I was bucked by the supportive letter from Bryan Thomas of Abbotskerswell 2 weeks ago. Two citizens took issue with him in last week’s MDA but avoided a tilt at me!
Note that a SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) minute spoke of ‘instilling fear’. You might know that Dominic Cummings attended some of its meetings but he is no scientist! My near namesake, Dr David Halpern PhD FacSS, was there. He runs a large team of graduates under the name of the Behavioural Insights Team, or more ordinarily the ‘Nudge Unit’. It was in No 10 but growth caused its translocation down the road. There is a team of the same name in our ‘ally’, the US of A.
Dr Halpern is a psychologist with a distinguished academic history. Wiki quotes - “11 March 2020 he gave an interview to the BBC on the importance of shielding vulnerable people during the C19 ‘pandemic’ until herd immunity was achieved.” He was right then but Government negligence followed. As Professor Knut Wittkowski said several times before he was quickly censored, all that ‘lockdown’ etc would cause, is extension of the epidemic. Most people know that their behaviour is being recorded – eg. what you put in your trolley at the ‘super’market, your image on CCTV cameras – more in Britain than in any other nation we are told. The Nudge Unit’s skill is in tweeking our behaviour via our perceptions. What we fear, like an invisible virus, is basic in our reactions. I would bet the nudgers suggested that puerile red and yellow cross hatching round the lecterns for those stilted ‘press conferences’ in No 10.
Have ‘they’ succeeded in scaring the wits out of people as I said in my last piece. They have in the majority. I see the bizarre. A man driving a sports car with the windows down and a mask on! A lady walking alone along Le Molay Littray early one morning in the sun and with a breeze, but wearing a paper mask! I drove into Newton Abbot for a lead so I could connect my new lap top computer to a 16 hour battery for the writing of my book. There were a good number of fellow humans, about 10% being masked. The electrical shop was shut of course, and most others including essential ones like nail bars. As I went back to the pick up with its load of logs I passed a slender mother with a two year old. ‘Its like ghost town’ I said. ‘Yes. I think its nice’. I said no taxes are being paid. There will be no money for our NHS. It had not crossed her mind I reckon.
Perhaps she believes that the nice Mr Johnson, and his fellow, Matt Hancock, the Minister of ‘Health’, will look after her and her little one with every ounce of care.
Masks? Do they ‘work’. They do not if you keep fingering them. Watch clips of health professionals on the State Broadcaster. They are forever fiddling with them. If droplets with this virion have been caught on the mask, they will be transferred to the hands, and onwards. I read that oxygen saturation drops and CO2 levels rise. Serum cortisol levels show elevation reflecting hidden stress. A GP colleague saw a vast shed full of Amazon workers all masked and doing 12 hour shifts. Their health was being impaired. And how come Amazon was not ‘excluded’ along with vital food processing plants.
The obedient correspondents in last week’s MDA must surely have some idea that the national and global economy has been atomised for some decades to come. It was on the brink with wheelbarrow fulls of ‘quantitative easing’. That is printing paper money, or more factually, typing figures on the computer screen as Sunak is doing. Take the big shops in our local cities – Exeter and Plymouth. Torquay was already on skid row as a result of overblown and cheap ideas. The big tenants are defaulting on their rents and the owners of these big steel and concrete blocks will be adding to a cascade of bankruptcy. Pension funds and institutional investors etc rely a good deal on these supposedly solid incomes. No more. And do not forget that local councils including Torbay and ?Teignbridge, have been putting our money into these previously secure piggy banks. They will prove to be thin china.
In this ‘lockdown’ people have been going on line for essential items with the convenience and near immediacy of home delivery. No need to squeeze into that narrow space in the council car park and having found your glasses to read the small font instructions, find you need your car registration number. You have seen the many delivery vans going about, and there are more and more. That will be permanent. Happily, businesses like Arnolds the ironmongers in Bovey will survive for many good reasons including a personal service – human to human.
Stop Press. A whisper from No 10. You are limited to three, I repeat THREE, sheets of toilet tissue
per diem. So go easy on the figs and prunes.
What is my prescription as a doctor first and an orthopaedic and trauma surgeon second? That you must first recover your common sense if it has suffered in wall to wall propangandere nero. If you have it still, attempt to help your relative, friend or neighbour whose self confidence has gone out the window. Recover your courage and speak the truth as you know it. In the Sandygate Inn where I stopped for refreshment and good hearted company on my way back from work in my Combe woods, some would say cheerfully that they had the ‘covidization’ before Christmas, and so they did.
Common sense resides in the men and women who do real jobs. There were many such citizens in 1939 when we were about to fight an evil ideology then.
Finally, note this from NHS England – from Offguardian. “Over 95% of “COVID Deaths” recorded in England and Wales had potentially serious comorbidities, according to statistics released by NHS England.” And whether this virus was the primary CAUSE of death has been seldom proven.
