Let’s get the definitions out of the way. Unqualified, apartheid means the repugnant South African system of segregation by race. It comes “from Afrikaans, literally ‘separateness’, from Dutch apart ‘separate’ + -heid (equivalent of -hood)”: apart-hood. The word itself doesn’t make any reference to race, it just happened it arose in South Africa, and by its use there, unqualified, it came to mean racial apartheid. But the word — apartheid/apart-hood, or apartness, or separateness — can apply to any form of segregation. The phrase sexual apartheid makes perfect sense, segregation of the basis of sex. So to does the phrase religious apartheid, segregation on the basis of religion. And so too does the phrase covid apartheid, segregation on the basis of covid status. The repugnant state of racial apartheid can very meaningfully be found mirrored in the repugnant state of covid apartheid. Once you have separateness, or segregation, on the basis of this or that, you have apartheid; all that is necessary is to specify the basis of segregation, and then you have a fully formed phrase of clear meaning.

With the definition made clear, we can now turn to ask the question, do we have covid apartheid here in Britain? The answer is a clear yes. It may only be at the pilot stage, but that makes it even more alarming, because the whole point of a pilot is to test something at selected sites, and if it passes the test, then roll it out on a larger scale. The chief purpose of the pilots is to assess feasibility (can covid status certification work on the ground?) and acceptability (how many covidiots will buy into covid status certification). Dr No should perhaps add that in this parish, a covidiot is someone who wears a mask and socially distances when there is no need, does the hand sanitizer hand wringing ritual at each and every opportunity, and generally accepts the official/MSM covid narrative hook line and sinker, without batting an eyelid.

In health service research, we divide studies into those that look at structure (how many beds in the hospital), those that look at process (how many admissions to those beds) and those that look at outcomes (how many of the admissions died). The pilots are primarily structure (how many tests) and process (who gets the test, and how do we process the results) studies rather than outcome studies (effect on transmission), despite The Times printing a jump the gun report last month suggesting they were outcome studies. They can’t be, because the numbers, particularly of cases, are too small, and furthermore there aren’t any meaningful control groups. Last Friday, the government quietly admitted the was no need to bother with all that sample size nonsense (“The analyses are mainly descriptive in nature, and no formal power size calculation is presented. The main focus is on the feasibility of testing…”) and the samples are too small to provide any meaningful outcome results (“The initial events within the Events Research Programme (ERP) are currently insufficient in scale, scope and study designs to generate any direct evidence based on transmission data…”). Make no mistake, these studies are not outcome studies, but feasibility and acceptability studies. Can covid status certification be made to work on the ground? How many covidiots will buy into covid status certification?    

To understand how covid apartheid works in practice, we only have to look at how the pilots are run. Most of the pilots are at large sporting or entertainment events, and involve pre-attendance lateral flow tests. The Crucible ran just such a pilot recently. Without a negative covid lateral flow test, you were snookered. You didn’t even get to be in the frame. And right now, and for the next few days, covid apartheid will be in operation at Edgbaston, for the cricket.  Without a negative covid lateral flow test, you will be dismissed, out for a duck, no innings, and the only ashes you’ll see are the smouldering remains of the stash cash you burnt buying your ticket. The whole thing is run using a hideous smartphone widget called the Edgbaston App, which means if you don’t have a smartphone, you’ll find yourself up Queer street, [popup_anything id=”1083″] rather than watching the bowling from the pavilion end.

Once the pilots have been run, and found to pass muster, as they will, then covid status certification, and so covid apartheid, will become the norm at large sporting venues. The pilots will show that covid apartheid is both feasible on the ground, and acceptable to the masses. Never mind (see footnote) that the science is non-existent, and that the pilots didn’t look at outcomes (is covid spread reduced by using draconian test-and-ticket regime?); instead, focus on the control! The government will have succeeded in its objective, to segregate us into those who have clean covid status certification, and those who don’t. Covid apartheid will become normalised, and we will find ourselves not so much a gentle but slippery slope, as poised at the top of rushing roaring rapids that descends into a dark hell of universal covid apartheid. Because if covid apartheid works for large venues, then why the hell not use it at medium size venues? If it works for medium size venues, why not use it for small venues? Why not use it everywhere?       

