I’m incensed – incensed and angry about the way the SAGEs and especially that infamous ‘behavioural’ group, the ‘Nudge Unit’, have destroyed our culture of live-and-let-live, of mutual tolerance, of generosity in spirit. Instead, creating their climate of abject fear, they’ve turned too many of our fellow citizens into tinpot dictators, of self-appointed covid ‘wardens’. I won’t mention the ‘fear porn’ with which the MSM have overwhelmed so many of us for over a year. 

I’m beginning to think that even some SAGEs have fallen prey to this fear, robbing them of clear analytical thinking – something one would expect scientists to possess. I’m sure that our covid emperors, from BJ to Matt-the-Han, have also lost their vestiges of critical thought – if they ever possessed them – to that ‘fear’.

This fear is exacerbated by their continuous dithering: be it about holiday travel, be it about letting us all out, as promised, on ‘Freedom Day’, be it about lifting their ridiculous restrictions. It made me hopeful that not all of us have submitted to fear when I read that by the end of the week over 300,000 Brits will have travelled to ‘amber’ countries, against the pleas of fear-ridden covidians in government.

Those holiday-makers believe they’re safe because they’ve had the jab. Didn’t the covid government tell us last year that the jab would give us back our freedom? Should we not ‘believe’ what our SAGE~ and Nudge~driven government tells us? One interesting aspect to this government warning about travel caught my eye. It makes horrible sense:

“Paul Charles, the chief executive of travel consultancy The PC Agency, said the Government appeared determined to suppress the demand because of fears Border Force resources and quarantine checks could be overwhelmed. “That’s why they are trying to reduce the numbers travelling,” he claimed.” (paywalled link)

God forbid that we plebs ‘overwhelm’ yet another public service for which we pay! The pleas from the covid cabinet, to desist, are already subtly supported in MSM articles. It’s not just, as one would expect, about ‘staying safe’. There’s a strong whiff of nasty nannying discernible. Some of us more mature readers remember how we were told not to do this or that, not to play with these or those kids because they were ‘dirty’. This time, it’s not ‘dirty’, this time it’s ‘diseased’. The SAGE professor Van Tam told the breathless meejah:

“The disease levels in these different countries that are potential destinations are all very different, and some of them still have quite high levels of disease activity compared to the UK.” (paywalled link)

Yes, that’s correct: don’t go there because the people there are diseased! Don’t touch, don’t play with them: ‘dirty’! Will it work? Given the irrational fear of our WFH muzzle-wearing classes it actually might. They don’t notice that they’ve fallen back into the olden times of general prejudice which they used to abhor. 

There are two other ‘nudge’ items which may keep them obedient to the covid diktats. One is that this horrible uncertainty about ‘variants of concern’ – do they kill us? Were the jabs useless after all? The other is about fear of losing money. It means that the kerfuffle about disregarding the ‘amber warnings’ could leave travellers ‘out of pocket’, as The Times reports under the interesting headline “Fears chaos over Covid holiday rules could leave thousands out of pocket” (link, paywalled).

Gawd – where would we be without our daily dose of ‘fear’! This fear of losing money is based on people possibly losing their money when their holidays, already booked, might have to be cancelled because: ‘disease’, because government isn’t giving properly strict ‘guidance’. Well, short of closing down air traffic to ‘amber’ holiday destinations there’s not much that can be done. 

If this fear of losing money by travelling to disease-ridden places weren’t sufficient to keep people at home, there’s the latest appeal, ‘nudging’ us into changing our behaviour. In an opinion piece in The Times (link, paywalled) we’re told that it’s ‘selfish’ to book both a foreign and a British holiday because people doing this are selfishly thinking only of their own selfish joys and not of the British holiday industry. Hedging one’s bets in times of uncertainty is ‘selfish’ – who knew!

It seems all those travel experts in the MSM, those ‘guidance providers’ in the covid cabinet are overlooking the fact that they cannot drive the population to accept mass jabbing on the one hand, with the carrot of ‘freedom’ after having been jabbed, while still keeping the fear of covid rampant on the other.

