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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The new UK Government-announced lock-down is putting people’s lives at risk, according to a leading microbiologist. Indeed, Dr Sucharit Bhakdi, an infectious medicine specialist, says the UK response is ‘Grotesque, absurd and very dangerous.’
The softly-spoken Professor Bhakdi is one of the most highly cited medical research scientists in Germany.
P.S. Thursday: 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 by a factor of 12.5. (See below).
‘Spooked’
Meanwhile, Mail on Sunday journalist Peter Hitchens is emerging as one of the few, beside ourselves, trying to hold the Government to account, asking them challenging questions about liberty and the economy, and being vilified for it. OK, ok, some others are Off-Guardian, Swiss Propaganda Research, Rob Slane’s Blogmire and Craig Murray.
The House of Commons, the BBC, ITV, Sky, the mainstream media are all sycophantically following the Government line, or even calling for ‘stronger’ measures. No-one is saying ‘hang on a moment!’ They have all, to quote Dr Bhakdi, been ‘spooked’.
Labour, of course love the idea of a universal wage. It is part of their socialist utopia. They also want the Government to micro-manage our lives. What excuse do the journalists have? We shall try to inject some clarity, remembering the source of all wisdom is fear of God, not fear of a virus:
Prov 9:10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.
Informed Prayer
The Bible says:
1Tim 2:1 I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; 2 For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.
Your prayer for those in power will be better informed by being aware of the respected professor’s analysis.
Peter Hitchens speaking at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
Christian Voice continues to say the Government is over-reacting to Covid-19 and should simply advocate isolating anyone frail or with a susceptible medical condition. We remember the ‘figures’ upon which they have made their decisions depend on the information the experts put into the model in the first place.
We also advocate widespread available testing, as per South Korea.
In fact Mr Hitchens quotes a leading vet, Dick Sibley, who remembers the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak. His ‘heart sank’ when he learned Imperial College were advising the Government.
Their advice in 2001, he says, led to ‘the unnecessary slaughter of millions of healthy cattle and sheep’. Their bad advice was eventually ‘overruled by the then Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King.’
The Imperial prophecy of doom led to the Government imposing this week’s extraordinary shutdown. They said without such rules the disease could claim up to 250,000 lives. The salient words are ‘could’ and ‘up to’. It all depends on their initial assumptions. As the geeks say: ‘Garbage in, garbage out’.
Covid-19 downgraded
Astonishingly, Covid-19 was downgraded from being classified as a High Consequence Infectious Disease in the UK last Thursday, 19th March. This, according to the Government’s own webpage, was mainly because the public health bodies in the UK concluded: ‘more information is available about mortality rates (low overall).’
I’m struggling to understand this. Our public health bodies decided Covid-19 was no longer a HCID. Four days later the nation was plunged into lock-down over it. That never happened over bird flu or SARS which remain HCID’s. Why the power-grab and why the moves to destroy the self-employed sector?
P.S. (Thursday AM). In addition, Neil Ferguson at Imperial College has now downgraded his advice. It won’t be 250,000 deaths, it will 20,000 in the worst case or ‘substantially lower.’ Hospitals are right now ‘within capacity’ to cope. And this just nine days after the doom scenario which led to the lock-down. He is not back-tracking on the lock-down, however. Instead he is calling for “large scale testing and contact tracing” to ‘bring an end to the lockdown’.
Spanish Flu
This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the end of Spanish Flu. The epidemic raged from January 1918 to December 1920. That’s three full years of misery as the First World War was ending and people trying to put their lives back in order. The Great War left 22 million dead. Spanish Flu killed perhaps one quarter to a third of the world’s population, perhaps 50 million.
But the Daily Express reveals Spanish Flu hit the young hardest. Those in their twenties and thirties were most at risk of dying. That is the complete opposite to Covid-19, which attacks those with respiratory issues, compromised immune systems, diabetes, obesity and coronary diseases.
Less advanced medical care and poorer nutrition may have contributed to the death toll from Spanish Flu.
Gassed last night
One haunting parallel with the First World War itself has been going through my mind. It’s the second verse of a song (Bombed last night) displaying typically dour squaddies’ gallows humour:
Gassed last night, and gassed the night before
Going to get gassed tonight;
If we never get gassed anymore
When we’re gassed, we’re sick as we can be
For Phosgene and Mustard Gas is much too much for me.
They’re warning us, they’re warning us,
One respirator for the four of us
Thank your lucky stars that three of us can run,
So one of us can use it all alone.
‘One respirator for the four of us’ just about sums up the current apparent predicament of the NHS.
People need to earn
Construction workers have now been allowed to work, so long as they maintain a two metre social distance from each other, according to reports and despite railing from ITV’s Piers Morgan, who seems oblivious that ordinary people need to earn money to house themselves and put food on their table. Indeed, if only ‘essential work’ should go on, how ‘essential’ is the work of an over-paid TV loud-mouth?
The Government have already announced they will cover 80% of the wages of those who would otherwise be laid off. They are now working on how to extend that to the self-employed. Questions to the Prime Minister in Parliament today were all about how people could be ‘supported’ by the Government. Not one asked whether it might be better to get people back into work, or even ask where the money is coming from.
But this money will have to come from taxation or borrowing. How much better to have urged us all to take simple proper precautions, isolated those at real risk, rolled out testing, and encouraged the rest of us to keep calm and carry on?
Work: the gift of God
Let us just remind ourselves we are not being ‘materialistic’. We are not putting money before lives, as if it were a binary choice. Firstly, being in work is generally an indicator of better health. Secondly, and above all, Almighty God takes pleasure in men enjoying the fruits of their honest labour:
Eccl 3:13 And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God.
So ‘Love thy neighbour’ does not just mean ‘slavishly support the Government and take their word for it’. We are to be prophetic, and depriving a man or woman of their means of livelihood is an oppression of the poor and their rights:
Mal 3:5 And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts.
Keep the Tube running!
Health Secretary Rt Hon Matt Hancock has decisions to make. We must pray for wisdom to avert economic disaster.
The one bright spot this morning has been Health Secretary Matt Hancock expressing amazement at the partial closures of the London Underground. We criticised those days ago. He urged Transport for London to run a full service.
But even then, astonishingly, the Independent reports he was castigated as ‘irresponsible’ by the rail worker’s union who echoed Labour’s socialist utopianism in calling for everyone to go home and the Government to pay them:
‘The general secretary of the RMT transport union Mick Cash said: “At a time when we are trying to encourage people to stay away from the Tube so we can concentrate on moving essential workers the government call to reinstate a full service is grossly irresponsible as it suggests it’s business as usual.
‘”The real problem is this government’s refusal to give any wage support to casualised workers who will receive no income if they don’t travel and go to work”.’
Inept text message
The Government sent an inept text message to millions of mobile subscribers from ‘UKAGov’ yesterday. It caused no end of people to wonder ‘How does the Government know my mobile number?’ In fact they persuaded the mobile operators to sent it to all their subscribers. HMG didn’t actually know your number at all, it just looked that way, as this news report explains.
The message told subscribers to ‘stay at home’ and directed them to its website: gov.uk/coronavirus for exceptions. Then it repeated and amplified the direction:
‘Stay at home.
‘Protect the NHS.
‘Save lives.’
Protect the NHS
It is curious that ‘Protect the NHS’ was in there, because actually, fear of the NHS being ‘overwhelmed’ is what is driving the Government panic. But, excuse me, how long have the Conservatives been in office? How long have they had to make sure the NHS is properly resourced, or to explain to us that it never can be? When did coronavirus first start in China? When did it become apparent there would a need for extra ventilators? It is really that difficult to set up field hospitals and pop-up wards in Excel Centre if Imperial College are correct? How many people are they expecting will need beds? For that matter, how many extra beds end up occupied in our annual flu episodes?
