hedda wrote:
However there are vast differences though in Covid deaths.

Argentina 116,000 compared to Victoria's 1944

Yet Victoria with it's longer lock downs but pretty much similar to all the Oz states has the largest amount of Covid deaths.

Melbourne & Sydney have approx 6 million residents each..Buenos Aires at 15 million but all 3 cities are spacious and possible similar in density. Why do some have higher death rates?

# I have been lucky with a legal reason to move about each day. I think lock down for many people must be very difficult and I can understand it would impact badly on the mental health of many.

It's one thing staying home all the time but another being made to stay home.

Yes it doesn't make sense does it when one just looks at lockdowns & restrictions. Common sense doesn't seem to play out. There are I think so many more factors than restrictions; health in general populations probably being a major one. UK is the fat man of Europe; and look at the USA....

Lord Sumption - as ever - devastatingly clear in a piece in The Telegraph; link to excerpt here not behind pay wall.

If we are on our third or fourth lockdowns they don't work.

When will frightened leaders level with the public that they are impotent against certain natural phenomena?

Authoritarian Europe is a disgrace. Stop pretending this stuff works and ignoring the damage it is doing:

dailysceptic.org/2021/11/22/lord-sumptio...an-european-regimes/

md wrote:
I thought his childhood home was near Melbourne and a place called Rosebud.

I stand corrected..he was born in Melbourne.

Had no idea he was connected to Rosebud which I visited once to see an old cousin. Hell of a long way from central Melbourne and was once quite working class but rapidly changing as it's by the bay and near the sea.

Wyot wrote:
Lord Sumption - as ever - devastatingly clear in a piece in The Telegraph; link to excerpt here not behind pay wall.

If we are on our third or fourth lockdowns they don't work.

When will frightened leaders level with the public that they are impotent against certain natural phenomena?

Authoritarian Europe is a disgrace. Stop pretending this stuff works and ignoring the damage it is doing:

dailysceptic.org/2021/11/22/lord-sumptio...an-european-regimes/

Lord Sumpton is obviously an intelligent man a with a long and distinguished career but why would he know more than medical researchers and doctors?

I mean I don't know if endless lock downs do or don't work but how would hiz honour know more than me?

hedda wrote:
[quote]Wyot wrote:


Lord Sumpton is obviously an intelligent man a with a long and distinguished career but why would he know more than medical researchers and doctors?



But where has he ever said that he did on matters of medicine or virology Hedda?

Wyot wrote:
Lord Sumption - as ever - devastatingly clear in a piece in The Telegraph; link to excerpt here not behind pay wall.

If we are on our third or fourth lockdowns they don't work.

When will frightened leaders level with the public that they are impotent against certain natural phenomena?

Authoritarian Europe is a disgrace. Stop pretending this stuff works and ignoring the damage it is doing:

dailysceptic.org/2021/11/22/lord-sumptio...an-european-regimes/

It isn't that lockdowns don't work, it is the way it is implemented.
You have to do it properly or not bother at all.

I think I might have used this example before, but if my house was infested with mice, and I killed most of them and then stopped because I could happily live with just a few, I would be a simpleton, because they keep breeding and soon I would be back where I started.

You cant eliminate a virus if you keep bringing it into the country and allowing it to spread.
If you cant do it properly there is no point at all.

More on the Austrian precedent here in Dan Astin-Gregory's "The Impact of Social Engineering":
I see The Great Reset has now moved on to The Great Narrative: www.weforum.org/events/the-great-narrative-2021

Also, Dr Raszek discusses a new hypothesis proposing SARS-CoV-2 causes DNA damage, and potentially mRNA vaccines too:

Honey wrote:
[quote]Wyot wrote:



If you cant do it properly there is no point at all.

We aren't a million miles away Honey.

My view - well it is not even a view it is unarguable from the data - is that there is no necessary link (when you examine different international responses) - between lockdown severity and covid deaths.

The example you give may be the reason. I have no idea; I am not a scientist.

Which is why I get so tired of people falling back on "the science" and conflating questioning the efficacy of lockdown with questioning experts on virology.

Very slow voice: they are not the same thing....