Footnote: In passing, it is worth noting that this use of lateral flow tests, to green light entry and participation, is not only an unauthorised use, it also makes no sense, which is of course precisely why it they are unauthorised for such use. DIY (and self reported, to add another opportunistic layer of creative screening) lateral flow tests have a sensitivity of at best 49% (see Table 2, but note gold standard is a PCR positive test, and that the Birmingham students study found the overall sensitivity to be a derisory 3.32%), meaning that at least half, and possibly as many as 96%, of covid positive individuals, by PCR test, will test negative on a lateral flow test. But they will still be given a green light, despite being PCR positive. Dr No of course has his doubts about the veracity of PCR tests, but be that as it may, if the government chooses to say a positive PCR test defines a covid case, then using lateral flow tests to filter spectators into haves and have-nots is to use a sieve that has holes in it the size of gob-stoppers, or, if you are in Birmingham, or Edgbaston, the size of cricket balls. 

Comments

  1. Shawn Gibson Reply

    I completely agree with you. Passports and testing are both just Covid theatre; the government know they are but they also know that the masses demand protection and will buy this as an adequate source of it. I’m tired and I don’t know what the right answer is: As a vaccinated individual do I boycott anywhere requiring that I show my status? What if that venue has no option but to do so, or else they can no longer trade by either not following the inevitable rules that are coming or through not having enough custom to remain viable. I’m inclined to support the venue rather than the bigger cause. It all saddens me. There are no winners here.

    • Tom Welsh Reply

      When you think of it, Shawn, your post demonstrates one reason why democracy – even if it were possible – would not be a very good system of government. Because the “broad masses”, as I like to call them (even though many of them are clever, well-educated, and comfortably off) seem to have impenetrably thick skulls when it comes to understanding even the simplest of ideas about reality.

      We are surrounded on all sides by clear, compelling, well-documented evidence that the whole Covid business is an absurd hoax. It is a mild viral infection that mostly kills only those who are already at death’s door – who, in other words, are very likely to die of something quite soon. It has no unique signs or symptoms, and there is no reliable test for it. No one knows where it came from, how it is transmitted, or what the best treatment is.

      In other words, it is a heaven-sent opportunity for politicians and unscrupulous businesspeople to profit by terrifying the broad masses into the irrational behaviour that always lies so close to the surface. I can perhaps compare it the fear of vampires, or of the Devil, that used to haunt superstitious minds. (But what am I saying? The past year or so has shown that the huge majority of our species is just as superstitious as it has ever been).

      Instead of thinking things through, perhaps reading a few of the many extremely approachable books and articles easily available, reading appropriate blogs like Dr No’s, and discussing matters rationally, our fellow human beings have preferred to run around like headless chickens screaming (if I may be permitted an Irishism) that the sky is falling.

      How could we base a system of government on the judgment of such people? But entrusting it to those who float to the top of our political casspools is almost as bad. There is a difficult problem here, as Plato discerned. Sadly no one since has made much progress towards solving it.

  2. Anne Mathieson Reply

    All of this is wrong, lockdowns, mask wearing, mass vaccinations regardless of health status or age, mass testing and social distancing. Yes it is all theatre everything about the response to Covid is visual, a reminder to humans they are a walking disease factory and we should behave and act like one. We are being mentally and physically conditioned, and so far the majority are complying. Where is this heading? I don’t want to know. I now only participate in society for absolutely essential tasks.

  3. dearieme Reply

    I’ve said before that the vaccines are anti-lockdown vaccines rather than anti-viral vaccines. In other words their purpose is to dig many governments out of the holes they’d stupidly plunged themselves into.

    But they are not even effective anti-lockdown vaccines if we are going to carry on with restrictions, “passports”, and all the rest. Quite why a Conservative government should be so keen to ruin small businesses beats me. Maybe they just lack the backbone to stand up to the advice they receive from leftie academics. I suppose the problem starts with letting leftie civil servants pick the leftie advisers.

    The system is hopelessly rotted.

    • Tom Welsh Reply

      “Quite why a Conservative government should be so keen to ruin small businesses beats me”.

      For a start, although the ruling party calls itself “the Conservative Party”, it is absolutely not conservative in any sense – except perhaps that it wants to conserve its members’ money and power.

      And why should they not ruin small businesses? Doing so demonstrates the effectiveness of their power, and the fact that ordinary people cannot resist it. Psychopaths like that: making people do what they don’t want to, forbidding them to do what they do want to, and making sure that all concerned are fully aware of what is happening and why.

      Orwell explained it in simple terms in one of the most chilling passages of “1984”:

      “Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power”.

      In short, they ruin people because they can and because they enjoy doing it.

      There is another motive, too. Ruining small businesses gives more customers and money to huge businesses – the corporations with whose leaders our politicians like to hobnob, exchanging in a pleasant informal way money for power.

