reported this legitimate question earlier. The cost of providing them would have tiny compared with the financial disaster now looming as a result of lockdown.
Diamond Princess data
Writing in Science News, Dr Tina Saey explains that out of 3,711 people aboard Diamond Princess, 634, or 17%, contracted Covid-19. Just over half, 328, had no symptoms. Of the 306 with symptoms, the fatality rate was 1.9%. Of all infected, 0.91%. Moreover, the passenger list was strongly weighted to the retired. Indeed, among the over 70s, the fatality ratio aboard was 7.3%. Extrapolating the figures to China yielded 0.5% of fatalities among those infected. Nevertheless, 83% of Diamond Princess passengers did not contract the virus, even in those close-quarter conditions.
Plug those figures into the UK, and the numbers of deaths if the Government just did nothing was not 500,000, as Dr Neil Ferguson of Imperial College claimed, but more like 50,000. Yet the Prime Minister fell for the Ferguson scare.
Naughty children
The Sunday Express told us the Government could stop us going outside to exercise in retaliation to thousands taking advantage of the fair weather over the weekend. In something resembling a teacher’s speech to a class of naughty children, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said, “The vast majority of people are following the rules, let’s not have a minority spoiling it for everybody.” Labour’s new leader, Sir Keir Starmer, astonishingly agreed.
Yet journalist Barney Ronay remembered a report last year: ‘Public Health England’s paper states that “physical inactivity is responsible for one in six UK deaths and is estimated to cost the UK £7.4bn annually”.’
Furthermore, ‘Data suggests children from low-income backgrounds are already less physically active than those from wealthier backgrounds, and three times more likely to be obese by the age of 11.’
Driving to Fife poses no risk
The Guardian reports on Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer flouting ‘the rules’ by driving for an hour from Edinburgh to her holiday home in Fife. One can view that as the arrogance of the establishment. But perhaps the Chief Medical Officer knew full well that driving from one home to another with her husband posed absolutely no risk to anyone. Catherine Calderwood has now resigned.
The Lord Jesus said of the Pharisees: Matt 23:3 All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. However, at least the Pharisees were interpreting the law, rather than making it up as they went along.
Those taking the sun in South London’s Brockwell Park appeared to be maintaining social distances, so to that extent they were observing and doing, even if they had counted that to stay indoors was an observance too far. Lambeth Council closed the Park in retaliation on Sunday. Thank God they re-opened it on Monday.
‘Be reasonable and proportionate’
Indeed, The BBC reports some leading politicians beginning to see sense. ‘Newly elected Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner MP told Sophy Ridge it was “all right for people who have got big houses and huge back gardens” to tell sunbathers observing social distancing to stop doing so.
‘”If you’re stuck in inadequate accommodation… and you’re all on top of each other, quite literally, then I think people should do social distancing and should keep their distance, but also be reasonable and proportionate about that,” she said.’
Our politicians almost without exception have no idea of what it is like to be imprisoned in an apartment for hours at a time. Nor do I for that matter. Judy and I can go outside and tend the farm any time we like. But a lot of people and some of our members do not even have a garden. The Guardian’s Lynsey Hanley says: ‘Our experiences of the lockdown are shaped by class.’
All ‘play our part’
And it really seems the lives of ordinary people fail to register with most of the elite.
A young reporter sent at 10.30 am to interview the late Sir Noel Coward allegedly found the musician and bon viveur (I am being kind) in his silk dressing gown washing down his breakfast with champagne. The young man asked in an astonished voice, ‘Sir Noel, you are drinking champagne with your breakfast?’ To which the mystified louche replied, ‘My dear boy, doesn’t everyone?’
Mr Hancock said he was expecting Covid-19-related deaths to peak ‘in ten day’s time, on 13th April. But only if we all play our part’. However, one could argue the Government did not play their part. And that is exactly what the Daily Express reports here. The Government ignored warnings from the World Health Organisation to prepare for a new virus pandemic and gear up for mass testing. Even in December, after the general election, the need for testing was becoming clear from China’s experience. Still the UK did nothing.
Competence and fear of God
The Bible says:
Prov 20:18 Every purpose is established by counsel: and with good advice make war.