Bloomberg reports how well Japan is coping with Covid-19. But it also says:
‘Should Japan see a jump, it may be better suited than many peers to handle the surge. It has about 13 hospital beds per 1,000 people, the highest among Group of Seven nations and more than triple the rate for Italy, the U.S., U.K. and Canada, according to World Bank data.’
Germany has a current low death rate associated with Covid-19. We should note that Germany has 29.2 critical care beds per 100,000 people. Italy has 12.5 while the UK has just 6.6, according to wired.co.uk.
South Korea, on the other hand, is well on the way to beating the virus through widespread testing, as the Guardian reports.
Aghast at Italy
Governments around the world are aghast at what has happened in Italy, where cases continued to rise despite a draconian ‘lock-down’. The curve was easily outstripping China’s experience. Then again, as Dr Bhakdi explains, northern Italy is heavily polluted, with many people facing respiratory challenges already.
Cases and deaths are increasing more slowly now in Italy. But once again, recorded deaths are high compared with recorded cases, indicating that many more people are simply contracting the virus and recovering.
In addition, off-guardian reports, 99.2% of deaths in Italy had pre-existing conditions. Many were already at death’s door. We also hear twice as many elderly men have died in Italy as women. Women fight coronaviruses better than men.
At this time of writing figures stood at 422 deaths in the UK, a daily rise of 87, and 8,077 cases, a rise of 1,427. 135 people have ‘recovered’. Note that the figures for those ‘recovered’ only refer to people who have attended hospital and been discharged. In stark contrast to South Korea, the UK is only testing those who have shown up in hospital with symptoms.
No-one else who has been exposed to the virus is included. That means all who shrugged it off without symptoms, or had symptoms at home and recovered after a few days do not make the UK, or the Italian, figures. An epidemiologist on the BBC on Monday admitted the total number of cases in the UK would be well into the tens, even hundreds, of thousands, because so many cases are not being recorded.
In the UK, it isn’t even possible for a key NHS worker to know if they actually have the virus. They are not allowed to be tested. They have to go home and self-isolate for seven days regardless.
Excess winter deaths
So far to date there have been 422 deaths in the UK. How many people do you think die in the UK every day in ‘normal circumstances’?
Respiratory diseases were the biggest single cause (circa 45%), with pneumonia leading. They were followed by circulatory diseases (20%+) and then by dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (19%+). And yet, somehow, even with 47,410 excess deaths, around 1900 per day, the NHS coped in 2017-18. There was no field ward set up in a leisure centre.
Exact cause of death
In fact, Professor Bhakdi points out that winter excess deaths were either brought on by influenza or by various coronaviruses already circulating. However, the actual written-down ’cause of death’ is what actually killed the poor people. That would be a heart attack, or pneumonia. So to write ‘Covid-19’ as a cause of death of someone who actually died of pneumonia could be somewhat convenient.
Vox.com reports that the heat wave of 2003 killed at least 30,000 people in Europe. A Twitter user suggested 4,000 of those deaths occurred in Italy ‘from a simple heatwave’. He urged a sense of proportion when we look at Covid-19 figures, sad as every death is. And let us remember the reality. We shall all go that way, and that is why faith in Jesus Christ together with his forgiveness, is so important:
Job 30:23 For I know that thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living.
Heb 9:27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:
Coronavirus here ‘since January’
Dr Suntra Gupta, ‘surprised’ by universal acceptance of the Imperial College prophecy of doom.
Meanwhile, an Oxford University study claims coronavirus could already have infected half the British population. It might have been spreading in the UK since January, says Dr Sunetra Gupta. Modelling by Oxford’s Evolutionary Ecology of Infectious Disease group suggests Covid-19 first reached the UK by mid-January.
Dr Gupta is Professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford. If the learned professor is right, the true size of the outbreak is likely to be closer to the 400,000 mark. It is very possible that half the population has already been exposed to Covid-19.
Widespread testing is needed to assess the theory, said Dr Gupta. ‘We need immediately to begin large-scale serological surveys – antibody testing – to assess what stage of the epidemic we are in now,’ she said.
The Daily Mail reports: ‘The Oxford university research offers a contrasting view on the disease to the study that is informing government policy. It was carried out by experts at Imperial College London.
‘”I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model,’ Professor Gupta told the Financial Times”.’ That is a devastating put-down.
Negative Health Outcomes
And as Dr Bhakdi says in his video, plunging people into poverty has negative health outcomes down the line. that is what makes the current UK approach ‘dangerous’ in his view. On top of that, seeing family and friends, going out, are the things which make life worth living. This particularly applies to the elderly, but affects us all.
In this view, those who went out in the park or up on Snowdonia last weekend were not irresponsible. They were not not ‘idiots’ or ‘morons’, pace Piers Morgan. They were following government advice to take exercise and they were trying to keep some semblance of normality going.
Prince Charles has symptoms
The BBC reports that the Prince of Wales has now tested positive for coronavirus.
The Prince of Wales has contracted Covid-19 from someone he met out and about, has mild symptoms and is recovering, as we should expect.
‘Prince Charles, 71, is displaying mild symptoms “but otherwise remains in good health”, a (Clarence House) spokesman said, adding that the Duchess of Cornwall, 72, has been tested but does not have the virus.’
A Clarence House statement read: “In accordance with government and medical advice, the prince and the duchess are now self-isolating at home in Scotland.
“The tests were carried out by the NHS in Aberdeenshire, where they met the criteria required for testing.
“It is not possible to ascertain from whom the prince caught the virus owing to the high number of engagements he carried out in his public role during recent weeks.”
Charles and Camilla are now self-isolating at Balmoral. We pray for HRH as we pray for protection for all the Royal Family and Her Majesty’s Government. Once again, his experience demonstrates that for the overwhelming majority, Covid-19 carries mild symptoms. It also shows how widespread the virus is, reveals the limited extent of testing in the UK and shows that carrying on is really not that difficult. And now HRH will be immune.
Pray for Government
So pray for our leaders to find the wisdom and humility to row back on their shutdown and get the population back to work.
They have invested a lot in the original dire Imperial College predictions. It would be tempting for them to hope the predictions come true to justify the measures they have taken. However, I.C. have now downgraded them (Thursday 26th) and we can only pray this sparks the end of the lock-down.
It is beginning to look as if the field hospital in Excel Centre will never be used. That will be a cause for rejoicing, and yet, it cost taxpayers’ money to erect in the first place.
If the scare fizzles out, there could be some very upset people out there, outraged that the UK Government impoverished them for no reason at all.
We had better start praying against disorder, because the stability of society itself could be at risk.
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.
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It is not coronavirus which is destroying the UK like Egypt's Biblical plague of locusts, but the universal social distancing mandated by the Government.
It is not coronavirus which is destroying the UK like Egypt’s Biblical plague of locusts, but the universal social distancing mandated by the Government. The Plague of Locusts, illustration from the 1890 Holman Bible
Christian Voice continues to say the Government is over-reacting to Covid-19 and should simply advocate isolating anyone frail or with a susceptible medical condition. We remember the ‘figures’ depend on the information the experts put into the model in the first place. We advocate more available testing, as per South Korea.
‘Egypt is destroyed’ said Pharaoh’s advisers. The Government simply have not assessed the impact of their measures (not ‘the virus’, but their measures) on the economy. Or if they have they aren’t telling us. But then again, Rishi Sunak’s loan guarantee gives the game away. More on all this below.
We are praying and confessing this verse:
Psalm 91:5 Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; 6 Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that waiteth at noonday
Remind the Lord of his word and pray that over yourself and your family. However, how good it would be if our Queen and Prime Minister confessed it over the whole United Kingdom? Keep praying for fear of God, not fear of a virus, to be the position of Her Majesty’s Government.
Nadine’s mum is recovered
Both Health Minister Nadine Dorries MP and her 84-year-old mother recovered quickly from Covid-19
Let us say again, it is only people with underlying health conditions who need to keep indoors and avoid social contact.
