The extraordinary case of the vanishing covid case numbers

The Nation is quivering with excitement, waiting for Rishi’s budget tomorrow, or so the MSM tell us. It’s the hour of leaks, of  treasury ‘sources’ dropping titbits into the ears of ‘reporters’. We’ve been there every year. It’s a pointless exercise because we all know that there’s nothing we can do about it except gulp and pay up. 

Staying with money: it’s good to know that our peacocks have made excellent use of the £10,000 they were given to make their home ready for WFH and for the parliamentary Zoom meetings. This was in addition to the £26,000 they get for office costs. The ‘representatives’ of the downtrodden workers especially grabbed that golden opportunity with both hands. From the Labour deputy leader, Ms Rayner, down, the sums spent are staggering:

“Geraint Davies, the Labour MP for Swansea East, also spent £3,975 on Apple equipment between April and July, while Barry Gardiner, the former shadow international trade secretary, claimed £1,748 for an iPad, £131 for an Apple pencil and £349 for a keyboard for the device. Damien Moore, the Conservative MP for Southport, spent £2,598 on Apple equipment in May, while Jacob Young, the Tory MP for Redcar, spent £1,940.” (paywalled link)

It’s all ‘within the rules’ according to the various spokesmen. Well, that’s a relief, innit, and let’s not think, as one campaigner hinted, that these MPs seem to have used the allowance as ‘slush fund’ to upgrade their personal equipment. But enough of that – troughers will trough, won’t they, so why should we be surprised.

Back to the covid front and to the covid ‘news’ spouted by yon Matt H. yesterday. We must all be amazed and happy that the vaccination of the elderly has been such success. ‘Fewer than ten over-80s’ now need intensive care, having received the jab. Yon Matt H. and professor JVT – that’s Jonathan Van-Tam to peasants like you and me –  dazzled the MSM with numbers about who’s now less ‘at risk’ and all the usual jazz (link).

The wonderful thing is that at the same time all those scary case numbers have been plummeting anyway. Sorry but I can’t help feeling that the covid dictators’ claim of success is a bit like shamans telling the faithful that thanks to their magical performance the sun will appear again after an eclipse – and lo and behold, so she does. 

Of course, they didn’t talk about case numbers having fallen to such an extent that MPs have suggested that the slides produced by the covid PR performers haven’t shown the reality ‘on the ground’. It seems that PHE is now ‘suppressing’ those numbers for a reason – you couldn’t make it up (my emphasis):

“Latest figures show that 971 of 6,791 local areas across England recorded fewer than three Covid-19 cases in the seven days up to Feb 23. Around 7.3 million people live in these neighbourhoods, or 13 per cent of the total population. Areas reporting between zero and two cases are marked by NHS England as “suppressed”, meaning the true number of positive tests is withheld. Official guidance states this is to prevent the small number of infected people from being publicly shamed due to their “rarity or uniqueness”. (paywalled link)

How very caring! I respectfully suggest that the true cause for this ‘suppression’ is to keep everybody to the straight and narrow of lockdown rules. After all, we peasants would surely leave our homes en masse because there’s no covid around – and we can’t have that, can we!

The Off-Guardian has an excellent explanation for the general tumbling of case numbers happening here and across the world, writing that the cause can be found in two WHO directives from January in regard to testing, and that therefore:

“What we’re seeing is a decline in perfectly healthy people being labelled “covid cases” based on a false positive from an unreliable testing process.” (link).

Indeed so! For the extremely scientifically-minded there’s a dense but interesting paper here, where the author (Professor Fenton) puts paid to the government fairy tale about asymptomatic people being ‘orrible covid speraders.

That brings us with an elegant swerve to the ‘man-hunt’ for the ‘Brazilian’. You recall that this totally scary mutant from Brazil was detected in six people here in the UK: two are self-incarcerating in England, three in Scotland – but one is roaming around, undetected, and can’t be found because he/she/it forgot to fill in his test document properly. How could he/she/it!