Even otherwise very intelligent commentators (on here - specifically - I include Hedda) conflate these things CONSTANTLY...

Wyot wrote:
[quote]Honey wrote:
Wyot wrote:



If you cant do it properly there is no point at all.

We aren't a million miles away Honey.

My view - well it is not even a view it is unarguable from the data - is that there is no necessary link (when you examine different international responses) - between lockdown severity and covid deaths.

The example you give may be the reason. I have no idea; I am not a scientist.

Which is why I get so tired of people falling back on "the science" and conflating questioning the efficacy of lockdown with questioning experts on virology.

Very slow voice: they are not the same thing....

Even otherwise very intelligent commentators (on here - specifically - I include Hedda) conflate these things CONSTANTLY...

Yes, because you cant get data from something that hasn't happened.

Lockdown versus no lockdown is REALLY comparing "half hearted attempts and nonsensical rules" with "not doing much at all in varying conditions",
so they have never actually been compared, except in somebody's imagination.

And to repeat my original point; if something is as lethal and epidemic as Ebola, suppression may be indeed the best way to contain it and under those circumstances strict and solid lockdowns are probably vital. But when something is NOT that dangerous it is absurd to try suppressing it. Protection of the vulnerable becomes the essential.

Honey wrote:
[quote]Wyot wrote:
Honey wrote:
Wyot wrote:



If you cant do it properly there is no point at all.

We aren't a million miles away Honey.

My view - well it is not even a view it is unarguable from the data - is that there is no necessary link (when you examine different international responses) - between lockdown severity and covid deaths.

The example you give may be the reason. I have no idea; I am not a scientist.

Which is why I get so tired of people falling back on "the science" and conflating questioning the efficacy of lockdown with questioning experts on virology.

Very slow voice: they are not the same thing....

Even otherwise very intelligent commentators (on here - specifically - I include Hedda) conflate these things CONSTANTLY...

Yes, because you cant get data from something that hasn't happened.

Lockdown versus no lockdown is REALLY comparing "half hearted attempts and nonsensical rules" with "not doing much at all in varying conditions",
so they have never actually been compared, except in somebody's imagination.

True. And they shouldn't be compared you are correct. The whole debate works on the level of correlation - both sides even the "scientists" who have been highly disingenuous throughout - not causation and is not comparing like for like.

People correlate a lockdown with a reduction in A&E admissions, for e.g, because a graph is produced with the lockdown date followed by reduced admissions. Well, ok, perhaps it played a part perhaps not. Perhaps also seasonal change? Perhaps a change in treatment approach?

Equally someone like me is being equally disingenuous if I point to a graph showing that there were already reduced admissions prior to the lockdown therefore the lockdowns were superfluous. Well maybe, maybe not. Maybe admissions would have spiked upwards again without the lockdown.

I have come to my views because I believe taking away peoples human rights and causing death and misery by doing so should only be done if the level of threat is such that:

1. It justifies it?
2. The lockdowns work?

1. It doesn't justify it. Excess deaths are surely what counts? While a nasty disease for some it is harmless to the vast majority (98%). Mortality causes have been redefined quite deliberately as well so that pre Covid ways of dying and at a "dying age" have been co-opted into orbit.

2. While comparing lockdown countries with non lockdown countries is - I agree Honey - ultimately pointless; I do it to highlight the absence of anylevel of evidence - even correlative let alone causational! - that they are having an impact.

JK2006 wrote:
And to repeat my original point; if something is as lethal and epidemic as Ebola, suppression may be indeed the best way to contain it and under those circumstances strict and solid lockdowns are probably vital. But when something is NOT that dangerous it is absurd to try suppressing it. Protection of the vulnerable becomes the essential.

I agree with this.

To apply the tests in my previous post:

1. Is it justified? Yes Ebola is bloody lethal and rapacious with a death rate over 50% that no doctor in the world - unless drunk and doing a party piece - would describe as "died with" Ebola....

2. Will it work? Yes partly because of 1. It is so lethal and kills so many that it doesn't get very far; in stark contrast to the relatively harmless but ubiquitously infectious Covid-19. This is thankfully why Ebola outbreaks are rare and geographically limited.