10 May: Daily Mail: Has our mad mass house arrest during Covid-19 saved even a single life?
by Peter Hitchens
We will not escape from this misery until the Government has been forced to admit that it made a foolish mistake and over-reacted wildly to Covid-19.
The Prime Minister is like a man who sets fire to his own pyjamas, while he is wearing them, to cure himself of hiccups.
Now he stands naked and scorched, as his house burns around him, and exults that his hiccups have indeed gone away. This is what I mean by getting things out of proportion.
Above all, he must stop pretending that his actions saved us from deaths that never happened, and people must stop believing this evidence-free bilge.
Till that moment comes, months and perhaps years of costly, painful stupidity will follow. The belief that the Panic Policy worked means it can never fully end. If, and when, you go back to your job – if you still have a job – you will be compelled to abide by ludicrous, impractical rules. You will be forced to wear pointless muzzles on trains and buses...
And while this farce continues, businesses will continue to close and jobs continue to vanish, visiting misery and sickness on millions.
I have seen this before in the old Communist world, a mad, fixed idea pursued by dense men relentlessly and without opposition or thought, until the whole thing collapses or explodes. Now I see it here...
I have yet to see any reason to believe that throttling the economy and imposing mass house arrest have saved a single life. Deaths from Covid-19 peaked and began to decline in this country on April 8, a decline far too soon to have been brought about by the Johnson Panic of March 23...
As for the damage done by the wild, almost Maoist measures adopted by the Government, evidence pours in hourly from ruined businesses and people who thought they were secure, discovering the multiple miseries of Universal Credit.
And this is only just beginning...
But the vast, sweeping, showy policies of mass house arrest and the unprecedented switching off of an entire advanced 21st Century economy were, and are, pursued with relentless enthusiasm...
Even when Professor Neil Ferguson, chief advocate of the Panic Laws, was caught ignoring his own rules, nothing changed. The nation giggled and missed the point. I actually care more about what goes on above Prof Ferguson’s neck than what takes place below his belt.
The significance of his action was that even he doesn’t believe his scare stories enough to obey the rules based on them. Well, I don’t believe those scare stories either and never have.
But thanks to him and his raving prophecies, I now live in a country where the police – the police! – seriously consider prosecuting a free man for canoodling with his married mistress...
We are living in a mad country, governed by clowns. Who will save us from this, or must it just go on for ever?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8303715/PETER-HITCHENS-mad-mass-house-arrest-Covid-19-saved-single-life.html
9 May: UK Sun: SECOND LOVER Husband of lockdown-breaking Professor Ferguson’s lover Antonia Staats ‘has his own mistress’
by Nick Parker
It was not known whether 38-year-old Mr Lucas, an Arabic studies lecturer - who recently showed coronavirus symptoms - had left his home during lockdown to visit his mistress at another address...
PIC CAPTION: Professor Ferguson and Ms Staats are said to have met on dating site OkCupid, which has become popular with left-leaning couples who share liberal views...
Prof Ferguson, 51, would have been asked whether he reckoned Brexit was either “terrible for the UK” or “great for the UK”.
He would also have been quizzed on whether he considered his political beliefs to be either, “liberal/left, centrist, or conservative/right”.
The algorithm matched him with blonde Ms Staats, a south London-based left-wing campaigner with a masters in Asian politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies...
Ms Staats - who lives in a £1.9million home in Clapham, South West London - is also a climate change activist who joined anti-press protests outside Parliament in 2017...
The Sun on Sunday source added: “The fact that Professor Ferguson was matched with a left-wing activist makes his political leanings pretty clear.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11586872/husband-professor-neil-ferguson-lover-seeing-woman/
the Ferguson Protection Unit (including from IMPERIAL COLLEGE?) gets coverage on BBC, of course:
9 May: Daily Mail: Professor Lockdown Neil Ferguson should NOT have resigned over secret trysts at his London flat with married mistress say epidemiologists because ‘we need all the assets we can use in time of crisis’
•Experts blast ‘misconception’ that one man was the ‘architect of the lockdown’
•Scientists release a joint statement to defend introduction of social distancing
•Thibaut Jombart described his shamed colleague as ‘one of the best in the world’
By Tom Pyman
However, leading figures in modelling epidemics have issued a joint statement defending the science, with one colleague claiming Professor Ferguson shouldn’t have resigned, as he described him as ‘one of the best in the world’.
The 26 signatories slammed a ‘misconception’ that one single scientist was the ‘architect of the lockdown’ and single-handedly convinced the government to introduce drastic social distancing measures.
Instead, they say, a committee consensus is required, with some 56 participants currently making up the SAGE committee.
‘Any scientific advice to the UK government, including advice which preceded the lockdown is the result of the work of hundreds of researchers throughout the UK,’ they wrote.
‘The government may then take this advice, as well as a number of other considerations, into account when making decisions.’...
Thibaut Jombart, a member of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicines Moddeling Group, and senior lecturer at ***Imperial College London, where Professor Ferguson was based, coordinated the letter and praised his colleague’s influence on ***BBC Radio Four’s Today programme.
‘I’m against targeting any individual in general irrespective of what happened which was an error of judgement,’ he said.
‘There has been a lot of science going into informing these decisions and I think we should bear that in mind.’...
‘There’s a lot of brilliant epidemiologists in the country and he’s definitely one of the top ones in the world. In this time of crisis we need all the assets we can use so I think he should have stayed involved.
‘He’s a very experienced modeller, I’d rather have him on SAGE. So I hope he will stay involved in one way or another in the science.’...
The scandal broke on Tuesday and critics have said he ‘undermined the government’s lockdown message’ on one of the darkest days of the pandemic.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8303021/Professor-Lockdown-NOT-resigned-secret-trysts-mistress-say-epidemiologists.html