‘Surely it is better to lock down everybody of any age with underlying health problems – as well as the very elderly – and expect the rest of us to keep the economy going,’ she said.
Two days ago we reported Health Minister Nadine Dorries MP had passed Covid-19 on to her 84-year-old mother. We are happy to report that just a few days later, her mum has made a full recovery, as did Nadine.
Michel Barnier, the head of the EU task force handling the post-Brexit relationship with the UK, has tested positive for coronavirus. He’s apparently a devotee of exercise, mountain air and healthy eating and, guess what, he’s feeling fine.
Testing
South Korea dealt with the virus better than most by widespread testing. In the UK, testing is belatedly being scaled up. Will we all be offered it on demand as in South Korea? Don’t count on it.
So actually, what we are not hearing from Gov.uk is that thousands more people have been infected than we think and they have all got better.
Life must go on
Anjana Ahuja: Life must go on
Miss Ahuja went on: ‘Even in a pandemic — perhaps especially so then — some semblance of life must continue. Food supply chains must function; hospitals and care facilities need to operate at full steam. In order to keep hospitals staffed, schools need to stay open if feasible. In any case, schools act as informal quarantines — and provide a psychologically comforting routine.’
In addition, depriving people of their income results in impaired health outcomes:
‘The instinct to shut society down, as China did with Wuhan, is not cost-free when it comes to public health. Maxwell Smith, an ethicist at Western University in Ontario, points out that compulsory quarantine, school closures and a disrupted economy inflict social damage that can affect health further down the line. “China will feel the effects [of a shutdown] for years,” he said.’
Economic Assessment
We are still waiting for a UK government assessment of the economic impact of their corona virus measures. No, not an assessment of the impact of the virus. Rather of the impact of their unwarranted shutdown of large sections of British life.
But to get some idea of what they think it is going to cost, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced on Tuesday evening £330bn of loan guarantees. The Government thinks British businesses are going to need £330bn of loans to get them through. Those are loans which must be repaid. And £330bn is 15% of our Gross National Product. The Chancellor thinks the economy is going to take a 15% hit. And who will benefit? That’s right. The bankers.
Worse than Second World War
London-based Capital Economics says the UK economy could shrink as much as 20% in the next three months alone. Metro reported the story as: ‘corona virus triggers a “big recession”‘.’ But once more, the research company said. ‘This is due to the introduction of new government measures against the virus, such as closing pubs, restaurants and theatres, which will ‘significantly reduce economic activity’,’ according to its chief economist, Paul Dales.
‘He continued: “With the peak of the virus yet to come, it is clear we are in the early days of a big recession. As such, our previous forecast that GDP would fall by 2.5% q/q in Q2 is no longer fit for purpose.” With chunks of the economy grinding to a halt, including hiring and investment decisions, the GDP could fall by between 10% and 20%, Mr Dale added.’
Metro went on: ‘Budget forecasters now believe the scale of borrowing needed to pull countries out of a corona virus-caused economic crisis could resemble the large amounts of debt taken on during the Second World War, Reuters reports. By 1945, Britain’s national debt had exceeded 200% of GDP, resulting in the government turning to the US for financial assistance.’ But this time, the disaster is largely self-inflicted.
London Transport all but shuts down
Tooting Bec Tube Station is closed. Why?
People are being urged not to use London Transport unless they really have to, apparently in order to allow essential workers to get to work. So normally, doctors and nurses cannot get to work? It’s nonsense. We heard a story just today from a Kenyan in London who reported there was only her and the driver on a bus which would normally be packed with people going about their business.
Meanwhile, London Transport closes forty stations on the Underground. They have one thing in common, the Evening Standard reports. They are not interchanges. So an essential health worker can change at Vauxhall. But he then cannot get off at Tooting Bec to walk up to St George’s. Why? No-one says. Methinks those in power are punishing those revellers who were celebrating St Patrick’s Day on Tuesday evening all over London. Some were chanting ‘To hell with corona virus’, or words to that effect.
School closures
As for school closures, the BBC is still running interviews with parents who think this is very sensible. It isn’t. Why, in the early stages, did the Government not spell out loud and clear to us all that school children in general are the lowest risk group for even catching Covid-19, let alone becoming a serious case?
For example, a 16-year-old girl interviewed by the BBC about the cancellation of examinations (can you believe that?) let slip she had been self-isolating. ‘Oh really’, said the presenter, ‘Was that for corona virus?’ ‘Yes,’ replied the girl, ‘I had a bit of a cough and a temperature for a couple of days. Not very nice.’ That was it. For the under-tens in particular, there have been minuscule cases in China and not one death in that age-group. There was no need to close schools and every need not to. (On the bright side, closed schools will not be indoctrinating children with homosexuality and transgenderism…)
Instead, the Government have given their best Chicken Licken impersonation.
Cancelled operations
Meanwhile, the Health Secretary’s right-hand man has told NHS hospitals to cancel operations in an effort to free up 30,000 beds to create space for an expected surge in corona virus patients. In a letter to NHS bosses today NHS England’s CEO, Simon Stevens, said hospitals should cancel all non-urgent surgeries for at least three months.
Mr Stevens hopes to stop the health care system becoming overwhelmed during a potential surge of COVID-19 cases. So far, today, Worldometer says there are 2,689 confirmed cases in the UK and there have been 128 tragic deaths. I am praying those 30,000 beds are not needed. But as noted above, thousands more who have had Covid-19 at home and recovered do not register in the statistics and did not need a hospital bed.
Give an account
Luke 16:2 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.
It should be that the Government would give an account of themselves. But as with the Skripal affair, no-one on the Opposition benches appears willing to break ranks with the establishment line and demand answers. We may have to wait for a month or two before they realise the sky has not fallen down and that the Government over-reacted and brought the United Kingdom economically and socially to its knees for no reason at all.
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The nations, particularly in Europe and the US, are gripped by fear. Furthermore, the entire world is heading for a recession which will make 2008 look like a tea-party. Our leaders, supposedly men of intelligence, are rushing us into a global recession not because of a deadly virus, but out of unreasoning fear of a fairly average one. We need to pray against the fear. If it does not stop now, we shall all suffer, and for no good reason at all.
Isa 41:13 For I the LORD thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee. (KJV)
Jeremiah the prophet wrote this:
Jer 6:25 Go not forth into the field, nor walk by the way; for the sword of the enemy and fear is on every side.
But in that case, the Babylonians really were coming. Here, what do we have? A coronavirus, Covid-19, which causes albeit serious flu-like symptoms but is not even as easy to catch as the flu, which Public Health England estimates kills an average of 17,000 people every year. And world leaders are spreading fear about Covid-19 like, well, like a virus. There is even advice from the Prime Minister for pregnant women to hide away. UK medical professional bodies say pregnant women, and young women in general, are not high-risk for Covid-19.
Church: Set an example!
I am going to urge some perspective and an end to the fear over Covid-19. Yes, we do need to wash our hands thoroughly, stay home if we are sick and protect the elderly and those with underlying health conditions. But we also need to stay kind and stay focussed. Political panic will bring dire effects many times worse than the virus itself. But first, I’ll urge the Church to set an example.
Isa 12:2 Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the LORD JEHOVAH is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation.
But what are we doing instead of trusting the Lord Yehovah? Even now, woke elbow-bumping from welcome teams is creeping in instead of handshakes, the ‘peace’ is being dispensed with and those churches which dispense communion wine in chalices are keeping the fortified spiritual drink in its bottle. Firstly, no virus can live in it. Secondly, the Bible says:
1Jn 4:18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
We do not behave like this during the annual flu epidemic. We did not do it during Swine Flu a mere eleven years ago. So what is going on?
I’m going to argue the panic stems from the politics of anxiety coupled with modern risk-aversion. And the Church of Jesus Christ should beware these things of the world:
2Tim 1:7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
French close cafes
Eiffel Tower – hundreds will lose their jobs.