That man-hunt boils down to the covid authorities now tracing all 139 passengers on that flight from Brazil. What amazes me no end is the zeal with which this detecting exercise is being undertaken – as if this one person alone might scupper the pristine covid statistics on which BJ’s lockdown exit rests. The Times’ editorial this morning observes:

“If allowed to spread uncontrollably, the Manaus variant might well reinfect the vaccinated and previously infected, and nullify so much of the progress made in recent weeks. […] The risk, as Dr Susan Hopkins of Public Health England warned yesterday, is that a vaccine-resistant strain may already have a foothold in the community before next week’s reopening of schools.” (link, paywalled)

Only in the covid universe can six persons, five of them in quarantine, be equated with the mutant having a foothold in the community. In this morning’s Newsletter Lockdown Sceptics has a quote from a ‘well-placed source’ which supports our hypothesis that the lockdown dictators are quivering for ‘new variants’ to keep us locked in permanently:

“I have good reason to believe that Hancock is desperate for variants, and that experts think it a waste of time to hunt for them and think vaccinations are fine to keep things going well, including coping with variants. He wants twice daily briefings on any possible variants.” (link)

Alternatively, it looks to me as if yon Matt H. is desperate to be seen as the ‘great covid protector’ and cannot bear the thought of being relegated to the also-runs when we get back some sort of normalcy. 

And so to the latest ‘trend’: to stop the virus it’s now trendy to wear two masks at once. From the US president and his covid emperor, a certain professor Fauci, all the way to our shores: 

“Double masking is being considered by government scientists, a senior official has suggested, as she said the “more layers you have better”. Dr Susan Hopkins, of Public Health England, said that people should ideally wear masks made up of three layers to get the best protection.” (paywalled link)

Rest assured – PHE is ‘looking into it’, and what they really mean is that the mask you wear should have three layers, not one or two (link, paywalled). Why this is being talked about now (“do as Biden does”) is astounding. Aren’t the vulnerable now vaccinated, protected, and might go out into the fresh air in all those areas with none, one or two cases only? And anyway – aren’t we’ve being told how brilliant the vaccines work, for example:

“Jonathan Van-Tam, the deputy chief medical officer for England, said this gave an overall effect of “reducing the likelihood of hospitalisation by 80 per cent after one dose”. (link, paywalled)

That clearly means to me, stupid peasant that I am, that ‘Our NHS’ is now in fact protected from being overwhelmed, no? Ah well – perhaps not if that Brazil mutant is already roaming free in this country, endangering us all even though there are no actual numbers of hospital admissions rising, new Brazil covid cases being detected.

It’s the ‘precautionary principle’ taken to the extreme and I can’t help but wonder if there’s a connection between the length of straight hair, sported by that English PHE lady and that precautionary extremist, the NZ president Ms Jacinda Ardern, and their utmost adherence to the precautionary principle. As female I’m allowed to say so. Meow.

I leave you with an extraordinary piece of news: the EU can work very speedily indeed! Brussels is ‘working’ on some sort of covid passport – read this and shiver:

“A proposal for a “digital green pass” will be put forward by the European Commission on March 17 to “kick start” tourism by the end of June. Ursula von der Leyen, the commission president, announced the plan after European Union leaders agreed last week that a Covid-19 certificate or “passport” would need to be in place by the summer. […] Along with vaccinations, the “pass” or certificate will include information on an individual’s most recent Covid test results and “statements of recovery”, such as test data showing immunity owing to the presence of antibodies.” (link, paywalled)

And –  oh the joy for our holiday-obsessed WFH middle classes! – this passport ‘could be extended’ to the UK provided our ‘case numbers’ drop (link). Well, I can envisage two ‘outcomes’. Either our covid testers will stringently apply the advice of the WHO, to eliminate all those false +ve results – or M Barnier, who is now a special adviser to Ms vdLeyen, will find a way to make the issuing of such EU passports to us Brexit Brits contingent on our kowtowing to more EU trade restrictions.

There’s one huge fly in that ointment: the fact that mass vaccination in EU member states is hugely lagging behind ours. The Germans are especially cross because such passport will be useless for them since most of those able and willing to travel won’t be vaccinated much before Christmas. So this Brussels initiative might end up like the proverbial damp squib. We can live in hope …

KBO!