I’m not going to hold my breath that this fear campaign will be dialled down even though, surprise surprise, the MSM acknowledge all of a sudden that the scare models of that ‘variant of concern’ weren’t correct after all:

“Hospital admissions are “fairly flat” in variant hotspots while initial estimates suggest a smaller increase in transmissibility that would not risk overwhelming the NHS if restrictions end next month.” (link, paywalled)

Well I never! Have SAGEs discovered what we’ve been pointing out for some time, namely that hospital statistics do not show a ‘spike’ in sick covid patients? Rather, the exacerbation of covid fear by our SAGE modelers was at least good for keeping us plebs fearful for another few weeks. It was good for employing another ‘surge’ initiative, for more tests and more jabs!

Strange, isn’t it, how SAGE modellers are now apparently ‘overwhelmed’ by a dose of common sense. First, here’s a scientific explanation – mind you don’t ask why this hasn’t occurred to those eminent SAGE scientists before:

“Scientists are coming to the conclusion that the recent surge in cases may not mean the variant is more transmissible, but rather a blip caused by a perfect storm of conditions and something known as “the founder effect”.The effect occurs when a variant quickly becomes established in a new geographical location by chance, rather than because a mutation gives it an advantage.” (paywalled link)

Next, an explanation, sadly demonstrating that SAGE scientists were ‘doing science’ driven not just by ‘fear of covid’ but by fear of being racist:

“The Indian variant was imported into areas which have always been Covid hotspots due to deprivation, the inability of large numbers to work-from-home, and the fact that many live in multi-generational households. Areas such as Bolton and Blackburn have consistently struggled to keep cases low, even when battling the original Chinese wild-type of the virus, and even when locked down.” (paywalled link)

And we’re back to ‘deprivation’ as explanation: give them more money, taken from our wallets, and covid will disappear, is it? Don’t ask how those poor people who ‘imported’ that Indian variant when they flew back from India actually afforded those flights.

Then there’s this little piece on the SAGE modellers and scientists: be amazed that they are only fallible human beings, driven by moods and fears  just as we are:

“The mood has improved as scientists see signs that the variant may not be 50 percent more transmissible than the Kent variant, as had been feared. While advisers concluded last week that 50 per cent was a realistic possibility it is now considered the top end of a plausible range” (link, paywalled)

I cannot help but come to the conclusion that even SAGE modellers were driven by the Nudge Unit’s fear propaganda, that they traduced science through ‘scare modelling’ to help the politicians, nudged into fear as well. I was not surprised when I read this LockdownSceptics report on one of the Nudge unit ‘scientists’. She’s not a medic but a ‘race expert’, but still believes she’s got the right to drive covid policies initiated on medical grounds.

Funny that, isn’t it, when we are being told incessantly not to argue by using data we cannot possibly understand because we’re not doctors or medical experts. At least her ‘expertise’ explains the lack of proper observations and questions about the Indian variant: all of that would be racist and the race mongers in the nudge unit couldn’t permit that.

To conclude: proper science, as we’ve maintained for a very long time, has been subverted by behavioural ‘experts’ who are also ‘race’ experts. On the one hand, valid data were lost or disregarded, on the other this approach has nudged many of our fellow citizens into a behaviour which is profoundly un-British. The curtain-twitchers of old, so deplored by our ‘betters’:  the better educated, better off middle classes, have been resurrected. Real or virtual curtain-twitching is fine as long as it keeps the covid emperors in power.

I do wonder what will happen when the travellers now piling onto holiday flights will come back. Is the covid empire secretly hoping that these ‘selfish’ travellers bring back a new ‘variant of concern’, from those dirty, disease-riddled countries they’re heedlessly visiting for their own selfish pleasures? Is that why we’re told BJ will make the final decision on Freedom Day a week before that date?

Or will this travel exercise turn out to be a very British giving the finger, virtually, to the covid empire?

 

KBO!

 

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