by John Ward
The Slog looks at naive acceptance of risible Covid19 restrictions, points up the chronic unreliability of sound information, and offers rare praise for the Daily Telegraph.
This from the latest Ipsos Mori research monitor on Covid attitudes in the UK:
‘Overall, a large majority of Britons say they are very likely or certain that they will follow government guidelines and self-isolate should they test positive, come in close contact with someone who is positive, or arrive in Britain from a non-exempt country. Eighty-four per cent will do so if they themselves test positive for coronavirus while 77% will do the same should they come into close contact with someone who tests positive.’
This is yet another case of acting from the best of motives with the worst of information.
Here, for instance, is what the widely respected US/UK distributor of test data to (for example) Yale and the British Medical Journal had to say about “positive” Covid test results three days ago:
‘Evidence from external quality assessments and real-world data indicate a high enough false positive rate to make positive results highly unreliable over a broad range of scenarios.’
Such reality remains the problem with almost every wild goose chase that Manflu Halfcock pushes out there. A little bit of Janet & John to help the poor little chap:
And here’s the latest updated list of doubletalk in relation to Coronavirus: the global death rate, the efficacy of masks, the use of lockdown, the repairing of a broken economy, restaurant rules, bar rules, the demography of C19 death, the likelihood and timescale of vaccines, the modelling projection failures, the incompetence of drug trials, the smearing of HCQ, and the prevalence of Pharmafia funding/links/shareholdings etc in Government “advice”.
To call this rock-solid evidence “conspiracy theory” is to act like a reader of Izvestia circa 1974.
This is the United Kingdom of England, Wales, Scotland and the Northern Island (UKEWSNI). The UKSSR may trip more easily off the tongue, but it is not who we are.
As long as the dear old Torygraph continues to be the only MSM title seriously questioning Halfcock & BoJo C19 strategy on grounds other than Party political nitpicking, I really do think it is worthy of our support. It’s the last serious newspaper left in England, and we of the Decent Reality Tendency need all the allies we can get.
Here’s a small selection of the DT’s positively sensible output of late:
Champagne lockdownism is the new champagne socialism – and it is now the biggest obstacle to a sane response to Covid. (Sherelle Jacobs)
One in five people drank four nights a week during lockdown…Binge drinking nearly doubled during the pandemic… cases of binge drinking among women rose from eight per cent in 2019 to 14 per cent during the peak of lockdown in April. (Max Stephens)
The ONS says Covid19 was the 24th highest cause of death in August. Barely 450 of the 34,000 souls who passed that month. We pretty much know that lockdown gave 8,500 women and 3,500 men death sentences from undiagnosed breast & prostate cancer. (Allison Pearson)
James Frayne, who is close to Mr Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, and until recently carried out focus group research for the Cabinet Office, accused the Government of “dicing with political death in recent times” and warned that Downing Street’s draconian approach “will come back to haunt them in calmer times” (Camilla Tominey)
This is good journalism. Long may it continue.