Action supposedly to stop the spread of Covid-19, or to slow the death rate, is portrayed by the media as a ‘battle’ or as a ‘war’. In 1917, we were properly at war and the Allies launched the Battle of Arras. Siegfried Sassoon refers to it in his poem ‘The General’:
“Good-morning, good-morning!” the General said When we met him last week on our way to the line. Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead, And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine. “He’s a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack. But he did for them both by his plan of attack.
After 39 days of fighting, 300,000 young men, evenly from both sides, lay dead or injured. From Sassoon’s poem we see that leaders carry a terrible responsibility. By their decisions we can indeed, one way or another, be ‘done for.’ Leaders must be more than cheery, they must be competent. They must weigh up advice dispassionately and make rational decisions for our benefit, not theirs.
2Sam 23:3 The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.
C.S.Lewis wrote:
Let scientists tell us about science. But government involves questions about the good of man, and justice, and what things are worth having at what price; and on these a scientific training gives a man’s opinion no added value.
Pray for an end to the lockdown. Pray our leaders will be men like this:
Exod 18:21 Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens:
Pray for those kind of men to be appointed, to be wise, competent and God-fearing.
Rough German to English glossary
einkaufen = shopping
buchladen = bookshop
ausweis = ID card
hause = home
demonstreren = demonstrate
besuchen = visit
wohnung = flat, apartment
verlassen = to leave
triftigen = important
einen = one, vier = four
bekannten = known
offentlichkeit = public / publicity
treffen = meeting
baumarkt = hardware store
alleine auf der parkbank ein buch lesen = reading a book alone on the park bench
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But now ask your MP to ask the Government to recommend Good Friday to Her Majesty as a day of prayer for release from Covid-19.
DIY abortions
Psalm 106:37 Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils,
The Government has announced the biggest change to abortion provision since 1967. They have introduced ‘telemedicine abortions’. A woman can just ring or Skype a doctor for for ‘DIY’ abortion pills, mifepristone and misoprostol.
She will then perform her own abortion at home, by taking both abortion pills, meaning she will be left to deliver her dead unborn child at home without a doctor or any other medical professional present. This is a backstreet abortion, the type abortionists say they are against.
Safety and safeguarding issues
Only last week, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said “there are no proposals to change abortion rules.” The Department of Health stated the proposal carried ‘significant safety and safeguarding issues’ for women and young girls. Indeed, who might be standing over her as she makes the call?
Under the Abortion Act 1967, abortions could only take place in hospitals or abortion clinics approved by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. That brought judgment on us all:
Deut 19:10 That innocent blood be not shed in thy land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and so blood be upon thee.
But this change will leave even more mothers bereaved and without the opportunity to consider the gravity of what they are doing. It has been made without any public consultation, parliamentary scrutiny or debate whatsoever.
The approval will expire “on the day on which the temporary provisions of the Coronavirus Act 2020 expire, or the end of the period of 2 years beginning with the day on which it is made, whichever is earlier.”
MPs must call government to account
We demand the Government rescind this decision and we urge MPs to call them to account.
Psalm 139:13 For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.
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'Fearfully and Wonderfully made': Participants in the Bushey Park Park Run. Exercise is the single most important thing you can do to boost your immune system.
‘Fearfully and Wonderfully made’: Participants in the Bushey Park Park Run. Exercise is the single most important thing you can do to boost your immune system.
Our leaders are in a panic over Covid-19. We have urged them to keep calm and carry on. Only today, a report covered by the BBC says accountants expect a fifth of small businesses to go bust within a month. They will simply run out of money. The Government lending packages have turned out to be meaningless.
Kirsty McGregor, founder of the Corporate Finance Network, told the BBC: ‘Small and medium-sized businesses employing less than 250 people employ most of the workforce – 23 million people.
‘We could lose up to a million of them in the next month or so. And it will be irreversible which will be catastrophic for the UK economy.’
No economic modelling
I have been drawing attention to the damage the UK Government is inflicting on jobs, businesses and the economy with their ‘lockdown’ measures. They had a sensible strategy but were spooked into lockdown by a scary report from Imperial College, London, projecting 500,000 deaths unless there was a lockdown. The same learned team predicted thousands of human deaths from BSE, ‘mad cow disease’ which would cross the species barrier. There were a few hundred.
Crucially, it is now clear Boris Johnson was afraid the NHS would not cope and that this would be blamed on the Conservatives. After all they have been in office one way and another since May 2010.
It is also becoming clear the Treasury did no economic modelling of the effects on jobs and businesses and the public purse of shutting down the entire hospitality sector, sports and the High Street. If I am right, that omission was irresponsible. The Government did not have full information without which it is impossible to make a rational decision.
