Cyprus-Forum.com

[repulsewarrior]

...for the record,


Over 1000 people moved through Agios Dometios roadblock on Monday
CNA - CYPRUS/Nicosia 22/06/2020 19:56
More than a thousand people moved to and from the occupied territories of Cyprus on Monday, through the roadblock of Agios Dometios.

"According to Cyprus’ police data, until 18.00 (local time) 605 people from the occupied areas passed to the free areas and 493 people passed from the free to the occupied areas passed through Agios Dometios roadblock in Nicosia.

Today`s crossings are particularly high compared to yesterday, the first day of the reopening of roadblocks after their temporary closure due to the measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 in Cyprus.

The Republic of Cyprus implemented on Sunday, the decision to open the roadblocks for Cypriot citizens and persons residing legally in the Republic. On Sunday, 51 people passed through to the free areas. But it was not until Monday that the occupation authorities allowed the passage of..."

[erolz66]

And back to the numbers

Sweden (population 10.23 million) today passed the Netherlands (population 17.28 million) in confirmed positives to date.

https://bchurchill.github.io/covidtrend ... ingtime=33

Sweden continues to climb up the Hopkins list of countries with most tested positive cases. Having surpassed the Netherlands on 13 the June it is today ahead of Ecuador (population 16,080,778), Egypt (98,420,000), Belarus (9,485,000) and Belgium (11,460,000)

[cyprusgrump]

And back to the numbers

Sweden (population 10.23 million) today passed the Netherlands (population 17.28 million) in confirmed positives to date.

https://bchurchill.github.io/covidtrend ... ingtime=33

Sweden continues to climb up the Hopkins list of countries with most tested positive cases. Having surpassed the Netherlands on 13 the June it is today ahead of Ecuador (population 16,080,778), Egypt (98,420,000), Belarus (9,485,000) and Belgium (11,460,000)

It is bizarre that your ‘search for the truth’ never brings you into contact with any evidence that contradicts your narrative – Lockdown = good.

Instead, you search out bizarre information such as this which supports your position while ignoring everything else that I read almost every day.

Why, it is almost as though you have no interest in truth at all – just bludgeoning your pre-determined position across...

[erolz66]

There is nothing bizarre about the figures for number of confirmed positive cases in respective countries. They are just numbers. That they do not conform to what you want to believe regardless of evidence is your problem not mine.

I go where the evidence leads. When people come here and claim this virus will spread , peak and decline everywhere in essentially the same way regardless of when and what actions by government are taken, I look to see if there is evidence that supports this argument or not. In the case of Sweden the evidence to date of new confirmed positives is not supporting this argument. That you do not like this reality is self evident in you choosing to take the time and effort to just attack me the messenger when I point this reality out whilst ignoring the message / evidence entirely.

On any comparative scale of how much someone 'follows the evidence' through to 'ignores it to maintain a pre chosen position' you I am afraid are vastly nearer the latter end of that scale than I am. That is also shown by the evidence of our respective behaviours here over years. it is where the evidence leads and you will also just ignore this.

[cyprusgrump]

There is nothing bizarre about the figures for number of confirmed positive cases in respective countries. They are just numbers. That they do not conform to what you want to believe regardless of evidence is your problem not mine.

I go where the evidence leads. When people come here and claim this virus will spread , peak and decline everywhere in essentially the same way regardless of when and what actions by government are taken, I look to see if there is evidence that supports this argument or not. In the case of Sweden the evidence to date of new confirmed positives is not supporting this argument. That you do not like this reality is self evident in you choosing to take the time and effort to just attack me the messenger when I point this reality out whilst ignoring the message / evidence entirely.

On any comparative scale of how much someone 'follows the evidence' through to 'ignores it to maintain a pre chosen position' you I am afraid are vastly nearer the latter end of that scale than I am. That is also shown by the evidence of our respective behaviours here over years. it is where the evidence leads and you will also just ignore this.

Ignoring the point I made completely - what a surprise...

So you are claiming that in your 'search for the truth' you never stumble across anything that contradicts your view...? Nothing?

Because you'd think that somebody that was really 'searching for the truth' would occasionally post something from the other side of the argument that was at least feasible...?

But you don't of course, you have no interest in the truth in this or any other thread - you just bludgeon, bludgeon, bludgeon your pre-chosen position....

