Apparently there is an uptick in cases at Weston super Mare down to parties for VE Day. What was their excuse for breaking social distancing? One of the reasons we left lockdown so late was because the scientists didn't think that the public would put up with it for long. It seems that they were right.

tiny. On what evidence do you claim Cummings is autistic to the extent that this explains his unlawful actions and subsequent terminological inexactitudes? Claims, almost certainly false, have been made that his son is autistic, but I know no one, aside from yourself, who has labelled him so.

His behaviour, well before this incident. That his kid allegedly has autism was only a belated clue. It's not an excuse, only an explanation. Many adults with autism can fake being a normal human beings most of the time. He doesn't try very hard.

Since this is now the Dom Cummings thread, some thoughts from Brendan O'Neil:

"Cummings Derangement Syndrome

Imagine living in a country where bishops intrude into political life and demand that the elected leader ‘repent’ for his political sins. Or a country where former police chiefs make televised denunciations of elected politicians and their ‘sophistry’. Or a country where incredibly wealthy women offer financial reward to rogue civil servants who are seeking to undermine the democratically elected government. Or a country where a mob turns up at someone’s home denouncing him as ‘demonic’ and shouting at him about death, and the political class doesn’t condemn such behaviour but rather cheers it on."

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/27/cummings-derangement-syndrome/

To go back to Covid-19:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.24.111823v1

Does the virus suppress the immune system in the same way as HIV?

There has been some discussion about whether Covid 19 can adversely affect eyesight, with Cummings and Johnson suggesting it might. Apart from suggesting that this might be attributed to the viral attack causing conjunctivitis, the response has largely been negative. However, I can report that whilst in hospital my vision (both long and short range) deteriorated significantly in both eyes and to the extent that I reported it to a doctor attending me. I was given an emergency appointment in the hospital’s ophalmology department in two weeks (probably to avoid any infectivity). However the ‘filmyness’ over my eyes did diminish rapidly , so rapidly that I cancelled my appointment. There were no signs of conjunctivitis. I even worried about going blind.

Good article Charly.

AK, one of the things that set H5N1 apart from seasonal flu was that they infected unusual parts of the body, including the brain, which is very rare. Flu normally sticks to the airways in humans. In birds flu is a digestive illness but H5N1 caused them to cough. Flu is very temperature fussy and doesn't easily jump to humans because we're not the right temperature amongst other reasons. Covid19 isn't as temperature sensitive which partly explains its success.

It could be a feature of severe diseases or those which jump species that they spread beyond the logical places for them to be. Covid19 seems to have been very greedy and invaded all sorts of body parts. This may explain a lot of deaths that didn't get recorded as covid. They may not have died of a lung infection but a stroke, a heart attack, maybe even a failure of some other organ. Inflammation could be the key cause by direct effect or as a side effect.

Oopse missed the key bit -

Maybe the inflammation affects the eyes (eg optic nerve) and as it goes down, proper vision returns.

some thoughts from Brendan O'Neil:

Well, that would be a first.

Strike 'thoughts'. Replace with 'Lies'.

Clarke, why don't you wait to find something to say before posting?

Imagine living in a country where a man who successfully led a campaign to free us from being governed by powerful, unelected, unaccountable elite bureaucrats became a powerful, unelected, unaccountable, elite bureaucrat.

A country where innocent people had to die because the same man was permitted to flout lifesaving rules without penalty..

Just imagine…

May 28, 2020 at 11:44 AM Phil Clarke
Politicians should defund unelected lying Climate Scientists immediately. How many have they killed already by depriving them of affordable power, potable water, medical aid, food, sanitation etc?

Except Ferguson did resign from SAGE, rather than undermine the message. At the time Matt Hancock said he was 'speechless'. He was speechless again this morning.

Did Ferguson resign or did he just drop out of Sage? Big difference. Ferguson also mixed with someone from another household and wasn't 2m apart...well not unless he should be in the Guinness Book of records.

By resigning I mean from his day job.

Why would he do that? He breached the rules and resigned from the role in which he was advising on those same rules, nothing he did wrong relates to his modelling work, whereas Cummings' entire role is advising the Government.

So a specialist in pandemics breaks the rules for rumpy pumpy but he's not making a mockery of his job but a non specialist in pandemics should have to leave his job over an overlong drive and a bit of a walk? What about all those MPs who are breaking the rules?

The police have cleared him of his isolation in durham with his family, it's just the day out to Barnard Castle that's a minor breach of the rules. The police wouldn't have even fined him so long as he returned to his parents farm when they'd had a chat about the rules.

"... whereas Cummings' entire role is advising the Government."

May 28, 2020 at 2:03 PM Phil Clarke

Climate Scientists have lied to Governments, even getting President Obama to quote Cook's fabricated 97% Consensus.

William M Connolley corrupted Wikipedia how many times? 6,000? 7,000? 8,000? More?

Another perspective on Covid-19:

https://www.hughwillbourn.com/post/cc-no-2-covid-brexit-and-flying-saucers

"In 1954 Leon Festinger, one of the most respected social psychologists of the 20th Century, joined a cult whose members believed that earthquakes and flooding were about to hit the United States but the cult members would be saved by “the Guardians” who would whisk them to safety in flying saucers. Their leader, given the pseudonym Marion Keech by Festinger, revealed the date of salvation and they all sat and waited.

The appointed time came and passed and they were not saved. Nor did the United States suffer catastrophic earthquakes and floods. This is where it gets interesting. Before he and his colleagues had inveigled their way into the cult, Festinger had posited that after their beliefs had been incontravertibly disproven, the cult members would become not less but more convinced of their beliefs.

Festinger hypothesised that if five specific conditions were met, believers would double down on their beliefs in order to avoid what he called ‘cognitive dissonance’: a contradiction between their beliefs and the evidence of their own lives.

Festinger’s five conditions are:

1. There must be conviction

2. There must be commitment to this conviction

3. The conviction must be amenable to unequivocal disconfirmation

4. Such unequivocal disconfirmation must occur

5. Social support must be available subsequent to the disconfirmation.

Believers could also avoid cognitive dissonance by simply abandoning their beliefs and some members of the cult did that. They left and did not return.

Those who stayed had invested heavily in their beliefs. They had disposed of possessions and totally reshaped their lives. They had each other for mutual support but that wasn’t quite enough. They became compelled to convince others. Festinger published an account of his research in a book entitled, When Prophecy Fails, and even now, sixty years later, it is a good read.

Festinger’s five conditions and the behaviour of the cult believers correspond closely to the situation with Brexit, Climate Change and Covid-19: a prophecy is made, believers invest themselves, their time, money and prestige in it, the prophecy fails and the believers become more fervent. The biggest difference is that whereas the flying saucer cult had a maximum of a few dozen believers, Brexit and Climate Change are mainstream preoccupations and our response to COVID-19 has devastated the economy of the world.

The history of the Climate Change movement is one of repeatedly delayed catastrophe in lock-step with increasingly strident advocacy. In the early 1980s it was a fringe movement. In 1988 it was predicted that sea levels would rise to completely cover the Maldives by 2018. "

The psychological aspect is very interesting. We argue about Cummings. We discuss the other politicians and officials who have broken the rules. France bans a drug that some French doctors believe is giving positive results. Cognitive bias, the search for things that fit a belief system, rather than what works in the real world. It goes on and on. The MSM goes bananas about trivialities.

Meanwhile, massive damage is being done to our economies; We squander our resources on renewables. Most of our politicians are clueless. My children are already saying "No jobs? I'll stay on and do a Masters". A surrealistic nightmare.

May 28, 2020 at 4:07 PM Charly
It seems that the cost AND consequences of Coronavirus are making more politicians realise that Climate Science isn't very high on many people's list of priorities, and is falling fast.

It will give some Climate Scientists the chance to get honest about the stuff that can be disregarded and dumped.

Attempts by Climate Scientists to meddle with Coronavirus have been as disastrous as their own attempts at computer modelling.