Someone dreamed up the ‘Protect the NHS’ slogan, and all the political and media class fell for it. Long-term prosperity, in which we all have a stake, has been sacrificed for short-term expediency.
I have no doubt that with the extra staff, premises and equipment which the NHS is now sourcing, it would have coped.
Simple precautions like the much-promoted washing of hands, together with keeping a distance and protecting those with underlying health conditions, together with massive testing, could and would have done the job.
Taking care of yourself
Having said all that, even though half of all Covid-19 infections are asymptomatic, and given there is only a 0.2% death rate among all those (symptoms or not) who have contracted the infection, it makes sense to do all we can to stay healthy enough to resist the virus, or at least fight it off.
Covid-19 is a new disease, and the world population is currently without the antibodies we build up against flu. There will eventually, perhaps within a year, be a vaccine, but until then, we are on our own, so to speak
Although in one sense we are not alone. Thank God he created us in his wisdom with an immune system to fight disease: Psalm 139:14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
The Lord Jesus told us to focus on the Kingdom: Luke 12:22 And he said unto his disciples, Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on. 23 The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.
So although we are not in fear, we shall be concerned and take precautions, praying for ourselves and our nations and for world trade to return to normal, to everyone’s benefit.
Hot honey and lemon
Many Christians identify big business, the deep state, the military-industrial complex, as elitist activities prophesied against in the Bible. However, our suspicion of ‘big pharma’ can leave us prone to fall for quack remedies. I hate to say it, but no scientist has found any health benefits from drinking colloidal silver. Furthermore, it could be dangerous. The suspension may well act as an antibacterial and antiseptic agent on external cuts, but so does tea tree ointment. Nor is there any evidence that chlorine dioxide is a ‘miracle mineral supplement’.
In short, there is no effective remedy against coronavirus. We are praying one is found and licensed quickly. That being said, honey, lemon and garlic with a bit of ginger in hot water three times a day seems to help against the common cold, and could act to alleviate coronavirus as well. The garlic and honey are antiseptic, the lemon contains vitamin C and the ginger is anti-inflammatory.
Boost immune system
There are also preventive measures we can take which can boost our immune system. These include vitamins and minerals. The afore-mentioned vitamin C is in citrus fruits. Between 100 and 200mg a day is recommended, and inexpensive tablets in shops like Wilkinson or Savers (the latter is now shut) come in those quantities.
Also available in the same outlets are zinc tablets, again in the recommended daily intake. Zinc is apparently the immune-system superhero, and is also found in red meat and poultry. Vitamin E is in nuts and vegetable oils. Vitamin D comes from sunlight, and is also present in oily fish, eggs, cheese and beef liver.
Daily exercise
Perhaps the best thing you do to boost your immune system is regular daily exercise. It is easily the best medicine. Your body is the temple of the holy spirit, so it makes sense to look after it.
The dear Apostle who wrote this under the ionspiration of the Holy Spirit was also an athletics fan and thought nothing of walking from Jerusalem to Damascus: 1Tim 4:8 For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.
And of course it should read: ‘for a little while’, in other words, for our time here on earth. Anyway, a thirty-minute swim or run, three or four times a week, will start to kick in with health benefits after three weeks. It is not the distance which is important, but the half-hour of demands on your cardio-vascular system.
Park Run
In those first three weeks, of course, you will not feel great at all. The first time I went for a run was from my late mother’s house in Sutton, Surrey, twelve or thirteen years ago. I ran around the block, a distance of a mile. Half-way around I was shattered and had to lean on a gate. But I staggered on and made it back. I persevered and then I discovered ParkRun. That weekly competitive effort transformed my running – and my fitness. For most people, a 5k run takes around 30 minutes. The immune system boost makes the body better able to resist and to fight off infections. ParkRun is now on hold, naturally.
But since the Government are allowing us of their grace and mercy to go outside for a daily run or other exercise during the lockdown (no, you can’t go swimming), now would be a great time to start.
Over the New Year, Judy and I had a couple of weeks of feeling unwell, with fatigue, runny noses and, yes, a persistent dry cough. (One can have that symptom with normal flu as well.) Significantly, I had not been out running for weeks. I have since put that right. Covid-19 will not be our portion.