  4. DevonshireDozer Reply

    This is a timely post because of a household experience within the last 24h. Here, in a rural part of South Devon, waves of wokery & wankery wash around our feet. The madness has percolated through the minutiae of everyday life & drenched every nook & cranny. We are both ruled & surrounded by fuckwits. As a result, we are already being subjected to covid apartheid.

    My Senior Management has been a keen line dancer for many years, regularly attending a local group. It was probably the thing she missed most during the months of house arrest and social prohibition. Last night she attended the first gathering for many moons &, perhaps foolishly, shared her opinions (on masks, jabs, lockdowns & other such nonsense) with another person. That individual felt driven to phone the group leader this morning, who then sent an email to Mrs DD. Key bits were as follow:

    “I have to confirm that all dancers are fully vaccinated as I can’t run the class if not.”

    “I have to keep a track and trace record.”

    “We have several vulnerable members and people with vulnerable partners who wouldn’t come unless everyone had had the vaccine.”

    Weaker women might buckle, but Mrs DD refuses to be bullied & is now wondering why she ever wanted to spend time with these people. Arguing with idiots is pointless, but it’s a small indicator of how effective the brainwashing has been. They really are clueless.

    It is very easy to see how, in 1930s Germany, Jews were ‘denounced’ by others who believed they were being good citizens for doing so. This experience is exactly the same. The big difference, however, is that we have nowhere to run to. The entire world is overrun by the same bolleaux.

    It’s over – we are officially ‘The Sheeple’ and I have no idea what to do about it. Suggestions welcomed.

    • dr-no Reply

      DD – this whole thing is the Stanford prison experiment writ large. You make one group the prisoners, and the other the guards, and let things rip. Within days, people in both groups do pretty extraordinary – but hang on a second, that’s the thing, they are ordinary people – and dreadful things. It’s built into the human psyche, and it’s always been there, just covered by the gossamer thin veil of civilisation. Many people, perhaps most people, are nasty and stupid. It’s why we need people like Edmund Burke, or whoever it was, to remind us in no uncertain terms that all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. And therein lies hope. If we do do something, then there is a chance that evil will not triumph. That’s why this blog exists, and will continue to exist, unless and until the British government’s Reich of a Thousand Traffic Wardens comes marching through the door, and shuts it down. Resistance isn’t futile, it’s the only sane response.

      • DevonshireDozer Reply

        “That’s why this blog exists” . . . and I sincerely thank you for it.

        Having done a higher business degree back in the early eighties, I had studied a fair bit of psychology, OB, Milgram, SPE etc., but seeing it up close & personal like this is sobering. If it wasn’t for your blog (& a few other) I think I’d be in a very poor mental state. Most of the sceptics I know are via such pages, so the potential to become completely isolated is very high.

        I don’t do farcebick, twatter & so on, but I am aware of the censorship they have deployed among their congregations. This makes me worry about your continued existence. The bastards ARE out to get us.

      • Frank Reply

        The primacy of the emotional, irrational part of the brain over the thin veneer of logical or rational thought, and the overriding impulse of tribalism and groupthink, is well explained in Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind (when reading it you have to remember to translate the American terms) – apparently rational decision-making isn’t even possible if damage occurs to the emotional part of the brain (the ventromedial prefrontal cortex) – he calls it “the Intuitive Dog and its Rational Tail”. Tribalism dominates what most people’s reaction to any situation will be, and rational argument and facts will either count for nothing or be manipulated to fit one’s emotional reaction.

        The pandemic (if that’s what it is) has created new tribalisms and hostilities and emotional reactions so that any rational discussion is impossible. The fact that the government took a conscious decision to incite social division and conflict in this way is to my mind an act of supreme wickedness.

  5. John B Reply

    His apt to mention South African apartheid, because a key feature of that was the (hated) Pass Laws, designed to ‘lockdown’ people because they could not move out of their locale without a pass, allow access to certain areas only with a pass, to plan urbanisation and control labour.

    In France now we have ‘Pass sanitaire’ – even a digital version for smart phones – which carries proof of vaccination or negative PCR. This will be required to gain entry into events such as concerts, football matches and for travel within the EU, so long queues of young people to get vaxxed – that’s the way to make ‘em do it.

    An EU ‘Pass sanitaire’ will be introduced on 01 July for the 27 Member States. It is bound to happen in the UK… to make it easier for travel to and from the Continent, I expect will be the official lie – or do I mean line?

    So the EU, will have a de facto internal passport system, the scope and scale of which I am sure will be increased in due course.

    PS. For a while thus morning your website could not be accessed… ‘server not found’. Were you aware?

  6. dr-no Reply

    There have been reports (including that by John B above, and others, thanks for letting me know) that this website was down yesterday. If you were unable to access the site, Dr No apologises, and hopes things are now back to normal. There is no obvious explanation for outage. We may have to consult a conspiracy theorist to see if they can come up with an explanation.