In France, the prime minister announced the closure of cafes, restaurants and all public places “non essential” to public life, including cinemas and discos, from midnight on Saturday . Edouard Philippe said: “We must absolutely limit movement, meetings and contacts.” He allowed food shops, tobacconists, banks and public transport to remain open.
The Guardian also reports: ‘Authorities have banned gatherings of more than 100 people and shut down attractions including the Eiffel Tower, the palace of Versailles, the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay.’ In the Paris region, there will be no Sunday church services.
Meanwhile, ‘the health minister, Olivier Véran, said the evolution and spread of the virus was “rapid and real”, but added that about 98% of those who test positive for the virus do recover.’
Hang on? 98% of those who test positive recover? How long are they ill for? For about a week. FullFact reports: ‘According to the WHO, current evidence on the new coronavirus suggests 15% of all illnesses are severe infections, requiring oxygen, and 5% are critical infections requiring ventilation. These levels are “higher than what is observed for influenza infection”.’
But in the main, patients do not require hospital treatment. Our own health minister, Nadine Dorries, reported feeling ‘pretty rubbish’. That was it. Her mother caught the virus from her and is now fighting it, according to news reports.
‘Non-essential’
So because a few thousand people are going to feel ‘pretty rubbish’ for a week, and a few hundred will need oxygen and a third of those will need ventilation, France has shut down its entire hospitality industry as ‘non essential’. Well, excuse me, but those employed in it and their families might regard their incomes as rather essential to their daily lives. Above all, the owners of the businesses still have to pay their rent and local taxes and food for their own tables even when their establishments are shut. M Phillippe’s diktat will cause real, and above all unnecessary, financial pain.
The prophet Isaiah warned:
Isa 19:16 In that day shall Egypt be like unto women: and it shall be afraid and fear because of the shaking of the hand of the LORD of hosts, which he shaketh over it.
France is afraid and Italy and Spain are in lockdown and ‘like unto women’ not because of the shaking of the hand of the Lord, but because of a really bad dose of flu. Nike has closed all its US, European and Antipodean stores. Berlin has closed its bars and brothels. (I didn’t know that about Berlin either.) The US has stopped flights from Europe. Coronavirus is not the judgment of God. But the reaction to it could be.
Italy and South Korea
We should just say a word about Italy, where the death rate from Covid-19 appears to be high. At this time of writing they had 2,158 deaths from 27,980 cases.
In contrast, South Korea, with 8,320 cases, had experienced only 81 fatalities. CNN explains that South Korea does far more testing for Covid-19 than Italy. Also, the age profile of those with the disease is much lower. South Korea Italy has an ageing population compared to South Korea. In Italy, 90% of deaths have occurred in those 70 or older.
The BBC reports that South Korea has concentrated on testing and treating in hospital only those seriously ill: Yes, they have closed schools, which is unnecessary, as we explain below. However: ‘The preventative measures being taken in South Korea have so far involved no lockdowns, no roadblocks and no restriction on movement. Trace, test and treat’.
UK hospitality sector ‘teetering’
Last night the Prime Minister advised people to stop non-essential contact with others, work from home where they can and ‘avoid places like pubs, clubs and theatres.’
Mark Cotman of York House Hotel
Significantly, because the Government has merely advised us not to go out, rather than actually closing their premises by law, venues cannot even claim on their insurance. Even if they could, that merely shifts the burden somewhere else in the economy. Better not to have incurred the loss in the first place.
Elsewhere, the BBC reportsthe UK hospitality sector is already ‘teetering on the brink’:
‘Mark Cotman is the group operations director at York House hotel in Eastbourne, and said his bookings are down 60% and he expects them to get worse. “We’ve got the money to carry on for maybe two or three months, and then we’re out of money. Then what do we do about paying staff, paying VAT, paying the veg man, the butcher?…We will run out of money”, Mr Cotman said.
All the treasury has offered is an ‘extension of business rate relief’ and ‘help’ from HMRC.
Mr Cotman went on: ‘The larger businesses like ours have received no assistance in the budget. We’ve been offered a facility of maybe applying for a loan but of course that’s got to be paid back. If we’re not taking any money, how can we pay the loan back?’
Panic attack
In the UK, panic and heartlessness have gripped the whole population. Ex-MP Luciana Berger observed a man with a trolley full of a store’s last remaining pasta refusing to give an old lady just one packet. People are stock-piling toilet rolls and flour. Make sense of that.
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.
According to the Metro, Doctor Abdu Sharkawy, an expert in Infectious Diseases from Toronto University, wrote on Facebook: ‘I am not scared of Covid-19. What I am scared about is the loss of reason and wave of fear that has induced the masses of society into a spellbinding spiral of panic, stockpiling obscene quantities of anything that could fill a bomb shelter adequately in a post apocalyptic world.’
London deserted, sport abandoned
The Daily Express reports: ‘London deserted: UK capital becomes GHOST TOWN as workers flee over coronavirus. LONDON’S usually bustling streets, stations and tourist attractions were almost entirely deserted today as workers and visitors abandoned the capital over coronavirus fears.’
The Football League and Six-Nations rugby have shut down, the London Marathon stands abandoned until the autumn, Formula One will run, if at all, behind closed doors and sporting events all over the world are cancelled for fear of catching the flu.
Imagine the economic impact of all that.
Elderly and infirm
Virtually all those who have died, around 2% of those infected, have been the elderly, or people with pre-existing cardio-vascular problems, high blood pressure, diabetes or cancer. StatNews reports:
‘Overall, China CDC found, 2.3% of confirmed cases died. But the fatality rate was 14.8% in people 80 or older, likely reflecting the presence of other diseases, a weaker immune system, or simply worse overall health. By contrast, the fatality rate was 1.3% in 50 somethings, 0.4% in 40 somethings, and 0.2% in people 10 to 39.’ In under 10’s it was zero.
Men are slightly more likely to catch the virus than women (51% to 49%) but Netnewsledger says men are 50% more likely than women subsequently to die from it. It appears male and female immune systems work differently. Women naturally fight infections like coronavirus better than men.
This might explain why women just get colds while men suffer the flu. That gender imbalance, a source of amusement to some ladies, could be more than a matter of supposed male weakness.
Immune system
In all seriousness, the world is panicking, with stock markets plunging and sporting events being cancelled, over a bad dose of flu.
One could argue 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. Even though Covid-19 is less infectious than flu, more people could catch it until the population builds up ‘herd immunity’. (See below!)
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.
Elderly to Self-islolate
Health Secretary Rt Hon Matt Hancock has decisions to make. We must pray for wisdom to avert economic disaster.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock has told the BBC that Britons ‘over the age of 70 will be told “within the coming weeks” to stay at home for an extended period to shield them from coronavirus.’ The advice, when it does come into force, could last ‘a very long time’.
‘Wartime like measures will ask car makers to produce medical equipment and turn hotels into hospitals, he said. “Every single person in this country is going to be affected,” he warned.’
‘Over-70s and younger people with certain health conditions will need to remain at home and have groceries and vital medication delivered, the health secretary said.’
Meanwhile, the Scottish government would ask the elderly not to isolate, but instead ‘ask them to reduce social contact’.
‘Jeane Freeman, Mr Hancock’s counterpart in Scotland, said: “We don’t want people who are elderly to be stuck in their homes alone not contacting anyone, with their families not able to be in touch with them and to help them. What we’re saying to them is, reduce your contact”.’
And that is all we need to do. Just that simple measure coupled with basic hygiene.
Proverbs 4:7 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.
Don’t close schools!
The evidence from China is that teenagers and children were minutely represented in the figures, among cases and even less in fatalities. The few children who have fallen sick appear to have caught the virus from adults, not from other children. Children are not transmitters. There is absolutely no need to close schools.
In fact, as the children will then go to be looked after by grandparents, so increasing social interaction with the elderly, there is every good reason not to shut schools. And that is on top of the impact on the economy of disrupting the working patterns of parents. Families today need two incomes to make ends meet, in stark contrast from two generations ago. But that is another subject.