Do the little things
The phrase ‘Gwnewch y pethau bychain’ – ‘Do the little things’ – is well-known here in Wales. It comes from the death-bed advice of St David, Dewi Sant. I believe when we do the little things that only we can do, we can trust the Lord to do the miraculous, the clever stuff which only he can do.
And then we can start praying those great psalms of protection. There are too many to count , but here is the one set in the Lamplight Bible Reading Plan coincidentally for today: Psalm 43:1 Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation: O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man.
2 For thou art the God of my strength: why dost thou cast me off? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
3 O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles.
4 Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy: yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, O God my God.
5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
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More news is emerging about how other countries are dealing with Covid-19. Some are following the ‘panic’ mode followed by the UK Government. Others are staying calm.
Email your MP from this link; you have to click on their name twice to reach their email address. Witness to your MP using the material here. Note we say people should take obvious health precautions, and those at risk can remain in isolation. But the general economy must now return to normal, especially with Imperial College now downgrading their mortality prediction yet again. (See below).
Protect the NHS
Whoever came up with “Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives” deserves some kind of advertising award. The phrase has been pushed relentlessly by Government and mainstream media. It’s catchy. It’s memorable.
But let’s just analyse the middle part: “Protect the NHS”. Here Labour missed an open goal. The only reason why we should possibly need to “Protect the NHS” would be if the NHS was unable to cope with an outbreak of disease at a similar level to the influenza of 2017-2018, in which 47,410 people died.
So why does the NHS only have 6.6 critical care beds per 100,000 population compared with Germany’s 29.2? Why does the UK have 2.9 hospital beds per thousand population while Germany can afford 8.2 and Japan 13.3? These are legitimate questions Labour could have asked. If they did, the dialogue was lost in their clamour for more lockdown and for the whole population to be paid to do nothing.
Exercise Cygnus
The Telegraph reports ‘Ministers were warned that the NHS could not cope with a pandemic three years ago but ‘terrifying’ results were kept secret’.
Exercise Cygnus was a three-day dry run for a pandemic carried out in October 2016. It tested how NHS hospitals and other services would cope in the event of a major flu outbreak.
It found: ‘The NHS lacked adequate “surge capacity” and would require thousands more critical care beds to cope with a severe pandemic. Health bosses would need to “switch off” large parts of the NHS to cope with demand. Medics would need to adopt a “battlefield” mentality, with frail patients denied critical care.’
The report was deemed so sensitive it was kept classified. The Government did nothing. However, the modelling, done by Imperial College, suggested the fictional outbreak would have a maximum death toll of 500,000. How Imperial College love that 500,000 deaths scenario. No wonder it found ‘Mortuaries would be quickly overwhelmed.’ The NHS coped perfectly well two years ago in the ‘Beast from the East’ flu epidemic.
But arguably, the Government has now taken emergency measures. They have ordered equipment and field hospitals and recruited staff. All this would have been quite sufficient on its own and the rest of us could have kept calm and carried on with a bit of self-quarantine if we felt poorly, protect the vulnerable and bring in mass testing. The latter should have been in place weeks ago.
PM ‘was panicked’
We are not alone in viewing the Government lock-down as a gross over-reaction: In the Telegraph, Sherelle Jacobs says “The PM was panicked into abandoning a sensible Covid-19 strategy, and has plunged society into crisis.”
She goes on: “Faced with the protestations of the London bubble, the PM has jettisoned the only sensible strategy for dealing with the biggest global crisis since the Second World War. To put lockdown in the most cynical terms, the Government has decided to trash the economy rather than expose itself to political criticism.”
Meanwhile, On Conservative Woman, Will Jones quotes the BBC’s James Gallagher: “As James rightly points out, coronavirus is ‘not going to disappear’. Yet ‘the current strategy of shutting down large parts of society is not sustainable in the long term. The social and economic damage would be catastrophic’. Indeed, it already is, and we’ve barely got started.”
Mr Kavanagh draws attention to the ‘Beast from the East’, the cold snap in 2017-2018 which led to 47,400 ‘Excess Winter Deaths’.
He says: “We are building a colossal national debt which will take our children’s and grandchildren’s lifetimes to pay off. Mental and physical ill-health, children’s shattered life chances, suicide, murder and alcoholism will claim many more lives than Covid-19. Patients with cancer, kidney and heart disease are already going untreated as beds go to Covid-19 victims.”