    • Tom Welsh Reply

      I too noticed that your site was inaccessible, Dr No. I tried using the ping command from a terminal, and it replied that dr-no.co.uk was not to be found. That means, I think, that the site’s entry on DNS was not there; there may have been nothing at all wrong at your end.

      The way the Internet is constructed means that DNS is a very easy way to take any site offline. All that is necessary is to “spoof” the DNS server for the required clients by somehow interposing a false set of DNS entries between the client and the proper DNS server.

      It is rather worrying, as it means that the powers that be can quickly and easily take any site offline.

      • dr-no Reply

        Tom – interesting, hadn’t appreciated it was that simple. Dr No’s twitter account has also had remarkably few impressions for the last two tweets, less than 100, when his tweets normally get several hundred impressions, and not infrequently thousands, even tens of thousands. Engagements remain stable, at around 5-10%, which means the interest is still there, but twitter isn’t serving up the tweets. The website shadowban.eu reports no ban, apart from reply deboosting, but one can’t help wondering…

        For those not familiar with twitter’s ludicrous jargon, an impression happens when twitter served a tweet on someones feed (Dr No thinks of it is a thumbprint on a window) which may or may not be seen by feed’s owner (or the home owner), and an engagement happens when the feed’s owner does something with the tweet, likes it, retweets it or clicks on a link, for example. Reply deboosting happens when twitter hides replies behind ‘Show more replies’, thus making the replies less visible, but as Dr No hardly ever posts replies, this is rather meaningless.

  7. dr-no Reply

    Very timely. Yesterday an important Select Committee published a report on covid passports: Covid-Status Certification. Some quotes from the summary show how damming the report is:

    “Given the significance and seriousness of introducing such a Covid-status certification system, the Committee was surprised at the lack of consideration by the Government of a number of issues and concerns with their suggested approach, in particular the scientific case for that system.”

    “The Committee was struck by the fact that the best assessment the Minister could make in favour of certificates was to say that it was a “finely balanced judgement”.

    “[W]e found that the Government failed to make a sufficiently strong scientific case for introducing Covidstatus certification in the UK.”

    “Overall, we found that the Government has not established a clear scientific case, nor a good overriding public interest case for the introduction of a Covid-status certification system. There remain a large number of uncertainties about the rationale for an operation of such a system, as well as serious ethical concerns in regards to discrimination and infringement of individual rights and significant data protection concerns. When we consider that the Government’s own assessment that the case for introduction is “finely balanced”, it is our clear recommendation that the Government abandon the idea of using a Covid-status certification system domestically.”

    The committee also found that the government had sneaked in “a Covid-status certificate for international travel, without notifying or consulting Parliament”. Nothing, rightly, irritates MPs more than a government that ignores parliament. But that is the way our authoritarian government works. Those black star armbands for the untouchables are just round the corner.

  8. Annie Davenport Turner Reply

    I just want to echo how glad I am to be able to come here and read such sense. I do a lot (!) ‘out there’ on various platforms, sometimes effectively, sometimes to a deafening silence, sometimes to deeply unpleasant endings of old friendships, but here I enjoy the quotes, science deeply considered and researched, and much else. Tom, your posts always restore a frequently now draining resolve – thank you. Yes, ‘Psychopaths like that: making people do what they don’t want to, forbidding them to do what they do want to, and making sure that all concerned are fully aware of what is happening and why.’ 1984, Brave New World, and Animal Farm all rolled into one, with a liberal dusting of 1930’s Germany and much else.

    I’m afraid perhaps the greatest conspiracy theory (which it can’t be; it’s there in plain sight in books, papers, the gov website, and video) of all time is unfolding before our eyes and threatening to engulf our beautiful world. As Dr No says, all we can do is do something, as best thought out as possible, but to keep doing, keep going, keep throwing starfish back into the sea, because ‘it made a difference to that one’. (Check out The Starfish Story if you don’t know it.)

    The whole darned thing is about to get a whole lot bigger as Phase 2 (now Phase 1 – covid* is done) of zero carbon rolls out. (If I had the spirits to laugh, I would; no carbon, we’re all dead.) However, a nice thing to remind people is that we currently produce enough food for 14B people, so where’s their pipe to place that and smoke it…?! (Before all smoke is banned…)

    * Beginning to wonder whether the great ‘conspiracy theory’ suggestion that CoVID19 doesn’t indeed stand for Certificate of Vaccine ID…. But who knows, and does it really matter anyway; on, on with the cause!

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *