Owen Jones – Evil Idiot

It’s been a while since I’ve ripped into that suppurating pustule on the body politic, however, here we go…

Owen Jones has always been nasty and illiberal but as Brendan O’Neill points out, this time he has sunk to new depths of depravity.

Professor Karol Sikora, an oncologist at the private Buckingham University, has become a social media star and a regular on TV screens, thanks to his viral tweets. You can see why the “Positive Professor” has developed such a wide fanbase: in an era of death, disease, economic turmoil and suspended freedoms, he offers desperate – often vulnerable – people the one thing they crave most: hope. His formula is simple: contrary to the misery peddled by the doom merchants, the measures strangling our economic and personal lives might actually be unnecessary.

Again, as O’Neill points out, Sikora did get some things wrong. There was a second spike for example and this was predictable. However, Sikora has been a voice of reason throughout this hysterical hyperbole about a disease that kills around 1% of people that it infects – that we have been able to measure. If you take into account people who were not admitted to hospital, it’s lower.

Jones on the other hand merely touts the standard media line and if you believe this wretched little poltroon then there are bodies piling up on the streets. But that is not what is so evil about him. Oh, no, he wants to de-platform people who disagree. Who dare to challenge the narrative, because only those in the ivory towers of the chattering classes may speak and they speak right-think.

On the matter of the measures being unnecessary, Sikora is right. Jones is – as usual – entirely wrong.

But there is nothing so cruel as false hope, and during a pandemic in which people’s lives depend on adherence to social distancing measures, it can be dangerous. Sikora is not a virologist or an epidemiologist: he is a cancer specialist. That should not preclude him from commenting on coronavirus: newspapers and TV programmes abound with non-specialists discussing the government’s response to the crisis, which is as it should be in a democracy. What matters is that he dissents from the medical consensus on how the virus should be defeated.

Have you ever read such utter bunkum? Yes, he is an oncologist and he rightly made the case that cancer treatment has suffered as a consequence of the insane ideology sweeping the country and has the government in a stranglehold. As for medical consensus, there was a time when the medical consensus thought that bleeding was an effective treatment, so Jones can stick his consensus where the sun don’t shine, frankly. Yes, it does matter that Sikora dissents from the consensus, because we need people to dissent, we need alternative voices, we need people who are prepared to stand up and make the alternative case. And the idiotic, insane lock-downs and mask wearing are pure woo with no scientific basis whatsoever (there is a case for some degree of distancing and handwashing). Indeed, SAGE is stuffed full of people who, like Sikora are not virologists or epidemiologists, they are people like CCP apologist Neil Ferguson and psychologists who have been caught deliberately ramping up fear to ensure compliance with their insanity.

There will always be people such as Sikora who dissent from consensus thinking, and challenging hypotheses is all part of the scientific endeavour. But we’ve lived with the virus for long enough to test and establish the facts: this virus spreads through social contact, it has mutated into a more transmissible strain, it is at least 10 times deadlier than the flu, and it is pushing our NHS to the brink.

Ah, yes, the old NHS on the brink bullshit. It’s always on the brink becuse it is an antiquated idea that was wrong when it was first established – a money pit that delivers substandard outcomes and needs pulling apart and a decent system put in place to replace it. As for the ten times more deadly argument, perhaps a reasoned and calm analysis is more in order. Its likeliness to kill you depends upon your age and underlying health. No one is seriously saying that it is just like flu, however a sense of proportion is in order here and Sikora has been consistently making valid points – that the cure is causing harm to other people who have need of the NHS.

Whether the aim is balance or sensationalism – or perhaps the latter hidden under the guise of the former – the producers and editors who provide Sikora with a platform should pause to reflect on the consequences of their decisions. They are responsible for helping to spread disinformation and discrediting the legitimate voices of scientists, doctors, nurses and paramedics who have understood the scale of the crisis from the start.

Sikora is not spreading disinformation. He has got some things wrong – the second spike, for example. He has been right about effects on other illnesses such as cancer. He, along with the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration are right to suggest shielding the vulnerable and letting the rest of us carry on as normal – and they, like Sikora have been victims of a nasty witch hunt led by people like Jones. However, Jones’ vile rhetoric in favour of silencing dissenting voices sounds awfully familiar.

“At around 12 pm [04:00 GMT] on Monday, Shanghai Pudong New District Court issued a verdict for Zhang Zhan’s case: she was sentenced to four years in prison over the crime of picking a quarrel and causing troubles,” Zhang Keke wrote on Twitter, adding that the woman attended the hearing in a wheelchair.

Yup, like the repellent Neil Ferguson, this execrable little man is nothing more than a shill for the policies of the CCP, he even uses similar rhetoric. Probably why he is so at home in the Guardian, which is nothing more than a mouthpiece for far left totalitarianism.