Furthermore, if a teacher, or anyone for that matter, feels unwell, just stop at home. ‘Self-isolate’. Yes, quite a few of us will fall ill if the government simply keeps the economic show on the road, but in the vast majority of cases we shall get better soon. Moreover, the economy will not in that event itself catch Covid-19, which frankly means a global slump which will take years to recover from and which will affect us all:
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.
SARS and Swine Flu
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the Covid 19 pandemic is ‘the worst public health crisis for a generation’ and warned Britain that the worst of the crisis is still weeks away. I said in the Christian Voice March newsletter (Email us [our email address is on this page] with your land address for a free copy of the Christian Voice March Newsletter!) that if there are fewer then 10,000 UK cases by Mothering Sunday it will be by the grace of God and in answer to prayer.
But is Covid-19 really ‘the worst public health crisis for a generation’?
According to the Daily Telegraph (£) the H1N1 Swine Flu epidemic in 2009 killed 457 people across the UK. The outbreak cost a total of £1.24 billion: ‘£654 million preparing for a possible flu pandemic, and £587 million responding to the H1N1 outbreak’, including ‘£1.01 billion on drugs, among them antivirals, doses of vaccine and antibiotics.’ There were early forecasts that 65,000 people could die, so alarmism is nothing new. It is hard to find an accurate statistic, but over a million people were infected in the UK.
Around 20% of the world’s population eventually went down with H1N1. It could be argued H1N1 was far less lethal than Covid-19, but in the early stages, it was thought millions could die. Yet the global economy did not shut down. Countries were not in ‘lockdown’.
SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) infected 8,000 people and killed nearly 800 in an outbreak in Asia in 2003. There were only a few UK cases. Again, some people chose not to travel, as I report below, but they were not forbidden to.
Not a clever disease
To those who are certain Covid-19 has been orchestrated by the Antichrist to decimate the population, I say, ‘Look at the figures’. The disease decimates the elderly and those already placing a burden on the health service. That is not a very clever disease from a ‘health economics’ point of view. If your ambition is to destroy the world, you want a virus which attacks young people.
Or maybe start a war. The First World War was excellent at sending millions of economically-active young men to their deaths. The Second World War did an even better job of destroying whole communities and their industries and property.
However, that is without recruiting leaders to destroy their own countries from within. We urge prayer for our leaders to adopt ‘business as usual’, allow the people to make their own decisions as to whether to go to the pub or the match, to self-isolate if they feel poorly, and for those at highest risk to stay indoors. The economic damage will be bad enough just from doing little.
Self-inflicted economic damage
Pandemics cause enough economic damage on their own, as individuals change their behaviour, without governments adding fuel to the fire. Sharon Begley of Reuters estimated that the SARS epidemic cost the world GPD $33bn in 2003, as Asian travellers cut their plans. (That equates to 0.063% of world GDP based on 2003 population of 6.36 billion and GDP $8,300 per person.) The effects were proportionally greater in Asia.
World-wide, it is difficult to separate the impact of H1N1 (swine flu) from the effects of the 2008 recession. However, H1N1 cost South Korea an estimated 0.14% of its national GDP in 2009.
Ms Begley suggests in a future pandemic: ‘The majority of the economic losses would come not from sickness or death but from what the World Bank calls “efforts to avoid infection: reducing air travel … avoiding travel to infected destinations, and reducing consumption of services such as restaurant dining, tourism, mass transport, and nonessential retail shopping”.’
That was in a 2013 article and is exactly what we are seeing now, except it’s not consumer-driven but mandated by those in power. When politicians and those at the top of sporting bodies start panicking, the economic problems only escalate. Politics of anxiety coupled with risk-aversion translates into job losses for the man in the street. The possibility of people losing their jobs and their businesses does not, for some advisers, form part of the risk assessment.
Financial failure, even a world-wide slump, will arise not from actual sickness or death in the population but will be self-inflicted, or leader-inflicted, on the population.
Appropriate response
Darren Schulte, M.D., CEO of Apixio, a health analytics company, says this on StatNews:
‘What’s the appropriate response to Covid-19? I believe we should counsel individuals to continue going about their daily lives while taking proper and prudent precautions until we learn more about its long-term public health risks of this disease. We should try to balance the public health and safety concerns with disruptions in daily activities. Quarantining individuals who have been exposed to the virus or who have underlying health risks makes sense, as does adhering to prudent measures like staying at home if you feel sick, washing your hands regularly, covering your mouth when coughing and sneezing, and avoiding large social gatherings. All of these can attenuate the spread of the virus.
‘But we must be measured in our actions so we don’t end up causing more lasting harm than good as we try to protect ourselves and our communities from a new — and scary — infectious disease.’
Advisors at war
In a year’s time, leaders will have to answer to their populations. That is why they need wisdom and the fear of God, not fear of the virus. Godly fear puts everything into perspective.
The Daily Express reports the UK’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, was leading the side who advise interfering as little as possible, keeping things going while protecting the elderly and those at risk.
Sir Patrick hoped the Government’s current approach will create a ‘herd immunity’ to the disease. In practice that means allowing millions of us to become infected. But last night it appeared he had lost.
The other side advocate shutting our entire service economy down. As the Guardian explains here, last night the Prime Minister seemed to be going down that route. It risks putting off another spike of the disease until next autumn and winter. It also means economic catastrophe for the travel, hospitality and sport sectors and all the jobs dependent on those who work in those industries. The High Street, already under pressure, could be finished.
Furthermore, it is becoming clearer by the hour that Government advisers have done lots of medical models to see how the virus would spread in different scenarios. Sir Patrick Vallance told the Health and Social Care Committee as much this afternoon. But has anyone modelled the impact of the various measures on the economy? If they have, they don’t seem to be telling us.
The tourism sector alone is worth £250bn to the economy and gives work to 3.5 million people. The sports sector is ‘only’ worth £24bn, but holds nearly one million jobs. Remember how even Pharaoh could not see the damage his own decisions were doing to his land:
Exod 10:7 And Pharaoh’s servants said unto him, How long shall this man (Moses) be a snare unto us? let the men go, that they may serve the LORD their God: knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?
Who benefits?
Sharon Begley observes that someone always makes money out of a crisis. It may be pharmaceutical companies from a vaccine, or suppliers of medical equipment in a pandemic.
Nevertheless, their profits will pale into insignificance if airlines, hotels and football clubs start turning to the banks.
Bankers are set to make billions from loans just to keep companies afloat. It would be too Machiavellian to suggest the head of Crédit Agricole has been urging Edouard Philippe to shut down the French hospitality industry, would it not?
It’s more subtle than that. He won’t be saying ‘Non’ to the idea, that’s for sure.
Turning to Prayer
The Bible says:
1Tim 2:1 I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; 2 For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.
We must pray for them to find that wisdom which has only one source:
Prov 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Pray for an end to anxiety, risk-aversion and sheer panic and for our national economy and world trade in general to return to normal, to everyone’s benefit.
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Slide 14: So UK Public authorities now have a duty to promote homosexuality and transsexualism.
This is the 48-slide PowerPoint presentation Stephen was able to give to Kenya Christian Professionals, clergy, activists and dignitaries on 13th November in Nairobi.
Slide 1: Christian Voice UK: Praying for National Repentance, Working for Godly Government.
Slide 2: What we do: (1) We research and analyse events against scripture. (2) Our members pray for and witness to MP’s and those in public life. (3) We go on the streets leafleting with Evangelistic Prophetic Witness, such as when London Zoo held ‘Gay Sunday,’ a party for homosexuals, or as we did in Nairobi at the UNFPA Summit.
Slide 3: Marie Stopes abortion ‘clinic’ in south London – we kill 544 unborn children, legally, every day in GB. In America, they murder 3,700 each day. Slide 4: Marie Stopes Kenya – Clinic in Malindi. MSK stays open in Kenya by pretending they only offer contraception and post-abortion care. Marie Stopes abortion clinics operate openly all over Kenya.
