A nice little earner all round …

It’s a huge relief to be able to open the MSM without being greeted by a grinning Hancock or PM on the front pages, never mind a glum-looking Whitty or Vallance. Sadly, this lovely state of affairs will end after the weekend. Instead we are presented with irrefutable evidence of mental laziness if not dereliction of duty exhibited by the various ‘covid correspondents’. There are the ‘fear’ reports about that SA variant, there are reports about China’s vaccines, there are reports on another app failure by our mighty NHS, and on a lovely little earner for government – and all without proper questions being asked.

Oh yes – in case you needed reminding: pubs were permitted to serve drinks in their outdoor areas, and in spite of the horrible cold people flocked to pubs (link) – in England, that is.People in Scotland, NI and Wales are still deprived of visiting their pubs and restaurants. Don’t ask how this makes sense.

All those pub goers presumably had their smartphone apps telling landlords they were covid-free. The NHS was going to develop this app further in order to create a sort-of covid-ID. Sadly – for them – and astonishingly for us, tech giants Google and Apple rejected the NHS app because it was ‘breaching privacy rules’ (link). The NHS aim was to have all those data being used by the famous Test & Tracers should a covid ‘pub hotspot’ be found. This report in Lockdown Sceptics has the details.

Mentioning “T & T” brings us to that nice little earner – for the government. You’ll be amazed (not!) to learn that on each ‘gold standard PCR test’ you’ll have to pay 20% VAT. The holiday-making industry is up in arms:

“The charge has been introduced by the Treasury despite an EU recommendation last year that testing kits should be exempt from VAT, as is the case with personal protective equipment. In the EU, the average cost of PCR tests is less than half the price in the UK, where they average around £130 apiece compared with just £60 in most EU countries. The disclosure follows the Government’s decision to require every holidaymaker returning to the UK to pay for a “gold standard” PCR test on or before day two of their arrival even if they have been to a “green list” country and have been fully vaccinated.” (paywalled link)

Should’ve stayed in the EU, shouldn’t we – or at least travellers should stop travelling and stay at home, right? I’ve not found anything about VAT having to be paid on PCR tests people need to take to show that they’re covid-clean. One would’ve thought that a reporter would’ve researched this. I’m too tired to wade through hordes of pixels to check this out myself – if any of you can find more about this, please mention it in comments. After all, if you find yourself in a covid hotspot after an innocent pub visit and are told to T & T, you’d like to know how much that’s going to cost you, wouldn’t you!

And so to China and the China vaccine. We read yesterday that a Chinese official had apparently denigrated the efficiency of the China vaccines. He soon rowed back, saying that he only meant to point out that combining different vaccines when giving two jabs might have better results (link). Again, Lockdown Sceptics has taken a closer look and puts the whole thing into perspective, concluding with this warning:

“It is not the time to think we can create a 100% effective barrier against a seasonal respiratory disease, as the Government appears to be aiming for, with Boris justifying restrictions because “vaccines are not giving 100% protection”, and the BBC promoting the need for continued restrictions because vaccines are not “100% effective”. It is the height of folly to think we can create an impenetrable wall of vaccination and coerce everyone to play their part in building this imaginary edifice. The vaccines, for those who wish to have them, are surely good enough. We must stop living under the shadow of Covid.” (link)

Just so – but this is the veiled aim of our covid politburo: keep the scare going, keep us all under the threat of more or fewer restrictions as ‘precaution’, and achieve a ‘100% covid-safe’ environment in these here Isles. 

And so to the latest ‘treatment’ for covid. This kicked of yesterday, and many of you will have seen the report in LockdownSceptics here. It is about a report in Lancet, that ‘a cheap’ asthma drug could help treat covid patients. Here’s the report in the DM, and The Times had this to say:

“A widely-used asthma drug is the first treatment to be proven to speed up the recovery of Covid patients who stay at home. Budesonide, which is taken through an inhaler, was found to cut the time it took higher-risk patients to feel better by an average of three days. It also reduced the chances of them relapsing after an initial recovery. […] That compared with 14 days for a control group which was given usual care, which often involves nothing more than instructions to take paracetamol.” (link, paywalled)

Well, as an old asthma patient who was made to try everything, I can tell you that Budesonide isn’t precisely the NHS asthma inhaler treatment of choice. Also, weren’t there reports last year that the good old steroid inhalers with dexamethasone were shown to be ‘very useful’?