On the news the other night was a man whose operation on prostate cancer has been cancelled. So Mr Kavanagh is right. The whole article is worth reading.
Risk-averse & mental health
On RT, Dr David Zaruk argues the panicky Covid-19 responses are the result of “a risk-averse culture and a helpless population that expects others to solve every problem.”
Also on RT, Dr Tomasz Pierscionek says: “Self-isolation may save lives, but exacerbates mental health issues & loneliness: I see the consequences on a daily basis as a doctor.”
The Imperial College professor is lambasted even by a colleague from 2001, Professor Michael Thrusfield, who is describing the Imperial College Covid-19 predictions as “déjà vu”.
The former head of the Pirbright Laboratory at the Institute for Animal Health, Dr Alex Donaldson, said in a 2011 paper that Ferguson made a “serious error” by “ignoring the species composition of farms.” His modelling was “severely flawed”. Only public revulsion stopped the mass slaughter ordered by the Blair administration.
Gates funds Imperial College
But Professor Ferguson has hit back, accusing those who see coronavirus as akin to seasonal flu of “living in cloud cuckoo land.”
Real Clear Politics reports White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Deborah Birx warning the public “not to panic when they hear about models and projections of the pandemic’s spread”. She said she was looking at Imperial College “in great detail to understand that adjustment” from their original prediction of 500,000 deaths in the U.K. to their new prediction of 20,000.
But even now, Professor Ferguson is revising the 20,000 figure downwards. It might now only be 7,000 extra deaths from Covid-19. The reason? Two thirds of coronavirus victims may have died this year anyway, he says, according to the Telegraph (£).
Sweden: no lockdown
Families are able to enjoy the fresh air in a Stockholm park without any restrictions
Read this: Lockdown, what lockdown? Sweden’s unusual response to coronavirus. Sweden is the only sensible country in Europe, on Covid-19, at least. Although most gatherings are now not allowed, life and the economy is proceeding as normal. People walk around openly, and few face masks are on display.
The Guardian reports: ‘The precautions that Swedes have been advised to adopt – no gatherings of more than 50 people (revised down from 500 last Friday), avoid social contact if over 70 or ill, try to work from home, table service only in bars and restaurants – seem to have allayed public fears that the shocking images from hospitals in Italy and Spain could be repeated here.
‘The prime minister, Stefan Löfven, has urged Swedes to behave “as adults” and not to spread “panic or rumours”.’
Will Sweden fare better than Norway, which has imprisoned its population? Will Sweden be spooked into lockdown as Covid-19-related deaths rise? This page from the BBC shows the impact of Covid-19 tails off anway despite what governments do. Lockdown has little effect. What does make a difference is sensible social distancing and widespread testing and tracing of contacts.
Iceland: only half infected have symptoms
Here is news outlet, Al-Arabiya, reporting on Iceland. The country has carried out extensive random testing. Iceland’s population is 364,000. Around a week ago they had tested over 10,000 people.
Fortune reported a day or two later that the figure was up to 11,727. Of those, 737 had tested positive, which is 6.3%. 15 people were in hospital. At this time of writing, ‘cases’ had risen to 1,086 and 2 people had died.
A couple of things come out of this. Firstly, Iceland is recording a death rate of 0.2% of those infected.
Secondly, half of those infected have no symptoms. “Early results from deCode Genetics indicate that a low proportion of the general population has contracted the virus and that about half of those who tested positive are non-symptomatic,” Thorolfur Guðnason, Iceland’s chief epidemiologist, was quoted as telling BuzzFeed News. “The other half displays very moderate cold-like symptoms.”
Iceland has banned gatherings of over 20 people, in itself something of an over-reaction. But otherwise, there is no lockdown or curfew, merely advisory quarantine measures.
Another Iceland
The Independent reports another ‘Iceland’ story, this time concerning the UK supermarket. It illustrates the lack of real thinking in government. Boris Johnson has urged people to use online shopping rather than go to the store as usual. It is ridiculous advice. There is no capacity to meet it.
Richard Walker, managing director of Iceland said while the company has “done their best” to restrict online orders to those most in need, any new slots released are being “quickly snapped up”.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday: “In a seminal address to the nation, the prime minister urged everyone to use food delivery services wherever possible, but the reality is that current demand vastly exceeds supply. “I’d actually urge the opposite of the prime minister, in that, if you are healthy, not in a vulnerable category and adhere to social distancing guidelines, please do shop in store, but make sure you shop responsibly.