Slide 5: However, a young British doctor, Linden Stocker, wrote this on the website of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 2011: ‘Whilst I was in Kenya I managed to organise spending 2 days a week at the Marie Stopes clinic in Kisumu. … They perform safe, completely illegal abortions for a cost equivalent of about £30.’ The cost in Kenya of a Marie Stopes abortion has since risen to around 10,000 Kenya Shillings.
Slide 6: Marie Stopes Kenya have over 20 clinics, from Kitale to Nairobi to Mombasa. MSK is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Marie Stopes International, the world’s second biggest abortionist after IPPF. Moreover, KSh 10,000 is a fraction of the true cost of an MSK abortion. Marie Stopes abortions in Africa are heavily subsidised by the West. The UK Government leads the rest with a grant to MSI in 2018 of £48 million of taxpayers’ money. (NB: The Church in Kenya could close Marie Stopes by constant prayer vigils outside its facilities.)
Slide 7: Unborn baby at just 8 weeks Slide 8: Effects of suction abortion on African-American babies of (from top left) 7, 9, 10 and 11 weeks.
Slide 9: The Bible says: Num 35:33 So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it. Psa 106:37 Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils, 38 And shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood. 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.
Slide 10: Homosexuality was legalised in the UK in 1967. Today, 100,000 homosexuals parade through London.
Slide 11: Jesus said: Mark 10:6 But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. 7 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; 8 And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.
Slide 12: Legalising homosexuality soon leads to Gvt promoting it. United Kingdom’s Equality Act 2010: Section 148 Public sector equality duty (1) A public authority must, in the exercise of its functions, have due regard to the need to- (a) eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under this Act; (b) advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it; (c) foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it. (4) Having due regard to the need to foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it involves having due regard, in particular, to the need to- (a) tackle prejudice, and (b) promote understanding.
Slide 13: (6) The relevant protected characteristics are: age; disability; gender reassignment; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; sexual orientation.
Slide 14: So UK Public authorities now have a duty to promote homosexuality and transsexualism.
Slide 15: Public authorities include Ministers of the Crown, Government Departments (except MI5, MI6 and GCHQ), The Armed Forces, National Health Service, County Councils, Police, Schools, Colleges and Universities.
Slide 16: Homosexual Police leading the London Gay Pride Parade. Slide 17: The police officer here in the front row of the Brighton Gay Pride Parade is the Chief Constable of Sussex. Note the homosexual desecration of the Union Jack. Slide 18: 5-year-old children are being subjected to homosexual propaganda at schools in England under the guise of ‘Relationships Education’ and transgenderism is being promoted. It’s very similar to the Comprehensive Sexuality Education demanded by UNFPA across Africa.
Slide 19: So, the UK then exports those evils. What David Cameron told homosexual activists at a party he gave for them in No 10 Downing Street on 22nd June 2011: ‘… an area where we have the ability to make progress, is the fact that gay people can be appallingly treated in other parts of the world, particularly in Africa.’
Slide 20: ‘(Foreign Aid) also has a spin-off benefit of giving us some moral authority (sic) in the world to talk to other leaders and governments about our relationship with them and what we expect from them. I’m very proud of the fact we [put] huge pressure on the leader of Malawi about an issue in that country but I‘m convinced we can do more. We have got the ability to speak to African leaders, African governments, about this issue that I know concerns everyone here tonight. And it concerns me.’ (David Cameron, UK Prime Minister)
Slide 21: Even before Mr Cameron’s speech, the Department for International Development had been promoting feminism and immorality in Africa: Social Marketing of Condoms [103545] To increase adoption of safer sexual practices among youth. Country: Kenya Budget: £15,031,330 Start Date: 01/01/2003
Slide 22: Young Voices for Change (SRH Rights and HIV/AIDS) CSCF345 [105559] Young Tanzanians (10-24) know, promote and enact their sexual and reproductive rights, including with regards to HIV/ AIDS. Budget: £499,934 Start Date: 01/04/2005
Slide 23: Western money is promoting wickedness across Africa: Not one African NGO promoting Sexual & Reproductive Health & Rights (that’s abortion, LGBT and feminism) is African-funded. Every single one has its staff and expenses paid by the West. So let’s follow the money …
Slide 24: Rich US homosexual Jon Stryker set up the ‘Arcus Foundation’ to advance gay rights world-wide. He admitted the money going to Africa to promote sodomy was around $12,000,000 / year from NGO’s alone in 2010. How much is flooding in today?
Slide 25: 2015-16, top ten funders of money to Sub-Saharan Africa for LGBT (Source: ‘Global Resources Report): 1 Government of Sweden $14,454,266 2 Open Society Foundations (Soros) $4,097,626 3 Hivos (Netherlands) $3,218,406 4 American Jewish World Service $3,084,250 5 Arcus Foundation (USA) $2,716,639 6 Government of Norway $2,537,539 7 UHAI-EASHRI (Kenya) $2,323,769 8 Government of Denmark $2,166,635 9 Ford Foundation (USA) $2,144,550 10 Global Equality Fund (USA) $2,033,860 Total for just the top ten: $38,777,540
Slide 26: 2015-16, top recipients of money for LGBT (Source: ‘Global Resources Report) include: 3 Dept for Int Dev (RSA) $5,424,750 9 IPPF (London) $3,641,407 10 UHAI-EASHRI (Kenya) $3,497,086
Slide 27: Note above, Nairobi-based UHAI-EASHRI was listed as a donor of $2,323,769 in 2015/16 but a recipient of $3,497,086. A cool $1.1m went on their ‘6-25′ staff and office expenses. UHAI EASHRI, established by Ford Foundation in 2009, claims to be ‘Africa’s first indigenous activist fund for sex workers and sexual and gender minorities’. But it is entirely funded by the West, not just by Ford Foundation (US), but Sigrid Rausing Trust & Baring Fdn ( both UK), Astrea Lesbian Fdn, Tides Fdn, Arcus Fdn, Urgent Action Fund, Atlantic Philanthropies, Fdn for a Just Society (all US) and others. (‘UHAI’ is an acronym but also means ‘life’ in Swahili.)
Slide 28: In an article on Saturday 23rd November 2019, the Nation newspaper revealed ‘Kenya’s best and worst paying jobs’ It said: ‘foreign-backed NGOs employed a total of 1,345 staff and 270 of them earned more than Sh100,000 monthly, making the agencies a magnet for those seeking or wanting to change jobs.’ Nowhere is that more true than in Kenya’s immoral NGOs.
Slide 29: In January 2011, The European Union gave a 300,000 Euro grant to promote gay rights in Cameroon to a group of pro-gay CSO’s led by the ‘Association to Defend Homosexuals‘. Cameroon’s Foreign Minister Henri Eyebe Ayissi summoned the head of the EU delegation in Cameroon to protest against the funding of groups that “violate the laws of Cameroon.” But the grant still went ahead.
Slide 30: Funding for Kenyan LGBT groups includes: Given to: National Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission (NG&LHRC): (Yes, there is such a group!) By: Sigrid Rausing Trust (UK): £180,000 over three years (2016-19).
Slide 31: The accounts of NG&LHRC show its total income in 2016 was Ksh 15,976,147
Slide 32: Here’s the NG&LHRC logo, desecrating the Kenyan flag.
Slide 33: There is also a ‘Gay & Lesbian Coalition of Kenya’ (G&LCK) which received $100,000 from Arcus Foundation in 2019. It also received funding from Open Society Foundations, Astrea, Hivos, UHAI, Coalition of African Lesbians, Kenya National Commission for Human Rights, Kenya Human Rights Commission, Kelin Kenya, National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders (Kenya), and the International Commission of Jurists, Kenya Section.