[erolz66]

So you are claiming that in your 'search for the truth' you never stumble across anything that contradicts your view...? Nothing?

No you are claiming this not me. Nor is it true. The evidence that it is not true is there. Do the work and you can and will find it. Of course you will not do the work though will you.

Because you'd think that somebody that was really 'searching for the truth' would occasionally post something from the other side of the argument that was at least feasible...?

I have done this more than you and Tim have. The evidence is there. You just project your behaviour on to me despite reality.

But you don't of course, you have no interest in the truth in this or any other thread - you just bludgeon, bludgeon, bludgeon your pre-chosen position....

See above. You claim to be talking about me but in fact, based on actual behaviour, you are talking about Tim and yourself way more than me.

[Tim Drayton]

A cogent and informed witness statement from retired pathologist Dr John Lee in a UK court case challenging broadcast watchdog Ofcom’s guidance that essentially censors views that challenge the dominant narrative about Covid:

A key error that I would like to highlight is the characterisation of COVID-19 by the Government and also by the broadcast media.

As has been well publicised, COVID-19 is a disease caused by a novel coronavirus usually causing a respiratory infection. In some cases it can be directly fatal, or at least a strongly contributory cause of death. Many of the fundamental parameters of the disease were unknown when the outbreak first came significantly to public attention in February and March of this year, and are still the subject of much uncertainty. For example, its reproduction rate in various settings (that is the number of people who will catch the disease from one person who already has it), the mortality rate, the percentage of the population who may be susceptible to catching it, and how the passage of the disease may vary with climate and seasonal changes.

There are of course a large number of serious human infectious diseases many of which we have largely conquered through vaccination or other public health initiatives. But globally many diseases remain. In addition to the burden of chronic disease, recent figures estimate 1.5 million annual deaths from tuberculosis, 1.4 million from diarrhoeal diseases, 1 million deaths from AIDS, 400,000 from malaria. Lower respiratory tract diseases are estimated to cause 3 million deaths annually, of which the various forms of influenza may kill 28,000 or more people in the United Kingdom in a bad year. The question is where does COVID-19 rank in the panoply of other serious diseases?

The answer from Government and the media was that COVID-19 is a uniquely serious disease presenting a grave threat to human beings and to our society. In January, February and March 2020, the broadcast media repeatedly showed graphic images from, for example, China, Italy and New York, illustrating hospitals apparently overrun with COVID-19 patients. This inspired a Government response unprecedented in peacetime.

I believe that this characterisation of COVID-19 is highly questionable. It is certainly a contagious disease, though not obviously significantly more contagious than a typical influenza, and much less contagious than diseases such as measles. It is also true that in a small proportion of cases, particularly in elderly people with co-morbidities, it can be an extremely serious disease, and in a small fraction of those cases, it can lead to death. But the initial framing of this disease was seriously flawed. The infection fatality rate (the proportion of those who catch the disease and die) came down from an initial wild estimate from the World Health Organisation of 3.4% (which would indeed have been an emergency and crisis) to 0.9% by Imperial College London, to 0.67% also by ICL, to 0.2% by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and will probably finally be around 0.1% (very similar to influenza).

But even this fails to characterise the epidemic properly. Those under the age of 18 have a vanishingly low chance of being seriously ill with this disease or dying of it, those under 60 a very low chance, and even older patients into their eighties who are otherwise fit and well, a low chance of this disease significantly affecting their overall level of health or their lifespan.

I would not want to be misinterpreted. Because this is a new disease and therefore could potentially affect a large number of people, I believe that it was reasonable to believe at the inception of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom that it constituted a potentially important and serious public health challenge for the Government and other institutions such as the National Health Service.

However, I do not consider, from early on in the epidemic, that it could continue reasonably or rationally to be characterised as a threat out of all proportion to other commonly experienced public health challenges, including the annual contagion of influenza. (In Germany, for example, mortality in the seasonal influenza epidemic of 2017/18 was about 21,500, while to date Covid-19 mortality is less than 9,000.) The alarm raised by the potential for a dangerous epidemic was rapidly replaced by increasing information showing, to informed and unbiased assessment, that the highly probable outcome of the epidemic was well within the envelope experienced in many years of the last quarter-century. At the same time, clear harms from the un-assessed policy of lockdown became apparent very soon after its inception.