Perhaps the various science editors just needed something to fill the rest of their pages – those not being filled with ever more scraps about ‘how I/my dog/my cat met/knew Prince Philip’ – in the blessed absence of politicians and apparently ‘sources’ littering the MSM thanks to the purdah.

However – there’s more to this Budesonide report. You might have noticed the use of the highly scientific expression ‘patients feel better’ in the report in The Times. So let me quote instead from the article published by Swiss Policy Research yesterday which puts this in perspective – a perspective which a proper ‘science editor’ and even a ‘covid editor’ ought to have noticed:

“First of all, two British budesonide trials, not one, have been published in recent days: the smaller Oxford trial published in the Lancet (about 70 patients receiving budesonide) and the larger PRINCIPLE trial published as a preprint (about 750 patients receiving budesonide).” (link)

Surely a covid-science editor worth her or his salt would’ve noticed and would’ve mentioned it, given that they have to fill their pages? There’s more – it’s a proper critique which is clearly beyond our covid-science editors:

“In both trials, budesonide achieved no significant improvement in any “hard endpoint”: in the PRINCIPLE trial, there was no significant difference in hospitalizations, deaths, hospital assessment without admission, oxygen administration, and ICU admission. […] Instead, both trials used “soft endpoints” to claim an effect of budesonide: in the PRINCIPLE trial, the time to “self-reported recovery” was 3 days faster (11 days vs. 14 days); in the Oxford trial, the number of hospitalizations OR “urgent care visits” was about 90% lower (1 vs. 10 persons), BUT only one person actually WAS hospitalized and required oxygen.” (link)

Ah! Just look at those numbers! SPR points out that these result might be best explained as a combination of ‘placebo effect’ – no placebos were given in the control groups – and that the inhaler might have suppressed some symptoms, making people ‘feel better’. Their conclusion however should have alarm bells ringing:

“The Oxford and PRINCIPLE trials showed no real benefit of budesonide in terms of hard endpoints. Their press releases were embellished and exaggerated. Moreover, both trials had financial ties to AstraZeneca, the manufacturer of budesonide. Why did most researchers, doctors, and the media fall for it? Because ‘Oxford’, ‘Lancet’, and ‘PRINCIPLE’. The same people already fell for the fraudulent remdesivir, anti-HCQ and WHO mask studies published in the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine.” (link)

Interesting, isn’t it! Do recall the offhand remark in the Times above, that the control group was just given paracetamol – and still those patients only took three days longer to recover … Gawd, ‘our covid-science editors’ are an incredible bunch when it comes to avoiding asking inconvenient questions!

I leave you with the latest examples of our intrepid covid-science reporters’ efforts. They are reassuring us that new studies have found that the ‘Kent virus’ isn’t as deadly as a SAGE group had warned us (paywalled link) without asking how come and, above all, why SAGE was trumpeting that the Kent Mutant was ‘more deadly’. Now we learn from those intrepid reporters that there’s an ‘outbreak’ of the SA mutant – in London. There are 44 ‘confirmed’ and 30 ‘possible’ patients!

And this is why “we” must be scared to death: “Scientists are concerned that the strain, officially known as B1351, could evade vaccines because it is more transmissible.” (link) – what a clever virus! It comes out at night so we need curfews, it evades vaccines, it goes through muzzles so “we” better wear two of them at the same time – gah!

Perhaps someone ought to ask why that virus is so good at evading vaccines. Perhaps someone should ask if said vaccines are actually doing what it sez on the tin … and if not, then why force people in countries across the world to take the jab? I’m not holding my breath: this virus has created nice little earners all round, from governments to private enterprises. Money talks …

KBO!

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