Slide 33: Kenya Human Rights Commission: From Sigrid Rausing Trust (UK):£100,000 in 2019. Also, ‘The KHRC relies on donations from individuals and from organisations such as:’ the Swedish Int. Dev. Agency, Christian Aid, Trocaire, Danish Int. Dev. Agency, UN Dev. Programme, UNIFEM, Canadian Int. Dev. Agency and Ford Fdn. It started as a genuine human rights group, but in May 2011 the KHRC issued a report which called on the government to decriminalise homosexuality. That’s when the funds started rolling in.
Slide 34: Since 2012, the Kenyan Human Rights Commission has been primarily funded by the Ford Foundation of the USA at $200,000 per year. The KHRC even wanted to bring in a Hate Crimes Law in Kenya to prevent pastors preaching against homosexuality. Chairman: Prof. Makau Mutua Executive Director: George Kegoro
Slide 35: George Kigoro in full flow.
Slide 36: Prof Matua was in Kampala in 2010 in February at a conference – again funded by the Ford Foundation – to oppose David Bahati’s Bill against promotion of LGBT. The Ford Foundation is just one of around twenty NGO’s giving money to Ugandan gay groups. But let’s get back to Arcus Foundation …
Slide 37: In 2018, Arcus gave ‘more than $15 million’ ‘to organizations working to advance social justice for LGBT people around the world.’ Recent funding from Arcus Foundation alone to LGBT-advancing groups in Kenya: 2019: Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya $100,000 2019: Persons Marginalised & Aggrieved (PEMA – Mombasa) $140,000 2019: Transgender Education and Advocacy: $100,000 2014-2018: Pembizo Christian Council $391,000 (to ‘create counter-narrative to condemning religious voices’) 2011-2018: UHAI EASHRI $1,720,000: (‘funding for LGBT biannual conference in Africa. For Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda.’)
Slide 38: 2016: Network of African National Human Rights Institutions (NANHRI) Nairobi $200,000 (‘Support to the African regional platform of government-appointed human-rights institutions seeking to include LGBT rights as human rights, with a pilot project in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, and Uganda.’) 2013-2016: Other Sheep Africa $140,000 (‘to increase LGBTIQ acceptance within the Muslim community in 12 provinces of Kenya.’) 2016: The East African Documentary Film Fund $20,000 2014: Chemchemi Ya Ukweli (‘Fountain of Truth’!) $50,000 (Together for Transformation project, pilot LGBT training program for Muslim & Christian religious leaders.)
Slide 39: 2010 – 2012: Fahamu (Nairobi) $458,066 (‘Strengthen and expand African LGBT movement … partnerships, … with African governments and private multi-national and other corporations in collaboration with UHAI-EASRHI.) 2010: Akiba Uhaki Foundation $200,000 (‘support of the programmatic and convening activities of UHAI-EASRHI Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi.’) (‘Akiba Uhaki’ sort of means ‘supply justice’.) Plus South Africa LGBT projects in: Western Cape Provincial Council of Churches, Inclusive & Affirming Ministries, Southern African Christian Initiative.
Slide 40: Western politicians want Africa to end up with gay parades like this.
Slide 41: Immoral NGOs operate openly in Kenya: Planned Parenthood Federation of America: Chaka Place, 1st Floor, Chaka Rd, Nairobi International Planned Parenthood Federation: Senteu Plaza, 3rd floor Lenana/Galana Rd Junction, Naiobi. (Planned Parenthood Global is advertising in The Nairobi Star newspaper for a youth worker right NOW – Nov 2019.)
Slide 42: Open Society initiative for East Africa: ACS Plaza, Lenana Road, Nairobi, Kenya. Kenya National Commission on Human Rights: Ist Floor,CVS Plaza,Lenana Road, Nairobi UHAI-EASHRI: 3rd Floor, Suite 5, Rosami Court, Muringa Rd., Kilimani, Nairobi.
Slide 43: Kenya Human Rights Commission: Gitanga Road opp. Valley Arcade Shopping Center, Nairobi. National Lesbian & Gay Human Rights Commission: Mpulla House # 4 Arboretum Drive (off State House Road), Nairobi.
Slide 44: Urgent Action Fund Africa: 2nd Floor, Riara Corporate Suites, Riara Road, Kilimani, Nairobi. Fahamu Africa – Head Office: Block C, 3rd Floor, Peponi Plaza, Westlands, Nairobi, Kenya.
Slide 45: To stop evil coming from the West, we recommend: (1) African, Asian and Caribbean members unite at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, the next is in Kigali, Rwanda in June 2020, and put down resolutions defending life and family. (2) Forums like the African Union and the Caribbean Union should state their rejection of immorality and foreign aid intended to corrupt public morality. (3) Make it clear at diplomatic levels that aid donors must respect traditional family values. (4) Bring in local laws to prevent promotion of evil.
46 Local laws need to be passed to prevent money intended to promote sodomy and abortion in Africa from reaching its targets. We suggest: (1) Make it illegal to corrupt public morality – in particular to promote LGBT or abortion. (2) Proscribe the foreign NGO’s involved and deny their representatives visas, (3) Require local recipient organisations to open their accounts to discover their income, (4) Seize foreign monies promoting immorality.
Slide 48: Christian Voice UK: Praying for National Repentance, Working for Godly Government.
Slide 47: Christian Voice is glad to address governments, civil servants, members of parliament across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean on this issue and provide information to resist immorality. More research needs to be done to identify all the governments, ngos, cso’s, projects and amounts involved. And, lastly, thank God Africa is starting to move, as they say in Ghana: Beyond Aid
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Naturally, Tory peer Sayeeda, Baroness Warsi, criticised the Tories, arguing they are ‘trying to whitewash past problems.’
Meanwhile, the Jewish Chronicle was forced to defend itself from criticism by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, of all people. They said the publication of the Phillips piece was ‘an error’. They went on: “Anti-Muslim prejudice is very real and it is on the rise. Our community must stand as allies to all facing racism.”
But Islam is not a race, it’s an ideology. As the Guardian put it: Melanie Phillips said ‘the entire concept of Islamophobia was “profoundly anti-Jew” and had been invented to mimic antisemitism, adding: “To equate it with the dehumanising, insane and essentially murderous outpourings of Jew-hatred is obscene”.’
‘Denial, dismissal and deceit’
Sayeeda, Baroness Warsi wants Tory ‘Islamophobia’ probe to go further.
Baroness Warsi criticised the appointment of Prof Swaran Singh as chairman of the Tory probe. She said the Sikh Professor of Social and Community Psychiatry believes ‘that institutional racism simply doesn’t exist’.
“That gives an indication of where the inquiry will end up,” she said.
The Muslim Council of Britain said the appointment of Professor Singh was “at risk of being seen in the same light as the Conservative Party’s customary approach to Islamophobia, that of denial, dismissal and deceit”.
Islamophobia ‘invented by Muslim Brotherhood’
However, Melanie Phillips contends ‘Islamophobia’ was invented by the Muslim Brotherhood as a tit-for-tat response to antisemitism. A ‘phobia’ is an irrational fear or hatred. For example, ‘claustrophobia’ is an irrational fear of enclosed spaces. From the secularist side, homosexual activists invented the term ‘homophobia’ for the same reason. Their intention was to stifle debate and cast their opponents as deranged. Neither ideology, that of Islam nor that of Secularism, can ever be immune from criticism.
Melanie Phillips writes: ‘So “Islamophobia” appropriates to itself the unique attribute of antisemitism — that it is deranged — in order falsely to label any adverse comment about the Islamic world as a form of mental disorder.
‘The concept of “Islamophobia” is thus profoundly anti-Jew. To equate it with the dehumanising, insane and essentially murderous outpourings of Jew-hatred is obscene.’
Anti-Jewish violence
Police images of two boys accused of antisemitic abuse and violence against a rabbi in North London. Images stitched together by Press Association
A criminal event yesterday could not have better timed to illustrate Melanie Phillips’ point. Two boys were arrested after shouting antisemitic abuse at a rabbi and then beating him up. The attack happened last month in Clapton, North London.