This alternative interpretation was suppressed to the extent that the narrative concerning the disease presented on the broadcast media still maintains unchallenged belief in the disproportionate severity of the Covid-19 epidemic, long after this has been untenable in the face of accumulating evidence.
If one studies datasets published by the Office for National Statistics, and calculates all cause mortality for winter/spring for the last 27 years corrected for population for each year, 2019/2020 ranks not first, second or third, but eighth. It is also clear that for several of the last six years there has been lower than usual mortality, meaning that, in the unavoidable cycles of nature, a year of excess mortality should have been expected.

It also turns out that a key early assumption is incorrect, namely that the entire population is vulnerable to the disease. A large proportion of the population (40–60%) show immunological evidence of immune responses to this virus without ever having been exposed to it. This is because as many as one in six respiratory infections in a normal winter are caused by other coronaviruses, and, perhaps not entirely surprisingly, these stimulate immune responses that cross-react with the new virus. Yet even now, the broadcast media continue to repeat the initial incorrect assumption, many weeks after something that seemed highly likely from the outset, namely that many of us have some immunity to the disease, has new clear data to support it.

It seems to me that the conceptualisation and contextualisation of the disease, designed to support the official narrative established in the earliest stages of the epidemic, has not been seriously scrutinised or challenged by the broadcast media to date. Particularly in the key months of February, March and April, I believe that this lack of challenge has been a major factor in the formulation of responses which have been inappropriate and caused major collateral damage.

https://lockdownsceptics.org/

[erolz66]

A cogent and informed witness statement from retired pathologist Dr John Lee in a UK court case

A request to the high court for a judicial review is not a 'court case' nor could submissions from an 'expert' on behalf of those making such a submission for judicial review be fairly or accurately described as 'witness statement'. As someone who spent 7 years challenging first Oftel and then Ofcom as it became on a daily basis, who attended countless oftel / ofcom meeting, was invited to speak at oftel/ofcom events and was the only consumer voice in Ofcoms Broadband Stakeholders Group that was set up by Ofcom to advise government, I can tell you the chances of the high court grating a judicial review on this issue are next to zero. Still gives Toby Young something to do and write about. You do know who Toby Young is do you Tim ?

As to the substance of retired pathologist Dr John Lee's submission it is to me as obvious flawed and just plain inaccurate in several places , pretty much like your previous expert's assertion as to what the population of Sweden is was totally incorrect. No I am not going to bother laying out why. If people are unable or unwilling to think for themselves then I am not going to do it for them only to be ignored when I do. The clue however would be in asking why he presents figures from Germany in one way, to show that this virus is no larger in scale than previous flu outbreaks and then uses an entirely different 'formula' when talking about the England and Wales ONS figures. His claims about these are just plain wrong if you look for yourself at the actual numbers in the same way the previous experts claim as to the population of Sweden was just plain wrong.

[cyprusgrump]

You claim to be talking about me but in fact, based on actual behaviour, you are talking about Tim and yourself way more than me.

You talk utter bollox in every thread you post in...

My position has been clear from the start, I believe that Lockdown is an inappropriate response to the virus and will cause more deaths than it saves.

I (and others) have presented plenty of evidence to support this position. Evidence that you dismiss or simply ignore - or challenge with a pointless Straw Man argument. There are plenty coming round to a rather sceptical view of Lockdown.

You on the other hand claim to be 'seeking the truth' and totally non-partisan on every thread. The reality is actually the complete opposite as I have pointed out.

You clearly seek out and post 'evidence' that only supports your view of things - something that you then accuse others of.

Why not just man-up and take a position on the subject...? Why hide behind the 'seeking the truth' mantra when you clearly are not? There is something bizarrely Narcissistic about your posts...

Anyhoo... could I care? I am increasingly confident that Lockdown is and will be proven to have been a big mistake. When the virus dies out (as it is doing rapidly almost everywhere) I'll post the evidence that proves you wrong...

BTW, I took my wife to see one of the top doctors in Cyprus on Monday. The first thing he wanted to talk about was how disastrously inappropriate Lockdown was. He said, "we effectively copied and pasted a policy from a totalitarian regime that was wholly disproportional to the disease". Needless to say, we didn't need to wear masks during the consultaion - it was quite refreshing!

[Londonrake]

I just wanted to point out that I have exclusive copyright to the term "bludgeoning" on chat forums.

Ding, ding! Seconds out.