“No panic-buying, adhere to the two-metre rule, because that will enhance priority online for those who need it most.”
Belarus trusts Vodka and God
Football in Belarus with temperature testing
One country at least is keeping even calmer and carrying on more or less as usual. According to Sky News sports including football matches are proceeding as normal, albeit with S.Korean-style temperature checks. Sky reports: “So far, 94 coronavirus cases have been reported in Belarus, a former Soviet nation that is home to 9.5 million people.”
President Alexander Lukashenko himself took part in an ice hockey match on Saturday. He declared that sport “is the best anti-virus remedy”.
At the event, he told a reporter: “It’s better to die standing on your feet than to live on your knees.”
Mr Lukashenko also recommends a regular shot of vodka, something of a Belarusian tradition. But above all, he says regular trips to the sauna, working in the fields and having breakfast on time are the best ways to stay healthy – dismissing stricter measures imposed in neighbouring Russia and elsewhere as “frenzy and psychosis”.
Tomorrow we hope to return to the theme of personal health and protection. Christians are well placed to stay healthy, having both faith and realism. As President Lukashenko has prayed: “Let God protect us from the coronavirus.”
Sublime to ridiculous
Other countries following the panic model are ill-placed financially to do so. They have little or no social security or means of paying workers to stay at home.
The BBC reports on India. Lockdown there has meant simply workers in the big cities beginning to starve. There is now, as a direct result of lockdown, a mass migration as people try to return to their villages. With transport shut down they are walking. They believe there will be food there. However, some will die along the way. It is tragic.
In Kenya, despite a day of prayer last Saturday week, a curfew has been imposed during hours of darkness. Sri Lanka has done the same. Kenya lies on the equator, so night always falls at 7pm and it becomes light around 6am. However, in Nairobi, office workers are used to buying provisions on the way home. Consequently, many markets are open until 8pm. How do people feed themselves without the markets? And how does a woman selling tomatoes feed her family without an income?
No deaths in Kenya
To date Kenya has 50 Covid-19 cases. No-one has died. In most of the country there are no cases at all.
Africa News said just yesterday: “There are now more than over 5,250 confirmed cases of coronavirus across the continent, with a number of African countries imposing a range of prevention and containment measures against the spread of the pandemic.”
There have been 174 deaths in the whole continent. Most affected are Egypt and South Africa. East, West and Central Africa is faring better, with some countries Covid-19-free. Lesotho is one of them, but has imposed a lockdown.
Let us put those 174 deaths, or even 17,400 deaths, from Covid-19 in context. Unicef reports: ‘Every day 5,500 children under the age of five die across the 21 countries of the region (of east and southern Africa) and the majority of the deaths are largely preventable.’
Dr Sucharit Bhakdi, specialist in microbiology: “All these measures are leading to self-destruction and collective suicide based on nothing but a spook.”
Dr Joel Kettner, Professor of Community Health Sciences and Surgery at Manitoba University, former Chief Public Health Officer for Manitoba province and Medical Director of the International Centre for Infectious Diseases: “I have never seen anything like this, anything anywhere near like this. I’m not talking about the pandemic, because I’ve seen 30 of them, one every year. It is called influenza. And other respiratory illness viruses, we don’t always know what they are. But I’ve never seen this reaction, and I’m trying to understand why.”
Dr John Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine, of Health Research and Policy and of Biomedical Data Science, at Stanford University School of Medicine and a Professor of Statistics at Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences: “The one situation where an entire, closed population was tested was the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its quarantine passengers. The case fatality rate there was 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population, in which the death rate from Covid-19 is much higher.”
Dr. Sunetra Gupta, Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford: “I’m surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model.”
Dr Karin Mölling, German virologist: “I am of the opinion that maybe one should not do so much against young people having parties together and infecting each other. We have to build immunity somehow. How can that be possible without contacts? The younger ones handle the infection much better. But we have to protect the elderly, and protect them in a way that can be scrutinized; is it reasonable what we are doing now, to stretch out the epidemic in a way that almost paralyzes the entire world economy?
“The 2018 influenza epidemic, with 25,000 deaths, never disconcerted the press. The clinics had to deal with an additional 60,000 patients, which was no problem in the clinics either!”