The unnamed religious leader was set upon by two attackers shortly before 10pm on 29th November. They shouted ‘F**k Jews’, ‘Dirty Jew’ and ‘Kill the Jews’ as he walked in Amhurst Park.
Police released CCTV images. Despite the two wearing hoodies, a relative recognised the boys, aged 14 and 15. They handed themselves in to police on Tuesday 17th December. The two are due to appear at Stratford Youth Court on 7th January 2020.
Repeatedly punched
According to Jewish News, Jewish neighbourhood patrol group Shomrim said the rabbi had left the Bobov Synagogue in Egerton Road after a wedding. He was walking along Clapton Common when he was assaulted.
‘The two attackers repeatedly punched him, threw him to the ground and carried on beating him, only stopping when a member of the public intervened.’
Shomrim said the rabbi sits in a Judaic court as a judge. He was left “collapsed on the pavement, bleeding and dazed, where he lay for several minutes”.
Fellow rabbi Herschel Gluck said the victim was left “bruised and traumatised” by his ordeal.
It is quite plain from the CCTV images that the boys in question are not members of a white supremacist group. They have learned their anti-Jewish hatred from another source.
Islamophobia and Identity Politics
Antisemitism is not just an academic matter. Nor is it confined to pro-Palestinian Labour Party MPs and Momentum types. It is real, it is racist, and it finds expression in actual personal abuse and violence.
Hallmark Channel has irritated both One Million Moms and US gay activists.
Hallmark Channel has irritated both One Million Moms and US gay activists.
A greetings card company has managed to irritate both US conservatives and gay activists.
Firstly, the Hallmark Channel on Pay TV allowed adverts featuring two lesbians kissing. Secondly, in response to a petition from One Million Moms (1MM), they banned the ads. Thirdly, after a Twitter storm from the usual suspects, they allowed the offending material to continue.
Today’s is a world of identity politics. Those in the easily-offended immoral groups make a lot of noise. But they are a minute part of the market and need not be taken seriously.
Hallmark should have stood firm on their ban decision. Instead, they have provided a text-book study in how not to walk through a china shop.
Hallmark Channel
Hallmark Cards runs the Hallmark Channel through its subsidiary Crown Media Holdings, Inc.
According to Wikipedia, The channel’s programming is ‘primarily targeted at families, and features a mix of television movies and miniseries, original and acquired television series, and lifestyle programs.’
The Channel is available to almost 100million households with pay TV in the United States. Wikipedia goes on: ‘Despite largely being an apolitical brand, Hallmark Channel has garnered a following among politically conservative viewers in suburban and rural areas who, according to Manhattan Institute for Policy Research’s Steven Malanga in a Los Angeles Times op-ed, feel the network and its original programming feed their desire to “express traditional family values and also to steer away from political themes and stories that denigrate religion”.’
Zola not that gay
A still from the Zola Ad – no, we are not going to show the dirty girls kissing.
The adverts were promoting Zola, a wedding planning company. In truth, there are not that many gay-weddings pictured on their website. Zola, like Hallmark, know their market. And it’s heterosexual.
Yes, they do cater for gays and lesbians. You can find their pictures usually half-way down the page. Maybe gays and lesbians occupy 2% of their market. A Zola spokesman insisted ‘all kisses, couples and marriages are equal celebrations of love’. Nevertheless, their core market is heterosexual.
So the ads, and the confected row, are mere virtue-, no, vice-signalling.
Social media backlash
The BBC reports, ‘The company’s cable network pulled the ads … under pressure from the conservative group One Million Moms.’
The decision, they say, ‘drew criticism on social media and calls for a boycott.’
The original decision to withdraw the adverts drew criticism from a number of high-profile gay figures, including homosexual Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres.
New York Times reported, ‘Trending on Sunday were the hashtags #boycotthallmark and #BoycottHallmarkChannel, with more than 8,000 tweets mostly from users identifying themselves as L.G.B.T. families, allies and Hallmark viewers.’
Would the Hallmark Channel even notice if a load of people who are not viewers continued not to view?
And no, New York Times, the two young women in the advert are not ‘brides’.
Apology
Mike Perry, Hallmark president and CEO, has made a mistake by caving in to gay activist group GLAAD
Hallmark said it would reinstate the adverts and attempt to re-establish its partnership with Zola.
“We are truly sorry for the hurt and disappointment this has caused,” said Hallmark’s president and chief executive Mike Perry.
To make matters worse, Hallmark said it would lick the boots of gay activist media group GLAAD. It would “be working with Glaad to better represent the LGBTQ community across our portfolio of brands.” Maybe he is not serious, but there was no reason to roll over like that.
‘seathom play’ on Youtube volunteered: ‘Who is Hallmark going to listen to? A million moms or a few angry lesbians, gays and SJW’s? They know their audience.’
But do they? Hallmark have overturned a solid commercial decision in return for identity-politics brownie points. Mr Perry is in grave danger of limiting or even souring his market rather than expanding it. As 1MM put it: ‘You will lose viewers if you cave to the LBGT agenda.’
Hallmark Personnel
Cynthia (Cindy) Mahoney, another Hallmark CEO, and on the board of UK Hallmark Cards PLC
American Cynthia (Cindy) Mahoney is either co-President and CEO of Hallmark International or ex-president. The above Mike Perry was appointed to those roles in June 2019.
In any event, Ms Mahoney sits on the board of Hallmark Cards PLC in the UK. Australian Amanda Del Prete is Managing Director of the UK arm.
Both women were appointed to their positions in December 2018 after the resignation of then CEO Steve Wright. At the time, the company claimed: “These changes will continue to strengthen the leadership team as our priorities continue to be both a creative and customer-focused business.”
UK Turnover and profit down
Amanda Del Prete, Hallmark Cards PLC Managing Director, is skilled in Brand Management
Nevertheless In the UK Hallmark’s card business is not doing so well. Turnover in 2018 (at £134m) was down 5.3% on the previous year. An operating profit of £1.4m in 2017 gave way to an operating loss of £2.3m. Only sales of assets nudged the company’s Profit & Loss sheet into the black.
The company paid no dividend to its shareholders in 2018. According to the business social network site LinkedIn, Amanda Del Prete is skilled in Customer Insight, Consumer Products and Brand Management.
Be that as it may, she inevitably blamed the fall on Brexit leading to a fall in the pound. The MD still grabbed £522,653 in ’emoluments’.
Totally irritated
One Graham Shoebridge reviewing Hallmark on TrustPilot last year said: ‘The small shop in Marshallswick St Albans used to be so good, cheap and professional. Now staff are decidedly rude, lazy and complacent. They talk non-stop to each other, leaving customers feeling totally irritated.’
On their petition page, 1MM claim to have spoken ‘with Crown Media Family Networks CEO Bill Abbott’. They say he ‘confirmed Hallmark Channel has pulled the Zola.com commercial’. Furthermore, ‘the Hallmark Channel will continue to be a safe and family friendly network’. 1MM say they ‘thanked him on behalf of all our supporters.’ They praise the Lord and conclude ‘No further action is needed!’
Beady eye
No doubt 1MM will be watching Hallmark Channel from now on with a beady eye. Mike Perry’s vice-signalling over GLAAD was ill-advised.
Neverthless, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. If there is no repeat and no introduction of LGBT content, 1MM will be pacified. However, if there is, expect them to become totally irritated and Hallmark Channel to fall. the Lord answers his people’s prayers. It may not just be UK profits at risk.
Joel 2:11 And the LORD shall utter his voice before his army: for his camp is very great: for he is strong that executeth his word: for the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?
Address for Amanda Del Prete: Hallmark Cards PLC: Dawson Lane, Dudley Hill, Bradford, BD4 6HN
Tel UK: 0800 90 20 900 (freephone) or from mobiles: 01274 270 515