Cure worse than disease
Dr Anders Tegnell, State Epidemiologist of the Public Health Agency of Sweden since 2013: “Older people or people with previous health problems should be isolated as much as possible. So no visits to children or grandchildren, no journeys by public transport, if possible no shopping. That is the one rule. The other is: Anyone with symptoms should stay at home immediately, even with the slightest cough.
“If you follow these two rules, you don’t need any further measures, the effect of which is only very marginal anyway,”
Dr Tom Jefferson is a British epidemiologist, based in Rome: “So I cannot answer my nagging doubts, there does not seem to be anything special about this particular epidemic of influenza-like illness.”
Dr Richard Schabas is the former Chief Medical Officer of Ontario, Medical Officer of Hastings and Prince Edward Public Health and Chief of Staff at York Central Hospital: “Quarantine belongs back in the Middle Ages. Save your masks for robbing banks. Stay calm and carry on. Let’s not make our attempted cures worse than the disease.”
But this, in Off-Guardian, is devastating: “Covid19 yet to impact Europe’s overall mortality. Year-to-date statistics show excess mortality lower than previous years”.
Apparently, the European Monitoring of Excess Mortality for Public Health Action (EuroMOMO), tracks “excess mortality”. That’s the number of officially recorded deaths vs the average death rate. In the UK they call this ‘Excess Winter Deaths’. The phenomenon occurs between December and March. It is the result largely of influenza. We have already reported on the UK’s figures from 2017-2918 (47,410) and 2018-2019 (23,200).
Right at the moment, all of Europe except Italy is at ‘no excess’. Deaths are either at or below expected levels. Even Italy is only ‘high’ not ‘very high’. If you check out the MOMO website yourself, you may find the figures beginning to increase (although they were not doing so at the time of writing). The current figures take us up to Week 12. Week 13 will be released on Thursday 3rd April 2020.
Why a lockdown now?
But this is the point. In 2019, Several countries were “above average”, Spain and Portugal were “high”, and France was even “very high”. In 2018 the UK was “very high”. 2017 was even worse, especially in all the Mediterranean countries. But there were no lockdowns. Off-Guardian says: “As it stands – the 2020 figures are substantially lower than the previous three years.”
They go on: “So, the question is, if we didn’t have a lockdown in 2017, and we didn’t have a lockdown in 2018, and we didn’t have a lockdown in 2019….why do we have a lockdown now?”
And the answer seems to be (a) Unlike influenza, Covid-19 is indentifiable and new and its effects have been plotted around the world. (b) Governments in general have been spooked. (c) governments of countries whose health systems have been run down were particularly spooked.
One can understand the latter setting up emergency facilities, drafting in extra staff and buying ventilators. But to destroy your economy?
Magic money tree
Mr Corbyn was criticised during the December 2019 general election for his spending plans. The Sun said at the time: “JEREMY Corbyn’s magic money tree would blow a £300billion hole in Britain’s finances and cost families an extra £3,500 a year.” He had “no idea how he would pay” for what the Sun called “bribes”.
Mr Corbyn must feel vindicated now. There always was a magic money tree. It’s just that it wasn’t there to write off student loans and provide free broadband. It was to put millions out of work, ruin entire sectors and trash the economy. And don’t worry, Rishi Sunak has no idea how he will pay for it either. It is irresponsible.
I have put in a Freedom of Information Request to HM Treasury asking for their financial modelling of the likely economic effects of the Government measures against Covid-19. No response as yet …
And just let me rail against Boris Johnson’s ‘We’re all in this together!’ for a moment. No, we aren’t. Yes, all you MPs and the Westminster Bubble might ‘be in this together’. But you have salaries. You are not worrying about how you will pay the rent or put food on your table for your children because the UK Government has shut your business down.
Ezekiel 45:9 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Let it suffice you, O princes of Israel: remove violence and spoil, and execute judgment and justice, take away your exactions from my people, saith the Lord GOD.
Keep Praying, Keep Calm, Carry on
So keep praying for the UK Government to put fear of God before fear of Virus, stop oppressing the people by denying them the ability to work, to return to keeping calm and carrying on. Pray also for a swift recovery from the Prime Minister from his mild dose of Covid-19 flu and for his repentance and conversion and salvation found only in Jesus Christ.
How good it would be if Her Majesty’s Government could pray as the Americans do or put their trust in God like the President of Belarus. And God grant that nation, despite its no doubt many faults, wisdom and protection and bless them for honouring the name of the Most High.
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